'Keep your voice down you're not in a cla.s.sroom now,' Meili says. She looks over towards the town. An old warehouse behind the rubbish dump has been renovated and turned into the Earthly Paradise Nightclub. Its bright neon lights outshine the ones of the Eastern Sauna House above. People walk past and gaze up in wonder. A motorbike stops outside the entrance, and a smartly dressed couple climb off the back seat and become engulfed by children selling roses and chewing gum. Nearer the jetty, a crowd is wandering aimlessly outside a second-hand stall which is lit by a bright bulb. Meili suddenly remembers the CD player she bought from the stall and gave to Kongzi for his birthday. She rushes into the tent, brings out the CD of the 'Fishing Boat Lullaby' she also bought him, slides it into the CD player and turns the volume up. The melancholy notes of the zither ripple out like water. She closes her eyes and pictures fishing boats moving through an empty night, their sails gleaming above cresting waves. As plucked notes quiver, rise and fade, she imagines the sun setting in the west, waves lapping against a riverbank, willow branches softly swaying, a heron soaring into the sky. Slowly, the willows, waves, sails, river and sky turn the same brilliant gold, then the light fades and darkens. In a brief moment of silence, she remembers lying on the deck of their boat, wailing a funeral song for Happiness as the infant spirit flickered above her. After a final dissonant strain resolves into a sad chord, Kongzi raises his head to the moon and sighs, 'Ah, can you feel yourself dissolve into the landscape? It's just like the poem: "Scoop water from the river and the moon is in your hands. / Pick blossom from a tree and its perfume infuses your clothes." Thank you, Meili, for my wonderful presents. I will treasure them.'

'Yes, it's a beautiful song,' Chen says. Everyone else remains silent and begins to help themselves to more food.

As they're surrounded by water on all sides, at dusk the air becomes cool especially now in winter and the island feels more s.p.a.cious.

'How much grain do you feed your ducks every day?' Juru asks Meili, picking a piece of straw from her jacket. Seeing the children come running up waving branches in the air, she shields her bowl and shouts, 'Careful not to kick sand into the food!'

'Here, one for each of you,' Meili says, handing a meatball to each child.

'Rub your hands on your trousers first, you grubby girl!' Juru says to her daughter. 'Look, they're covered in mud.'

Nannan wanders out from behind a tree and watches the children scurry into the bushes.

'Don't tread in the poo!' Chen calls out to them.

'I wish people wouldn't s.h.i.t in those bushes,' Meili says, staring pointedly at Juru. 'When there's no wind blowing, the island stinks to high heaven. You asked how much we feed the ducks? We only have twenty-three left now. We give each bird a cup of grain a day, or two cups if they're laying eggs.' She sees Nannan pick up a tiny dead chick and says, 'Drop it!'

'Why is it dead, Mum?' Nannan asks, studying its face closely.

'It got sick, probably.'

'Why it wants to leave its mummy and daddy?'

'Huh, always asking questions! Come here and have another meatball!'

'I'm full up,' Nannan says, frowning. 'My tummy's tired.'

'Why not bury the little creature in the ground to keep it warm?' Meili says, and looks down at the ducks in the small pen Kongzi wove from branches and twigs. Nannan puts the chick down next to the stove and presses it into the sand with her foot.

'You're lucky to be able to have fresh eggs every day my ducks seem to have stopped laying,' Xixi says, taking a fried pickle from the plate Juru is pa.s.sing round.

'I've heard you're not producing enough breast milk, Juru,' Meili says. 'You should give your baby a formula top-up before you put him down to sleep.' The baby is sucking Juru's left nipple now, his little nose and hands red from the cold.

'The formula they sell at the market is fake,' Juru says. 'It's just ground rice and sugar. No protein.'

'I would've been lucky to have been fed rice and sugar at his age!' Meili says. 'Come on, let's taste the duck soup. Pa.s.s me your bowls.'

'"Condemned to the same life of wretched vagrancy, / At our first encounter, we laugh like old friends . . ."' Kongzi intones, his gold spectacles glinting under the strip light. 'So, who wrote that poem? If you can't answer, you must drink a shot!'

'We're peasants,' Bo protests. 'What do we know about poetry?' Bo never washes when he returns from the rubbish dump. As soon as any alcohol reaches his stomach, a smell of rot rises from his skin.

'How about a game of rhyming couplets, Kongzi?' says Dai, tossing his stub on the ground. 'Let's fill our gla.s.ses and have a go.'

'No, play with him first,' Kongzi says, pointing to Chen with his chin.

'All right,' Dai says, raising his gla.s.s to Chen. 'You and me, then. If you can't complete the couplet, you must empty your gla.s.s in one gulp. Here goes: Men who drift down the river . . .'

Chen pauses for a moment then blurts: 'End up getting stabbed in the liver . . .'

Dai rolls his bulbous eyes. 'Stabbed in the liver? When have any of us been stabbed in the liver?'

'Help me out, someone!' Chen whines.

'No, I'm afraid you've lost, my friend. Drink up!'

The infant spirit sees that these lives have now vanished from the island. All that remains is a smell of darkness and wisps of Mother's breath blowing from the bushes that have grown over the sandy beach. The reflections of the town's neon lights stretch right across the river into the reeds below. Mother and Father's plastic bag is still hanging from a branch. Inside it are some yellow flyers, a pocket mirror, three condoms, a stick of cinnamon, some star anise and a mouldy stub of ginger. Sounds from the evening return once more.

'Come on, Master Kong. My turn to challenge you.'

'All right. I'm ready.'

'A man who doesn't drink . . .'

'Lives a life more tedious than you could think.'

'A man who doesn't smoke . . .'

'Lives more miserably than an ox in a yoke.'

Father's efforts receive loud applause. 'What a scholar! It's clear you're a chip off Old Confucius's block. Such learning! Come, Master Kong, let's fill our gla.s.ses again and have another go . . .'

KEYWORDS: inferior breed, Mount Yang Guifei, merry-go-round, trampoline, bandages.

LAST MONTH, AFTER two days of torrential rain, the sand island flooded. Some families retreated to their boats, others moved over to the opposite bank and built temporary huts near the rubbish dump. When the floodwaters receded, they all returned to the island and rebuilt their shelters. At Spring Festival, Kongzi wrote rhyming couplets for every family to hang outside their doors. Bo and Juru didn't have a door, so they hung their couplet IN THIS GOLDEN AGE, EVERY FAMILY WILL PROSPER / IN THIS NEW YEAR, EVERY HOUSEHOLD WILL REJOICE from the branches of a nearby tree.

Kongzi has released the ducks back onto the island. He lets them forage under the trees for water weeds, fish and slugs left behind by the flood, so only has to give them a full meal usually a cabbage and cornmeal gruel after he returns them to their pen at dusk. The pale brown hens scuttling about in the sunlight are squealing like children running home from school. Meili's favourite bird is the large white drake that is double the size of the female ducks. Since she was forbidden to renew her lease on the market stall, she has spent most of her time on the island, looking after the birds. Every morning, she collects five or six luminous eggs from the cardboard boxes in which the egg-laying ducks roost.

Kongzi bought a hundred little ducklings yesterday for just two hundred yuan. Meili suspects that at such a cheap price they must be an inferior breed. She tears a cardboard box into pieces, scatters them over the beach and ladles boiled rice onto each one.

'Get up now, it's lunchtime!' she calls out to Kongzi, watching the yellow ducklings wander off towards a bush littered with plastic bags. It's noon already, but Kongzi is still fast asleep, his legs draped over his blanket and peony-printed sheet. The new shelter he built from scavenged tarpaulin, wooden planks, tiles and old doors is finally, after many repairs, waterproof. It's taller than their last one, and wider than the cabin of their boat, so the three of them are able to sleep quite comfortably. On the inside of the door Meili has nailed a coat rail, and on the outside a kitchen rack in which she keeps ladles, spatulas, chopsticks, spoons, and bottles of soy sauce and vinegar. Next to the pile of shoes beside the entrance is a coil of rubber hose which Kongzi found on the rubbish dump. He was going to take it to Time Square to water his plants, but last week the police discovered his vegetable patches and destroyed them, so it's useless to him now.

'Help me up, Meili!' Kongzi shouts.

Meili peeps inside the shelter and sees Kongzi's p.e.n.i.s sticking up under the sheet.

'No, my hands are dirty,' Meili says.

Kongzi reaches up, pulls Meili down and presses her hands onto his p.e.n.i.s. Reluctantly, she begins to rub it, peering out through a crack in the door at a duck stretching its neck in the sunlight. She glances down at the erection in her hands and feels a warm jolt between her legs. Kongzi squeezes her nipple. Her face flushes. 'You lecherous pest,' she says. 'Can't you wait until tonight?'

'Don't stop,' Kongzi moans, trying to tug her trousers off. 'Sit on me, will you?'

The zip of her trousers breaks. She pushes him away and says, 'Let me go for a pee, then we can do it in the cabin.'

Once she's lying flat on the heart-shaped sheet inside the cabin of their boat, Kongzi thrusts his p.e.n.i.s into her, swivels it about for a while like an oar in a fulcrum, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es. Meili's stomach cramps. His sperm is inside me now, she says to herself. Never mind. The IUD will kill them. She breathes a sigh of relief and crosses her legs.

'This time, I'm sure I've planted a son inside you,' Kongzi says. He e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es almost every day now, hoping desperately that one of his seeds will sprout.

'The ducks have finished their lunch,' Meili says, pulling her trousers back on. 'I must spray some water on them.'

'With what?' he asks, scratching the mosquito bites on his arms.

'My mouth. I heard the other day that if you spray them after a feed, it encourages them to preen their feathers. They need to rub themselves every day. It makes them feel good.'

Kongzi sn.i.g.g.e.rs quietly.

'Oh, don't be so vulgar! What's happened to you? I preferred you when you were a schoolteacher and wore a clean suit and a shirt b.u.t.toned to the top.'

'One must adapt to changing circ.u.mstances. I'm not a teacher any more, I'm a family planning fugitive.'

'Well, I won't let my standards drop. From now on, we must brush our teeth every day. Just look at yours they're as brown as rust. When you next go into town, buy three toothbrushes and a tube of Black Sister toothpaste the advert said it protects against gum disease. And buy some roundworm tablets for Nannan as well. She's always hungry these days. She probably has ringworm too. Have you seen that red patch on her leg? You can go to the pharmacy after you sell the eggs tomorrow.'

Meili climbs out of the boat and walks to the shelter. A few seconds later, Nannan comes running up searching for something to eat. She stumbles over a ladle and wok lid and b.u.mps into the stove, overturning a pan of boiling gruel straight onto her bare foot. She yells in agony. Meili steps over the pan and scoops her into her arms. Kongzi scrambles up the beach and stares at the large red blister already covering Nannan's foot and ankle. Meili douses the blister with soy sauce and says, 'This is serious. We must take her straight to hospital.'

Kongzi carries Nannan to the boat, shouting out to the other islanders, asking if anyone can lend him some cash. Meili runs after him. 'No, stay here, Meili,' he says. 'If you come to the hospital, they'll put an IUD inside you.'

She watches Kongzi sail Nannan across the river, carry her onto the jetty and disappear into the town. She imagines him carrying her along the road that leads to the hospital. First, they'll pa.s.s the pleasure pond where she took Nannan last month, and watched her pedalling cheerfully in a small plastic boat, her lips and hands blue from the cold, while on a trampoline behind, two girls stared into s.p.a.ce, munching sunflower seeds. After the pond, they'll pa.s.s the Empress Yang Guifei Roast Chicken Store, with platters of burnished birds displayed in the front window, then a poky shop cluttered with crates of instant noodles and beer. The smell of roast chicken will follow them to the end of the road, all the way to the hospital forecourt. The entrance lies behind a cl.u.s.ter of large ornamental rocks and a large poster advertising cosmetic surgery. The thought of entering the hospital doors makes Meili sick with fear. To distract her mind, she boils up some water in which she'll dunk their clothes and sheets to kill the bedbugs that have infested their shelter.

A few hours later, Kongzi returns. Nannan is still sobbing, her left foot now wrapped in bandages. 'Mum, take the hurt away,' she cries. 'It hurts, it hurts!' Meili squeezes Nannan's little hand and bursts into tears. 'Good girl,' she says. 'I'll buy you some instant noodles tomorrow, and a chocolate monkey. I promise.' At this moment, Meili suddenly realises she's a mother, and that her body is still connected to Nannan. She can feel the burns on Nannan's feet as though they were singed into her own skin. She'll make sure she never comes to harm again. Nannan curls up on Meili's lap, as hot and limp as a boiled duck.

'I had to pay two hundred yuan,' Kongzi says, slumping into his legless chair, 'just for a few bandages.'

As the sky darkens and the air grows damper, ducks leave the bushes and waddle to the feeding bowls. The feathers they leave on the branches quiver in the cold breeze.

Dai's two daughters wander up and tell Kongzi that their father wants to have a drink with him.

'Tell him I can't tonight. Nannan's hurt herself.' Kongzi seldom refuses an invitation to join his neighbours for a drink. Many families have come and gone since they arrived, but their firmest friends are still here. The children spend their days playing together, and the families often eat together at night.

'The ducks seem to be suffering from cramps,' Meili says to Kongzi, carrying Nannan into the shelter. 'We'd better not let them wade in the river.'

The infant spirit watches Father squat down and tune the radio to a different station. A nasal voice whines: 'Today, prosperity is within everyone's reach. If you want to turn your dreams into reality, make sure you catch the next edition of The Road to Wealth . . .'

'A man in the waiting room tipped me off about a good job,' Father tells Mother. 'It pays seventy yuan a day, lunch included. I'd be painting the jagged mountain behind the town. The authorities have renamed it Mount Yang Guifei. They've closed the quarry and are getting workers to paint the exposed rock face green, in time for a visit next month from the Provincial Tourism Department.'

'I could do that,' Mother says, lying down in the shelter, squeezing a flea that's jumped onto her blue cotton trousers. 'You could stay here and look after Nannan and the ducks.'

'No, the spray paint is toxic. It can render women infertile. Two workers pa.s.sed out from the fumes today. I saw them being carried into the hospital on stretchers.'

'If they want to hide the quarry scar, why don't they just plant some trees in front of it?' Mother asks, pulling down the door curtain to block the draughts.

'It would take too long. They need it to look presentable before the officials arrive.'

'This island was clean after the flood. But now there's so much s.h.i.t about, it's becoming infested with mosquitoes again. The Hygiene Department is bound to clamp down on us. I'm fed up with Bo and Juru s.h.i.tting in the bushes. Why can't they just dig a hole like everyone else? When the wind blows from the west, the smell is revolting. It's time we left. I've asked around and found out that Heaven Township isn't far from Foshan Mountain. Let's pack up and sail south.'

'You're not talking about Heaven Township again, are you?' says Father, scratching a bite on his neck. 'I won't leave this island until you get pregnant. We've been trying for six months and still nothing's happened.'

'Empress Yang Guifei didn't have any children, did she? It must be something in the water.'

'Mum, I bury the dead chick in the sand, so why it hasn't wake up yet?' Nannan asks. Backlit by the kerosene lamp, her face looks as dark as her hair.

'It's having a long sleep,' says Mother, stroking Nannan's bandaged foot.

'Tell Daddy to pull it out,' Nannan says, her eyes two pools of light in the darkness.

'I can't pull it out, Nannan,' Father says, resting his head on his bent knees.

'Mum, flowers don't have eyes, so why do they die?'

'Because flowers are too pretty for this world.'

'Daddy said I'm pretty, so I'm going to die soon too?'

Father frowns. 'Stupid girl, you can't even write your own name yet. What do you know about death?'

'Huh! You're a naughty daddy. I want a different daddy. I hit your neck. See, my dolly is very angry.'

'Don't lose your temper with her, Kongzi,' Mother whispers. 'Look, Nannan. Your toes are exactly the same shape as mine. Let me clip your nails.'

'What does lose temper mean, Daddy?'

'It means to get angry,' Father says, his tone softening. 'Yes, I can tell your doll's angry her black hair has turned yellow and her brown eyes have turned blue.'

'Daddy, you trick me. The chick isn't sleeping. You sold it to a man, and the man is going to eat it for supper. Tell me the truth.'

'No, I didn't sell it, Nannan. Perhaps your little chick woke up and flew into the sky.' Father switches on his torch and opens a copy of Confucius and Neo-Confucianism.

'The chick is not in the sky and not in the trees . . .' Nannan says, holding back her sobs. 'Mum, Daddy said I came out your bottom. So I must be very smelly.'

'No, no, you aren't smelly,' Mother says. 'After you came out, you drank my milk every day, so now you smell milky and sweet.' Then, glancing back at Father, she says: 'I can't believe she's four already. The years fly by so fast, we never get a moment to stop and enjoy ourselves.'

'Yes, time has flashed by. If you fall pregnant now, Nannan will be five by the time you give birth, so the baby will be legal.'

'After today's accident, I just want to concentrate on Nannan. Tomorrow I'll take her into town for a ride on the merry-go-round, then I'll go to the market and see if I can rent another stall.'

KEYWORDS: Yin forces, silkworm pupae, hunted animal, duck s.h.i.t, bamboo mat, army tanks.

IN THE DARK hour before dawn, Meili wakes with a start and feels as though she's trapped inside a coffin. Last night, as she was falling asleep, Kongzi whispered into her ear, '"Autumn shadows linger. / The frost is delayed. / Lotus leaves withering on the pond / listen to the patter of rain,"' then climbed on top of her. Rain is rattling on the shelter's roof, sounding like dried beans dropping into a metal bowl. Gusts of wind sweep water from the trees and send it crashing onto the tarpaulin in heavy sheets. Meili closes her eyes and waits for the storm to reach its peak. As lightning flashes through the black sky and thunder shakes the ground, Kongzi rolls on top of her again. 'Be kind . . . to me . . . Kongzi,' she mumbles. 'I don't want to . . . fall pregnant . . .' Her hands linked behind his neck, she holds onto him, tighter and tighter, until her body is so compressed and her lungs so empty, she feels she is drowning. She opens her mouth and gasps for air. The alcohol on Kongzi's breath makes her stomach turn, but she can't escape it. She senses herself sinking into the ground as his jolting body weighs down on her. 'It's pouring outside. I must . . . bring in those pickles . . . I left to dry on the hutch.' Desperately she tries to push him off.

To avoid having intercourse with him every night, Meili often goes to sleep on the boat with Nannan. She's terrified of falling pregnant, of the government cutting out from her a piece of flesh as warm as her own, of having to conceal inside her body a contraband object which would grower larger and more visible by the day. She left Kong Village to find freedom, but if she falls pregnant again she knows she will become a hunted animal once more.

After the rooster in the bamboo cage greets the dawn, smaller birds begin to sing in the willows and insects fly out from the reeds. Meili feels a stream of sperm leak out from between her thighs. Am I already done for? she wonders to herself. Her period is three weeks late, and she suspects that her IUD might have fallen out.

She sits up and looks at the imprint of the bamboo mat on Kongzi's forehead. He's grown so familiar to her, he almost looks like a stranger. She wants to shout, 'I'm pregnant! Are you happy now?' but stops herself just in time. If she is pregnant, she wonders whether she could induce a miscarriage by lifting heavy objects or encouraging Kongzi to make love to her more aggressively than usual. She crawls outside and puts on a T-shirt. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s feel heavy and tender and she can detect a sour taste in her mouth. Yes, I have all the symptoms. As her bare feet press into the sand, images from the past flit through her mind. She sees the winter morning she first set eyes on Kongzi, walking up to her wearing a yellow down jacket like a promise of a golden future. The first time he asked to meet her in the woods, her legs trembled with fear. She and Kongzi crouched in the dark shade of a tree beside a group of gravestones. He gave her some peanuts and said he'd invite her to a film in the county town and take her out for a meal. He told her a friend of his had opened a Sichuan restaurant on the ground floor of the County Cultural Centre which served beef poached in hot chilli oil and Chongqing hotpot. She remembers the photograph of Kongzi as a child, standing next to Teacher Zhou with a big smile on his face. She knows that Kongzi was Teacher Zhou's favourite pupil, and that in 1989, when he went to stay with him in Beijing, they joined the democracy protests and, on 4 June, stood at a street corner arm in arm and watched the army tanks enter the capital. Now she is Kongzi's wife. For his sake, she left the village designated on her residence permit and the comfort of their tiled-roofed house. She'd dreamed that if she worked hard, she could open a shop one day and buy a modern apartment in a county town with a flushing toilet and hot shower, like the one owned by Cao Niuniu, the son of Kongzi's artist friend, Old Cao. She still believes that as long as she avoids another pregnancy, she'll be able to live a good life one day, and stroll along supermarket aisles wearing nylon tights and high-heeled shoes.

She peeps back into the shelter. Nannan sits up and says, 'I want to cuddle Daddy.'

'No, you'll wake him up,' Meili replies.

'I want to tell him I not going wake him up, then!' Nannan says, leaning over to hug Kongzi's head. Meili puts a second jumper on Nannan, then shuts the door and goes down to the beach. Hugging herself against the cold, she watches the rising sun stain the horizon red and pour its soft light over the river, the banks and the distant bridge. Once more, she feels an urge to tell Kongzi that she's pregnant, just to see the look of joy on his face. Then she considers keeping quiet about it, and getting rid of the fetus on the sly by swallowing some castor oil. No I will have this baby, she says to herself, digging her toes into the sand. Once it's born, Kongzi will leave me alone, and I'll never have to get pregnant again. Suddenly she sees a vision of herself as a girl, leaning over an enamel basin and splashing icy water onto her face before setting off for school. She remembers the coldness of the water seeping through to her cheekbones.