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Chime The train station went through a commotion when it started to rain. Like the other three hundred migrant workers stuck at the station, Chunsheng had just laid out old newspapers on the ground, unpacked his quilt and got ready for a night of camping out in the square. With the first drop of rain he jumped up. While the other campers grumbled, got their things together, slowly being herded by the guards to the underground waiting hall, Chunsheng was already making his bed there. A twenty-three-year-old man from Hebei's countryside, Chunsheng was given a nickname "Monkey" for his small face, big deep eyes, and thin but very nimble body. Chunsheng's parents were peasants, but the father had aspired to make their youngest son into a bodyguard, therefore had sent the boy to the Shaolin Temple to learn martial arts. The monastery left a deep seal on the boy, who in three years grew into a marvelous practitioner. While his muscles hardened he became stubborn too-his parents realized that by sending him to the monastery they had somewhat lost him. He was not to become a bodyguard, for the temple had taught him not to acknowledge a master for money and to practice his arts only in retreat. He was not to stay at the temple either, for he was a born wanderer for whom sutras were not enough to evoke the deepest meditation. He left the temple last summer. Sitting head-between-knees on the floor of the overloaded hard-seat compartment, with sunflower seed shells falling on his back from some woman's mouth, Chunsheng realized that the temple chimes had boarded the train with him. Dang-dang-dang, many early mornings thereafter, on the top birch of a bunk bed, in a room shared by ten or more workmates, the sound of invisible chimes would come to Chunsheng's dreams, almost choke him with its crystal clear miracle. Dang-dang-dang. He would wake up and feel the delicate morning air resting on his face, so still, only perturbed by the rhythmic snores of his fellow sleepers. It was then the morning sutra would come naturally to his lips, and he would chant. He would chant in a voice so low that no one ever noticed it. Rain continued, the night descended and the campers had settled down underground. Some unpacked dry buns. Some took out a deck of cards. Occasionally a child uttered one or two cries, soon quietened by candy blocks or by mother's milk. Three days more and the Spring Festival would be here. Yet they were stuck in a railway traffic jam. The train tickets were sold out, not a single seat left. The hope of arriving home to Sichuan or Hebei for the new year had grown dim. Mostly migrants from villages, the campers had arrived the Shanghai station from other cities where they held their menial jobs-at textile factories near Suzhou, sun-glass factories at Jiaxing, or motorcycle assembly factories as far as Wenzhou. The Spring Festival was the time for them to "pave the railroad" with the hard-earned money but they decided against fattening the pockets of those "Yellow Oxen"s-the name they gave to the black-market ticket dealers-who wandered near the ticket windows and whispered, "Want tickets?" Chunsheng had approached a "Yellow Ox" with the question, "Say, do you have a ticket to go to Zhenzhou?" The "Yellow Ox"--a Shanghainese man in a leather jacket with a sad face--upon examining the young worker, replied "400 yuan." Twice the normal price; Chunsheng hesitated, and the sad-face strolled away. Chunsheng was no client to these "Yellow Oxen". They were servants to the city people, who had no time to wait in line and could pay. But it was not the end of the world. The train station sold tickets two days in advance. The "Yellow Oxen" might have bought up all tickets for today but tomorrow the campers could get up earlier and queue for a normal-priced ticket at the window. And they could be on their way in two days. Next
to Chunsheng two girls rolled out their quilt on the floor.
Having to work long hours, and living in dorms where the tap,
shared by many, only had cold water, they had not bothered
to wash either the quilt or themselves often. But Chunsheng
liked the scent--in the monastery quilts also smelt like this,
with sweat, farce and dream lingering in them. Chunsheng looked at her from the side. She was Shanghainese, wore her undyed hair in a ponytail and there was a sunny sort of beauty in her. More people gathered around her. Some murmured, "An interview, an interview." Some asked, "Would this be on TV?" Others kept silent, silently looking at her. She said, "This is not TV yet, because I have not yet graduated from the Film Academy." And she added, "but this is not for play either. I, I…" She
recounted how on early morning that day she had come to the
station to get a ticket and found a huge crowd sleeping in
the square, how after she got a ticket from a "Yellow
Ox", she was making her way to the subway when something
caught her ears. She spent the day at the Shanghai library. In the evening a friend called her on the mobile and they went shopping at the Grand Gateway at Xu-jia-hui. Surrounded by ridiculously-shaped boots she felt a strange nausea, and when the rain started she took an abrupt leave from her bewildered friend. She took her father's video camera and came to the station. "When I heard the song, I thought I had wasted my life because I knew nothing about anything." The girl said. Now she came here to learn something, Chunsheng thought. Indeed she had switched on the camera again, with the question, "How do you feel about being a migrant worker?" A middle-aged man, who had been preparing for his answer all the while when others were talking, turned completely red when his turn came. He said, "See, if I work hard in the city, monthly salary comes every month for sure, and I can spend it however I like. In the village we have to wait for harvest, and if it comes at all, it comes with a lump sum which we have to stingily save up for fear of no harvest next year. So I like to work in the city." The interview went on. People answered her in amusement and earnestness. She moved from one side to another in order to catch a good shot, and her camera made a chime-like noise whenever turned on and off. There could be no way she would understand, Chunsheng thought, but she heard my song. Thus thinking, Chunsheng moved into his quilt and got ready for sleep. (The author is a freelance writer based in Shanghai.) |