'No, whack him with my trainers!'

Meili puts her phone away and says, 'Quieten down. Now, listen, children. Spring Festival is coming up. If your parents haven't decided what to give you yet, tell them to visit my shop. It's called Fangfang Toy Emporium. It's packed with wonderful toys and games. If they bring one of these business cards I'm handing out to you, they'll get a 20 per cent discount . . .'

At the southern outskirts of town, the bus picks up speed and hurtles past lines of shacks with aluminium rain barrels glinting on the tin roofs.

KEYWORDS: Ming Dynasty theatre, face shape, toffee apple, swaddled, jewel-encrusted, sensitive.

AT THE END of the dancing policemen act, Nannan weaves her way back through the crowd of spectators with three bottles of Coca-Cola, and reaches her seat just as the curtains rise again. The instrumental prelude of a Cantonese opera begins to pour from the large loudspeakers flanking the stage. Meili, Kongzi and Nannan are sitting at the back. A group of scruffy workers who've wandered out from their nearby dormitory house in shorts and flip-flops are standing behind them, smoking. Local officials are seated on the front rows, dressed in freshly pressed trousers and short-sleeved shirts. 'We're in the birthplace of Cantonese opera,' Kongzi shouts over the din. 'This theatre is even older than the Confucius Temple and the Town G.o.d Temple. It's the perfect place to watch The Seventh Fairy Delivers her Son to Earth!'

'Is the opera based on the weaver girl and the cowherd story?' Meili asks, putting her arm around Nannan. She cracks a sunflower seed between her teeth and spits the sh.e.l.l onto her bulge. 'Here,' she says, offering some seeds to Nannan.

'You know I don't like them,' Nannan says, pushing them away.

'But these ones are freshly roasted, just try one they're delicious,' Meili says, wishing Nannan would overcome her irrational dislike of seeds. The drums are so loud now, she has to raise her voice to be heard.

'Yes, the Seventh Fairy is the weaver girl, the seventh daughter of the Jade Emperor and the Mother of the West. When she fell pregnant with the cowherd's child, her mother was furious and commanded her to return to Heaven. Now that it's born, she has to hand it over to the father.'

Gongs, violins, drums and guitars all sound out at once, drawing the audience's attention to the brightly lit stage, where two men with hoses are filling the air with white smoke in preparation of the fairy's descent to earth.

'Look, there she is!' Nannan cries out, jumping to her feet. A canvas backdrop is lowered, revealing the green landscape of terraced tea plantations beneath a clear blue sky. The sea of heads, hats and paper fans below wave about in antic.i.p.ation.

A woman in a jewel-encrusted headdress and a long red robe wafts down from the sky with a baby in her arm, singing: 'The Seventh Fairy cradles her swaddled baby son, and looks down at the Nine Regions and weeps, her tears flowing like a river . . .'

'This is boring,' Nannan moans. 'I much preferred the moon-dancing policemen just now.' This free show has been staged by the Foshan Song and Dance Troupe and the Shenxian County Cantonese Opera Company to celebrate 1 August Army Day. Meili, Kongzi and Nannan arrived at the theatre at five o'clock to make sure they'd get seats.

'Shut up!' Kongzi says, tapping Nannan's leg.

'My darling son is too young to know the meaning of grief, to know how my heart breaks at the thought of leaving him . . .' the fairy sings. The cowherd walks onto the stage wearing a headdress decorated with pompoms and ta.s.sels, a thick-belted tunic and padded boots. To a melancholy strain from the violins, he twirls around the fairy and takes her in his arms.

'Feel how fast my heart is beating, Kongzi,' Meili says, pressing his hand against her chest. The sunflower seeds on her belly scatter to the floor. 'The baby reminds me of Waterborn. She was no bigger than that when you sold her. I was still producing milk six months after she was gone. My body was yearning for her to come back.'

Kongzi pulls his hand away and takes a swig of Coca-Cola. Nannan sees a cla.s.smate in the crowd and waves to her. The sweltering, muggy air smells of cigarette smoke, sweat and sulphur. The open-air Ming Dynasty theatre is on the north sh.o.r.e of Womb Lake. Its ornate stage resembles the entrance to the Confucius Temple, with a golden roof supported by large red pillars. Lights pointing at the upturned eaves illuminate strange carved beasts glaring at the audience with mouths agape.

'Forget your sorrow for a moment,' the cowherd sings to the fairy. 'Let me wipe the hot tears from your face, and hold my son in my arms.' He takes the baby from the fairy and, gazing down at him, dances about the stage, the drums beating in time with his rhythmic steps.

'That baby's not real,' Nannan says, brushing a mosquito off her arm. 'See, it's not moving at all.'

'I am a celestial being and you a mere mortal,' the fairy sings. 'Our love defies the Laws of Heaven. For giving you a male heir, I have been berated and humiliated . . .' As the fairy bursts into tears on the stage, in the unlit darkness at the back of the theatre, Meili weeps as well. Although she can remain on the earth, she has to live like an escaped convict, searching in vain for a place where she can legally give birth to her child. At least no one has tried to harm the fairy's son. As soon as her own son was born, he was killed and condemned to another reincarnation.

When Meili returns her tear-filled eyes to the stage, suddenly the fairy looks identical to her, and the cowherd to Kongzi.

'What miseries you've had to endure to produce a child for me!' the cowherd sings.

'I have no regrets,' the fairy sings back to him. 'The hundred days we spent together could vanquish a lifetime of sadness.'

'Yes, for one hundred days, we were as happy as two fish in a lake. And now, as I hold my son in my arms, my sorrows melt away . . .'

'My dear love, we're not fated to remain together. Now that I have delivered our son to you, I must return to the Celestial Palace. I in the sky and you on the earth, with the Milky Way between us: it won't be easy to meet again . . .'

Meili pats her belly and whispers, Don't worry, little Heaven, I'll make sure that this incarnation will be successful. The family planning laws won't last much longer. Just wait patiently in my womb a few more years until it's legal for you to come out. And when that time comes, if you still refuse to budge, I'll dig into my tummy b.u.t.ton and pull you out with my bare hands! On the stage, the heartbroken fairy circles the cowherd, tossing her head back and flicking her long sleeves in despair. Meili strokes Nannan's ponytail, and feels her tears slowly dry up.

'Why were you crying, Mum?' Nannan asks. 'That baby won't die. I understand Cantonese. The daddy said he'd look after him.'

'I was just thinking about Waterborn,' Meili says, wiping her eyes carefully, trying not to smudge her eyeliner.

'If I died and came back as a boy, you and Daddy would be so happy! I hate myself. I hate being a girl . . .'

'Stop muttering and look at the opera,' Kongzi says impatiently. Nannan leans over Meili and taps her empty Coca-Cola bottle on his head.

'How sad that you must leave us!' the cowherd cries. He is stifling in his thick costume, and sweat flies from his face whenever he moves his head. 'My love for you is like a river. Not even the sharpest sword can sever its flow. Farewell, sweet fairy . . .'

'My heart is dying, but we mustn't cry. Goodbye, husband, goodbye, child . . .' Meili watches the fairy step onto a cloud and rise into the blue sky, and feels a part of herself rise to the heavens with her.

By the time they squeeze their way out of the departing crowd, Meili's dress is drenched in sweat. Halfway home, Kongzi takes her hand and says, 'Let's go to a restaurant. My treat.'

'Your treat?' Meili says, taken aback. 'OK then, follow me.' She decides to take them to the Hunan restaurant Tang introduced her to. She loves its homely atmosphere and rich, spicy food.

After Kongzi pours himself a gla.s.s of beer, Nannan challenges him to an arm wrestle. She grasps his fist and forces it onto the table. Kongzi retaliates, slamming hers down with greater force. 'Calm down, Kongzi,' Meili says, 'and serve out this steamed pork.'

'I thought you'd given up meat,' Kongzi says.

'I had, but I think I should eat some for the baby's sake. The pickles and raw vegetables I've been living on this week can't have provided much nutrition.' Meili downloaded a vegetarian diet drawn up by a Taiwanese nutritionist, hoping it would help her lose weight.

'I don't like meat, either, Mum,' Nannan whines. 'I want a toffee apple.'

'Why didn't we ever take a photograph of Waterborn?' Meili asks Kongzi. 'Who did she look like?'

'She had my face shape and your features,' Kongzi says. He fumbles in his pockets for his cigarettes, then remembers he's given up, and wraps his hands around his gla.s.s of beer instead.

'No, Waterborn was my sister, so she must have looked like me,' says Nannan. 'I remember when you came back after giving her away, Daddy. You said: "Don't be sad, Nannan. From now on, I'll only love you."'

'Nonsense, don't lie: I'd never say such a thing!'

'I heard you say it countless times!' Meili retorts. 'Kongzi, there's something I've never told you before: Waterborn was born with a sixth finger on her left hand. Sister Mao chopped it off in the delivery room.'

'So that's why her hand was bandaged!' Kongzi says. 'You told me Sister Mao accidentally cut her with the forceps.'

'Dad, why did you call me Nannan? It sounds like "boy-boy". My cla.s.smates said you chose the name because you wished you'd had a son.'

'No, what I've always wanted is a son and a daughter: one of each.'

'Don't lie to me. You two are always arguing about wanting a son. Now I'm older I understand. It's because of me that those family planning officers killed Happiness and that you gave Waterborn away. The government only allows parents to have one child living with them.'

'That may be the rule, Nannan,' Kongzi says. 'But still, your mother and I are doing our best to make sure you have a little sibling to keep you company once we're gone.'

'If you wanted me to have a sibling, why did you sell Waterborn?' A fly darts off Nannan's hand and settles on the table.

'Don't touch the fly it's filthy!' Meili says to Kongzi, as he's about to swat it, then she turns to Nannan and says: 'Your father, he he just wasn't thinking straight that day. He and I are working hard, saving up money so that you can go to university when you're older. Kongzi, I'm still hungry. Order a yellow croaker steamed with salted vegetables.'

'No, you're saving up money to buy little Heaven a residence permit,' Nannan says.

'Yes, that too,' Kongzi says. 'We want our family to have a bright future, Nannan. That's why we came here: to make money and give you a better life . . . A yellow croaker, please, waitress, and . . . mm, let's see, a "chicken of the immortals" as well.' Kongzi closes the menu and pushes it to the centre of the table.

'No, you came here to escape the family planning officers. All my cla.s.smates' parents are on the run from them. I understand everything now. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have left the village. If I hadn't been born, Happiness would be alive today. I hate myself.' Nannan stands up and leaves the table.

'Mere mortal that I am, I can't join you in the sky. The Heavens weep in sympathy, but are powerless to end my thousand autumns of longing . . .' Kongzi warbles, then thanks the waitress as she puts another dish onto the table.

'Stop singing, Kongzi,' Meili says. 'Listen, Nannan is growing up. Her body's starting to develop, and she's become very sensitive. We must be careful what we say in front of her. You must stop making her recite the Three Character Cla.s.sic and Standards for Being a Good Pupil and Child. You're putting too much pressure on her.' She rests her elbows on the table and rubs her throbbing temples. Last night she took Tang and six members of their staff to the Princess Karaoke Bar to celebrate his birthday, and she had far too much to drink.

'I read Nannan's diary,' Kongzi confesses. 'She wrote that she doesn't have a home to go back to and that she's like a stream flowing to nowhere.'

'The other day she asked me what "despair" means. I said it's when you feel there's no hope.'

'Don't talk to her about matters you don't understand. The Confucian Doctrine of the Mean says that we should neither cling to life nor throw it away, and should avoid extreme emotions of joy and despair. We should learn to be happy with our lot.'

'You just want an easy life. Where's your ambition gone? When my brother's released from the labour camp, I'm going to ask him to come and work for my company.' Meili looks down at her left hand and rubs the shiny scar tissue on the stump of her index finger. The nails of the four remaining fingers are painted with sparkling red varnish.

Kongzi picks up a slice of pork smothered in sticky rice. 'But your brother has no skills. What would he do?'

'I didn't have any skills either, but I still managed to help set up a company and become general manager, didn't I?'

'Yes, but you and he have different personalities,' Kongzi says, pouring himself some more beer. The restaurant is only half full. On the next table a man wearing a wig and a smart grey suit is serving himself and his elegant guest some vintage Five Grain Liquor.

'Did Nannan go to the toilet?' Meili says. 'This toffee apple should be eaten hot.' She looks up at the laminated menu of Hunanese food on the wall: CHILLI-STUFFED PEPPERS, HOT-SOUR DOG MEAT, CRISPY DUCK IN SESAME SAUCE . . . then stares at the goldfish swimming about in a dirty fish tank on the counter, next to a ceramic fortune cat that is continually raising and lowering its left paw.

'How I'd love to eat one of my grandmother's sticky rice cakes right now,' Mother says, gazing into her pocket mirror as she retouches her lipstick, 'or one of those deep-fried sesame twirls she used to make . . . I wasn't always this confident. All those years you made me travel across the country with you, barefoot and pregnant, my personality was crushed. It's only here, in this electronic dump of a town, that I've finally gained a sense of direction. Once Heaven is born, I want to open a chain of shops across the country, then buy ourselves a Foshan apartment and resident permits so that Nannan can go to a government middle school. My parents have no income now. They hired someone to help out on the fields, but the price of fertilisers and seeds has risen so much that they didn't make any profit. The five thousand yuan I sent them this year kept them afloat, but it wasn't enough to cover all my mother's medical bills. Who knows how much more treatment she'll need?'

When they have both eaten their fill, the conversation peters out. Father cleans his teeth with a toothpick while Mother checks the messages on her phone. The infant spirit watches the fetus shift position inside Mother's womb. Nannan still hasn't returned to the table.

'Where has Nannan gone to?' Mother says. She and Father look over their shoulders at the dark doorway.

'Look, she's over there, by the lake, under the willows . . .' Father says.

'Stop kicking me, little one a family planning officer might see you!' Mother says, rubbing her belly.

'Don't speak to the fetus like that you'll frighten it to death,' Father says, wiping his gla.s.ses with a paper napkin.

'Fetus? The baby's four and a half years old. By the time it comes out it will be able to recite the a.n.a.lects to you.'

KEYWORDS: Spring Festival, ghostly figures, firecrackers, Sacred Father of the Sky, stone baby, yellow mud.

SEEING MEILI STRUGGLE to stuff dumplings with her maimed hand, Kongzi puts down his chopsticks and offers to take over. The table is already laden with dishes of sliced pork tongue, braised trotters, stir-fried chilli prawns and drunken chicken.

'I wish we still kept ducks, but the Heaven rivers are just too polluted,' Meili says. 'Those birds you reared in our last place tasted foul. Do you remember how wonderful it was back on the sand island when we could eat roast duck every day?'

'Yes, it doesn't feel right not being able to kill our own bird at Spring Festival.'

'Don't say the word "kill" on the eve of Chinese New Year. It'll bring us bad luck. Here, have some of this Five Grain Liquor my a.s.sistant gave me. Let's hurry up with these dumplings, or the food will get cold. Nannan, turn down the television and join us at the table.'

'What about that sweet garlic you pickled?' Kongzi says. 'I'd love to try some.'

The room is clouded with cigarette and incense smoke. On a side table, three fat incense sticks are propped up in a bowl of rice, in front of three small paper tombstones on which Kongzi has inscribed the names of his father and his father's parents. Around the bowl are offerings of cigarettes, boiled sweets and king prawns. Nannan ignores Meili and stays on her small bed, smiling and frowning at the televised Spring Festival Gala. She's wearing the red nylon jacket and white scarf Meili bought her yesterday. Nannan had wanted a purple jacket but Meili managed to persuade her, after a heated argument, that red suited her better. On the studio stage, a Han Chinese woman is belting out a love song while girls in Tibetan and Uighur costumes dance around her in a circle. Nannan is only eleven years old, but this morning she got her first period. Meili was sitting in the yard plucking hairs from the pigs' trotters when Nannan rushed out from the toilet pit with blood running down her leg. Meili presumed she'd cut herself, but when she removed her stained skirt and underwear, she discovered she was menstruating. She placed plastic bags and towels over her bed and made her lie down. She told her not to worry, that this is what happens to every girl when they become a woman. But it was no use. Nannan was inconsolable. She burst into tears and said she didn't want to be a woman, and that she hated Meili for making her a girl. Kongzi went out to sweep the yard, came back to make Nannan a cup of brown-sugar tea and then went out again to buy her a hot-water bottle. Before the television gala started this evening, she burst into tears again, saying she wished little Heaven would come out so that she could go away and die. Afraid that Nannan might do something rash, Kongzi has decided to stay in all night. Every couple of hours, Meili gives her a gla.s.s of water and a fresh sanitary towel.

Meili looks at the dumplings Kongzi has made. Each one is long and thin, just like him.

'Oh yes, I haven't told you yet,' he says. 'I b.u.mped into the manager of the Hunan restaurant the other day, and we fell into conversation. When I told him my name, he said a guy went to his restaurant some time ago, asking for us. A tall guy, well spoken, with round gla.s.ses. Do you think it could have been Weiwei you know, that man who lost his mother?'

'When did this happen?' Meili asks, her heart pounding, certain that it was her who Weiwei wanted to see.

'Two years ago, just after Spring Festival.'

That was around the time my shop was ransacked by the inspectors, Meili thinks to herself as she drops the stuffed dumplings into a pot of boiling water. And when I had lunch at the Hunan restaurant with Tang that day, I saw a man who looked just like Weiwei. No wonder my eye kept twitching.

'Daddy, what is happiness?' Nannan asks, after watching a man in a white suit sing 'Your happiness is my joy . . .'

'Happiness is when you forget yourself,' Meili says, watching the dumplings bob to the surface of the boiling water, holding a slotted spoon in mid-air.

'Happiness, my daughter, is you coming back from school with a good mark. It's the nation at peace, our family united.'

'Here, come and have your dumplings, Nannan,' Meili says, spooning some onto a plate for her. 'And I'll pour out some vinegar for you to dip them in.'

'I hate dumplings. Mum, I want to go home.' Nannan leans back against the small headrest. Beside her pillow is an opened packet of rice cakes.

'But this is your home, and your bed,' Kongzi says, pointing to the large collection of dolls lying by her feet. Cha Na has given Nannan almost every doll that's sold in the shop, but Nannan's favourite is still the plastic doll with the red dress that Kongzi gave her many years ago, even though it's old and dirty, and the red paint on its mouth has chipped. To her great sadness, however, she hasn't seen it since they moved into this tin shack.

'No, what I mean is I want to go back to Kong Village,' Nannan says. 'This place doesn't feel like home. I miss Grandma.' On her crumb-strewn quilt is a copy of the school textbook, Cultivating a Moral Character and Forging a Successful Life, and a spiral-bound songbook. Since the beginning of winter, Nannan has become moody and withdrawn. In a lunch break last week, she pushed Lulu onto the ground, and since then none of the children in her cla.s.s will play with her.

'You were only two when we left how can you miss her?' Meili says, as she and Kongzi stare at the television screen and tuck into the hot dumplings.

'Besides, your home is wherever your parents are, so right now, this is your home,' Kongzi says. He takes a sip of Five Grain Liquor and smiles contentedly. As well as being deputy head of the migrant school, he's also been given a two-year contract to work as a supply teacher at Red Flag Primary, thanks to Tang putting in a word for him with the Education Department.

'I can't remember what Grandma looks like but you told me she was always nice to me,' Nannan says. 'Why didn't you bring any photographs of her, or of our old house? I want to phone Grandma and Grandpa and wish them Happy New Year.'

Nannan still hasn't been told that Kongzi's father has died. As soon as she mentions him, the contented smile vanishes from his face.

Noticing his distress, Meili turns to Nannan and says, 'If you miss them, go and prostrate yourself before the altar over there.'

'Prostrating is feudalistic,' Nannan replies.

On hearing this, Kongzi jumps up from his seat and grabs Nannan by her collar. Meili pushes him away and puts her arms around her, saying, 'She's only eleven! You can't expect her to understand about filial piety!' Kongzi flings his chopsticks on the floor to release his anger, then turns up the volume of the television. A woman in a green police uniform is singing: 'You angel in a white coat, when I came into this world, yours was the first face I saw. You picked me up in your soft hands and wrapped me in a blanket. With this song, I give you my thanks . . .' On the street outside, a string of firecrackers explodes.

Nannan snuggles into Meili's embrace and says, 'Can I have some Coca-Cola, Mum?'

'You shouldn't drink cold fluids in your condition.'

'But I want some.'

'All right. Kongzi, fetch her a bottle from the fridge.' They've had the fridge for only two days, but it's already packed with food. Meili's placed her severed index finger on the bottom shelf and Kongzi has hidden their cash in the freezer compartment.