The sign on the factory roof read Stone Forest (Shi Shùlín 石树林) Tasty Cakes Baking Co., Ltd.
The simplified characters, each taller than a person, glowed an imposing red. The drifting mist was cold and thick this Day Five morning, so only a luminous crimson cloud bloomed from the building’s upper floors. In a long, loose column of smocks, hairnets, and facemasks, workers emerged from the cool fluorescent light of the dormitories, traversed the chilly hundred meters under the sign’s cloudy red dimness across loading ramps, carpark, and driveway, and entered the cool fluorescent light of the factory. Hundreds moved from light to dark to light in near silence, emitting only a few hushed words during the fifteen minutes it took to pass the security guards and assemble in long rows at spotless production stations.
Zhào Yǔ Xī (赵语汐)!
“Present!” Yǔ Xī called, in her best big-city accent.
She silently savored the warmth radiating from the ovens as the shift leaders called out their lists. From left and right came names and responses, each carrying different degrees of the many near and far village pronunciations and inflections spoken among the plant’s migrant crew. She concentrated her hearing on Team North, across the plant’s central aisle of weighing, sifting, mixing, proofing, baking, and packaging machinery. She listened for his name among the hundreds, and picked it out as she did every morning.
Yáng Zǐ Xīn (杨子鑫)!
“Present!”
His imitation of the big-city accent was no better than hers. She smiled beneath her mask as she peered across the machines at him. He was smiling back, she knew. After a minute his eyes softened. He discreetly lifted a hand to his temple and made a brief tucking gesture.
Yǔ Xī felt her blush shine through her coverings as she averted her eyes and tucked the offending dark lock into her hairnet.
Whistles blew, and a thousand flour-dusted pairs of hands began the workday.
Team North and Team South faced each other, across the central line of machinery that was the factory’s crucial production backbone. For the nearly three-hour Process One, they apportioned dough and fillings, folded, sealed, and shaped the two-bite cakes. Arranged in perfect rows and columns on a vast train of trays, they crept along the backbone on conveyors through proof and bake ovens, and into cooling racks. For Process Two, the conveyor machines crossed, so that Team South would inspect and package Team North’s finished product, and vice versa. After twenty-five minutes to consume the provided company cafeteria lunch, the workers repeated the sequence in Processes Three and Four, and then cleaned every centimeter of the plant for the final hour. Then they drifted back to the dormitories through the sign’s shadowy red glow.
The factory ran all year except New Year’s week. Teams North and South, making, exchanging, packing. Processes One, Two, Three, Four, and cleanup. Twelve hours daily, six days weekly. (Day Six was music day, when the Chairman’s favorite ancient operas shrilled and clanged over the PA speakers).
Hours after daylight entered the high windows, during Process Two, a familiar glistening European limousine arrived outside the factory. There was a different car for each day of the week, and the driver and security guards used white gloves to open the doors of the Day Five sedan for Chairman Lǐ (李) and his wife. Mr. Lǐ went upstairs to his office, while the factory workers stiffened and fixed their gazes straight ahead for Mrs. Lǐ’s QC inspection.
She began her slow march along the crowded length of Team North to her desk at Quality Control West. Hairnet-less, maskless, and smockless, she inched behind the workers in a fiercely short and tight foreign dress, and impossibly tall and skinny foreign shoes. Some, especially the boys, couldn’t resist risking an admiring glance after she passed. Yǔ Xī looked up from her rows of cakes as the Chairman’s wife moved behind Zǐ Xīn. Of course, he hardly noticed the other woman’s passing, and across the machinery gave Yǔ Xī a small nod that made her smile.
Before Mrs. Lǐ opened her door to QC West, she spun and peered through her sunglasses. She would grimace in disgust if she caught anyone looking. She would grimace in insult if she caught no one. She slammed the door behind her. The next morning she would inspect Team South, and then switch again, and so on — in a new dress, always.
Inspecting and packing forty cakes per minute, Yǔ Xī drifted back several weeks, when the boy had approached her with his first bashful words. Only a few rows of hills separated their village dialects. He had gradually recognized the similarity during the morning roll. She had, too.
During their third Sunday off together, walking Shi Shùlín’s endlessly crowded web of high-rise streets and markets, their hands touched. First in daylight. And then alone in the sweetest darkness. Tingling with the memory, she exhaled and moistened her lips with her tongue, wishing it were his. She was grateful for the concealing mask.
Suddenly she realized that this was Zǐ Xīn’s tray. Her stomach quivered when she glanced across at him, and saw his eyes blink a smile at her. A whispered breath of laughter escaped her mask. On a Sunday lying with her cheek on his neck, they had worked out the backbone’s mechanical patterns. Now they could pinpoint which of their trays would go to or come from the other — and which trays would divert to QC West.
A quick look would never catch it, but this tray contained one column with a single extra cake that barely altered the pattern. She quickly palmed it. In a second she had it hidden in the sleeve of her smock.
Later, at lunch, sitting with her platter in the cafeteria, she twisted her wrist to withdraw Zǐ Xīn’s cake. But she quickly pushed it back and dropped her hands as Chairman Lǐ’s entrance with several security guards hushed the room. Phones blinked off and settled into pockets — everyone knew the rule.
“My bakers,” he shouted from the raised location he used for announcements, between the girls’ and boys’ sides. He held up a fresh package of cakes, and his foreign suit jacket spread open to reveal the wide belly inflating his shirt and tie. “Today I have excellent news. On this cake package, we have four languages. Next week, the new package will have five languages, because we have added a whole new country!”
He paused, signaling applause. Many of those nearest complied. He coughed and smiled before continuing. “And also, not only will we make the world’s best red bean, white lotus, and yam pastry cakes, but we will start our sweet winter melon flavor next week, as well!”
Another pause and obligatory applause.
“Finally: we will start a Sunday shift to meet demand. Volunteers, you will have the opportunity to earn more money to send to your families.” Laughing, he turned so every worker could see him. “Volunteer! The poor villagers need you!”
He ripped the package open and flung it and its contents into the crowd. Most of the cakes landed on the floor. Laughing, he strode to the boys’ side, straight to the Team North tables. He suddenly lunged and grabbed one of the smocked boys by the shoulders and lifted him from his seat. The Chairman was no longer laughing.
“And you!” he shouted and sprayed spittle into the boy’s face, “I pay you to make cakes, not stare at my wife.”
He pressed the boy against the table and with trembling cheeks sprayed more, “When she enters the room, you will look forward.
“When she inspects for QC, you will look forward.
“When she talks to you, you will look forward.
“Sunday shift is mandatory for you, at half pay. If you forget to look forward again, you will return to your filthy village a failure. No other company in this city will hire you. I will make sure of it.”
He shoved the boy onto the table, spilling cups and several half-eaten lunches. He stormed out, trailing his security guards, straightening his tie, and shouting, “Look forward!”
Even though the boys’ Team North tables were far across the crowded cafeteria, Yǔ Xī had heard the Chairman’s shouts and seen the tumbling platters. She glanced in the other direction, toward the girls’ entrance. In the doorway, the sunglassed figure of Mrs. Lǐ stood grinning for a moment, then turned and departed.
Within a minute the workers erased the messes and mutely returned to finishing their platters in the few remaining lunch minutes. Yǔ Xī extracted this morning’s secret cake and furtively explored every detail. She suppressed a grin, noting the rough, average-quality crimps left by Zǐ Xīn’s fingers. Hers were far better, particularly on the special thirty-eight-crimp cakes she secretly made and sent just to him. But baked on the hidden underside of this secret cake, the characters just for her, A Single Kiss (Yīgè wěn 一个吻), fluttered her heart despite their imperfect calligraphy.
The cake breathed a powerful and undeniable fragrance. In a moment she was sure she correctly guessed the filling. Salivating, and before the scent reached the other girls, she popped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes and chewed with swollen cheeks. The folds weren’t as delicate and flaky as hers, but his filling erupted with a flavor as immaculate as ever. Jasmine, rose, lychee, chocolate, and this time, cherry. Tart and decadent. Salty and sweet. A taste so silken, burgundy, and deep that her mind flashed with Zǐ Xīn’s smile, scent, and the touch of his smooth, firm limbs. She reopened her eyes and glanced at her neighbors. Had she exhaled or moaned too loudly? No one seemed to have noticed. She wiped her mouth, returned her platter, and went to her station.
Yǔ Xī increasingly longed for the private Zǐ Xīn cake she would receive this evening. She made her fingers race ahead of the Process Three dance. After creating an adequate lead, she braved an entire minute to form a cake with her best flaky folds, and lucky-thirty-eight perfect crimps. She slipped it into the array on the particular tray destined for Zǐ Xīn’s station. She smiled and thought about teasing him again for his rough shaping.
Hours later and a few minutes into Process Four, a squeal began to rise from a machine in the factory backbone. The shift leaders called for the maintenance custodian, smiling old Mr. Chén (陈). They pointed him toward the noise.
“Okay… I go… I go…” he sang, imitating the antiquated ceremonial cadence of the Day Six operas. He gestured and waved with dramatic formality, and Yǔ Xī and some of the Team South workers giggled at his quirky antics. He squeezed with his tool sack into the no-man’s zone between Teams South and North, bending between hot ovens and rotating shafts. After fifteen minutes, he emerged, flourishing a section of conveyor rollers in hands blackened with grease. He cried out to the shift leaders in classical verse, “A bearing turned evil, your majesties. This servant will restore it to goodness during the long night. Bakers keep baking — the line can run shortened until your humble custodian returns tomorrow, no problem!”
He bowed deeply, smiled, and shuffled toward his workshop. Workers exchanged looks with mirthful eyes and bouncing shoulders. Some murmured cheers of encouragement, “Go, Uncle Chén!”
Yǔ Xī looked up to smile across the machinery at Zǐ Xīn, but her laughing eyes faltered. Zǐ Xīn’s face was frozen with dread. Her brow creased, and suddenly her heart fell. With that roller section missing, and the conveyor pathways altered, their secret message trays were already diverted to QC West. She shot a glance at the track to Mrs. Lǐ’s door. Their private trays were already there. Yǔ Xī’s heart fell faster.
And it would keep falling.
After twenty minutes of deepening dread, Chairman Lǐ entered the factory floor with his wife in tow. She had retained her minuscule dress, shoes, and sunglasses, but he had put away his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves. Together they eyed the Team North line. They conferred, pointed at the ramps and intersections of the conveyor system, and conferred again. After some final figuring, Mrs. Lǐ aimed the dreadful weight of her bare, slim arm directly at Zǐ Xīn’s station. The Chairman fiercely gesticulated for a factory halt. He signaled the security guards where to converge. Yǔ Xī’s face crumpled.
In the silence of the paused machinery, Zǐ Xīn stood motionless, the focus of every eye in the factory. Chairman Lǐ pushed through the guards and loomed over the boy. He held out a single cake.
“‘I love you,’ it says,” he roared at Zǐ Xīn. He held the cake an inch from the boy’s face. “Right here.”
Watching from across the aisle, Yǔ Xī’s heart fell all the way. Her throat closed. Tears flooded her facemask.
Zǐ Xīn had written I love you.
She should have written it, too. She should have said it. She wished she had. A thousand times. Because all of the life in her mind and body screamed it was true.
The chairman threw smashed pieces all over Zǐ Xīn and his station. “You write this to my wife! You chose the tray that goes straight to her door! And you send her this filthy message? With this defiling filling?”
“But sir—” Zǐ Xīn began. The Chairman interrupted by tearing away his hairnet and mask, then raising his hand high. Zǐ Xīn didn’t flinch. He moved only when the force of the blow sent him stumbling.
Yǔ Xī covered her face and wailed through her fingers.
Mr. Lǐ snapped his fingers and pointed. The guards hesitated for an instant, and then descended on the boy. Blows and kicks echoed from the silent factory’s walls.
“A common peasant comes into my factory to do this! To my city to do this! To chase my wife with crude township obscenities!” He slashed with his hands and shouted, “Break some fingers!”
The guards broke some fingers.
Yǔ Xī gasped and trembled. He had written I love you.
“I will set this whole city against you. No one will hire you — I will buy your failure from them all! If I see you in Shi Shùlín again, I will buy starvation for your whole filthy family!”
Zǐ Xīn was now unresponsive. The Chairman motioned the guards to drag him to the front driveway. He bent and retrieved the boy’s phone from the layer of flour on the floor, then smashed it and threw it across the factory.
Yǔ Xī watched through a blur of tears as the guards tossed into the Day Five Limousine the boy who had written I love you. The car hurried away. The Chairman stood and sweated. Behind him, Mrs. Lǐ let her grin linger for a while before she smothered it and guided her husband back through the door to QC West. The shift leads whistled a restart. Yǔ Xī picked up some dough but her fingers wouldn’t obey.
After she fell half a tray behind, she threw down the unfinished cake and ran toward QC West. Her shift lead hollered, but she ignored him. Mr. and Mrs. Lǐ looked up from the QC table as she entered, breathless. She folded her hands across her chest and looked at the floor. “Mr. Chairman, it was a mistake. That boy, Yáng Zǐ Xīn, he made that cake, wrote that message, for me.”
The silence stretched so long that Yǔ Xī peeked up at the Chairman and his wife. “Sir, madam, it was a mistake because—”
“No,” the Chairman’s wife said. She stood and posed with a hand on a slender hip. “Those boys always do these things. Always for me.”
“But Mrs. Chairman—”
“Who are you? A village girl. A nobody with a nobody village accent, and a nobody village stench, and a nobody complexion of dark field-hand skin. Of course his cake was for me. It came straight to this table on purpose.”
Yǔ Xī looked back down at the floor. “But madam, the custodian, Mr. Chén, he worked—”
“After you migrants betrayed the Chairman’s trust so many times today, you dare come in this office to insult us? With your primitive provincial pronunciation, sounding like some bitch dog whining? No one can understand you. Speak clearly!” She thrust her hand onto a nearby tray and picked up a cake. Yǔ Xī immediately recognized its thirty-eight ornate crimps. Mrs. Lǐ slammed it down and shouted, “And you ruin this tray with this tacky village junk! You want to be that boy’s slut? You’re fired with him. Get out.”
“Show me the cake,” the Chairman said, waving away his wife’s words. After ten seconds, he pounded the table and clenched his wife’s arm so tightly that her flesh bulged. He said more slowly, “Show me the cake.”
She put it in his hand and scowled at Yǔ Xī.
He turned it in his fingers. “Good folds. Hm.”
When he flashed a grin, his wife’s scowl intensified. “What is your name?”
“Zhào Yǔ Xī, sir.”
He released his wife’s arm, leaving a red handprint. “We will keep this Zhào Yǔ Xī. Until she makes this mistake again.”
“But—” Mrs. Lǐ began, but she flinched at a sharp gesture from the Chairman.
“You will do as you are told,” he said. He stood and glared until his wife dropped her head and looked at the floor. He huffed and left.
Yǔ Xī stood frozen.
After an excruciating pause Mrs. Lǐ spoke. “You think now the Chairman is your friend? When I make you clean the shit from the toilets every day, and on Sundays at half pay? When I make you sweep the driveway and loading ramps in the sun until your peasant skin blackens even more? When I make you scour in the cafeteria kitchen until you stink from sweat? You think he will help you?
“He would never be seen near a country girl.” She held her head at a deliberate angle, so that Yǔ Xī had a moment to glimpse behind those sunglasses, and just see where Mrs. Lǐ’s eyelid bulged black and blue. “That’s why I am so lucky.
“But behind the east oven, he will help you. Behind the east oven he helps all of the other village whores that come begging to him. You’ll see when you ask him for protection from me. You’ll see when he takes you behind the east oven.”
Mrs. Lǐ did not let Yǔ Xī return to her station. The toilets were first, where squalid water speckled her face and smock as she scrubbed every bowl and urinal. Dust filled every pore as she swept the ramps. Sweat stung her eyes as she scraped scorched kitchen pots. By the end of her shift, the only clean lines on her face were where her tears continued to run.
She crossed through the dim red pool of light cast by the Shi Shùlín Tasty Cakes Baking Company’s sign, directly to the boys’ dormitory. They told her that Zǐ Xīn’s bunk and locker had been stripped while everyone was in the factory. There was no trace of him. Another boy was already in his place. They held their noses and laughed as she hurried away.
Yǔ Xī’s daily twelve became toilets, urinals, sinks, concrete ramps, and spoiled, greasy pans. Her fingers peeled and cramped, and her entire body ached. After a week, the shift leads mercifully began letting her borrow a clean smock to make cakes on the Team South line for just an hour, well before the day’s limousine arrived.
In the nights after her shift, Yǔ Xī sacrificed hours of sleep to revisit all of the places in Shi Shùlín that she had shared with Zǐ Xīn. She soon lost hope that she would ever see him again. But she kept visiting those places because, even exhausted in the dark, they recalled the feeling of being in his arms.
After two weeks, Yǔ Xī looked up as she finished scrubbing the floor in the girl’s toilet. Mrs. Lǐ stood over her in another imported, undersized skirt.
“My time of the month will also be your time,” the Chairman’s wife said. She smeared her bloody sanitary napkin along the walls and then dropped it beside Yǔ Xī. She pressed it down with the toe of her designer heel and smeared more mess across the floor. “A village girl can butcher a pig, so a village girl can clean some blood.”
Mrs. Lǐ never went into the boy’s toilet, so scouring there became a respite for a while. But one morning, while Yǔ Xī crawled on the floor to wipe the yellow-brown stains beneath the urinals, the Chairman came. He paused to look at Yǔ Xī for a moment, and then proceeded to the adjacent urinal. As he relieved himself, he said, “Zhào Lì Xī?”
“Zhào Yǔ Xī, sir.”
“Yes. Zhào Yǔ Xī. With the good folds.” He grinned as he looked down at her.
Yǔ Xī’s skin prickled with ice wherever his eyes touched. And they touched everywhere. She swallowed and glanced at the exit. Would he clutch her arm and take her behind the east oven?
“You would rather be back at your station.” He shook himself, adding droplets to the floor stain. “I might talk to her.”
Yǔ Xī’s voice betrayed her tremors, “Sir, I don’t…”
“Hm,” he said as he zipped and made a frost-cold smile. He stalked closer. “If I bring you one of her dresses, you will wear it for me. And then—”
“Sir,” Yǔ Xī muttered as she crawled a step back, “I—”
“Big boss?” called a familiar voice. “Big boss…”
Yǔ Xī inhaled hope as the old maintenance custodian paused in the doorway. He glanced for an instant at Yǔ Xī, then bowed his head toward the Chairman.
“What!” Mr. Lǐ snapped. “What do you want, old thing Chén?”
“Big boss, the winter melon flavor,” Mr. Chén said with a touch of his singsong opera voice. “We have the final two recipes ready. Don’t you want to choose the final taste for production? Come!”
“Troublesome old Chén,” Chairman Lǐ grumbled. He went to the old custodian and thumped him on the back. Now he chuckled. “‘Come!’ you say. ‘Big boss, big boss!’ Ha, I’ll come so you stop bothering me, old thing.”
As the two men left, old Mr. Chén shot a quick, soft glance back at Yǔ Xī. He held his hand low, so only she could see, and waved calm into her nerves. She quickly finished the boys’ toilet and took a broom outside to the dusty driveway.
“Ma.”
“Yǔ Xī, aren’t you working?”
“I skipped lunch to call. I want to quit, ma. I want to come home.”
“Yǔ Xī, oh, don’t cry.”
“I can’t stay any more. These horrible city people.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“I think soon they will. The Chairman and his wife. They torture me.”
“The money you send helps so much. Your grandmother’s medicine, and your cousin–he needs to pay for his school. Just a few more years. Can you still do that for us?”
“There was a boy, from close to our village. I wanted you and Pa to meet him. But they beat him and sent him away.”
“Oh, Yǔ Xī. It’s terrible. But it’s only a couple of months until New Year. Can’t you be strong until then?”
“I hate it here.”
“You help the family so much, Yǔ Xī. You are such a good daughter…”
Yǔ Xī’s stomach growled as she moved through the kitchen’s sweltering aisles. Pots and pans were already piled around the big sink. She wiped her tears with a filthy sleeve and clutched a scraper. She put a handful of gritty detergent powder into a pot and added scalding water. Her cracked fingers stung and seeped blood as she began scouring.
“The maintenance custodian needs to grease all of those conveyor bearings,” Mrs. Lǐ’s voice snarled.
Yǔ Xī turned and saw the Chairman’s wife standing close, arms folded and tense. Her sunglasses glowered. Yǔ Xī backed against the sink. Was the chairman’s wife going to hit her?
“And he needs to weld the broken cooling racks. But he is an old man, and his hands are too scarred and burned from grease and welding. Your village hands can burn now. Meet him in his shop tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You will stop cleaning the boys’ toilet.” She moved her hand in an angry gesture, and Yǔ Xī flinched. “Unless you want to wear my dress behind the east oven?”
Yǔ Xī sobbed, “No, ma’am.”
As Mrs. Lǐ stomped away, she hissed over her shoulder, “Are you really too stupid to just give up and go back to your garbage village?”
The next morning, Mr. Chén looked up from his workbench. He smiled and chanted, “Little Miss. Come.”
Yǔ Xī went to him. With her hands folded across her chest, she looked down at the floor and said, “Yes, Mr. Chén.”
“Today, Little Miss, you will learn some small trifles from this silly old man.”
He showed her how to clean the conveyor bearings and hand-pack them with new grease. After several bearings, she began to tremble and slow. He said, “Don’t worry, Little Miss, those small hands will grow stronger later. Clean them, and come.”
At the welding bench, he showed her the machine’s settings. How to attach the grounding clamp. How to insert a new welding stick and don the helmet. She flinched and gasped when she sparked her first arc. Teardrops appeared on the floor as she bent with shaking hands to retrieve the electrode she dropped.
“Little Miss, maybe someone wants those small hands to burn.” He handed her an apron and thick gloves. “And maybe someone doesn’t know that this old man offers these to keep small hands safe.”
Yǔ Xī nodded.
“Maybe the big bosses don’t know the way to this old man’s shop,” he laughed. “But there will always be dirty bearings and broken racks, in this place where the big bosses never come.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chén.”
She never went to the boys’ toilet again. By the time New Year’s week came, there were permanent black stains beneath her fingernails, but she could pack bearings for an entire shift. Her welds were far inferior to her perfect cake crimps, but the racks she repaired held together well enough.
On the Sunday before New Year’s week, she finished her shift with the rest of the punished. She was a day behind the other workers, who had all left at the end of Day Six. Puffing steamy breaths into the cold, she dragged a bag full of cakes — in five languages and four flavors — and a few of her things through Shi Shùlín’s dark streets. Two blocks from the train station, the crowd thickened until it pressed from all sides. Her sweat mingled with everyone’s as she pushed and rubbed toward the ticket windows. Voices strained in countless dialects. Hands hidden in the hundreds tried to wrench away her bag, but she just managed to hold on.
She reached the booth after two hours. The next train with any remaining standing tickets would depart in another ten. Secured beneath layers of clammy clothing, her ticket blurred and wrinkled as she stood for hours pressed against a corridor wall with thousands of others ripening their tickets in the same way. The green cars hissed and the crowd pressed against the doors. Yǔ Xī scraped her shins on metal steps as she battled the crowd’s weight with trembling legs. Her arms ached as she hugged her bag to her chest. The train rocked over the dawn countryside as Yǔ Xī jostled with dozens of others inching down the aisle to the nearest squat toilet. She barely managed to hold her bladder. Some didn’t.
After a few hundred kilometers, she forced her way off the train, waited a few hours, and crammed into her connecting train. Several times her knees buckled as sleep took her for a moment, but the pressing wall of adjacent passengers awakened her with complaints and shoves. Eyes reddened, and breaths and bodies stank through the night.
With each transfer, the dialects became more familiar, and the stations smaller. Fewer than a hundred passengers joined Yǔ Xī on the icy platform at her final stop. Fear of falling from the back of her cousin’s scooter kept her awake for the snowy last hour of her journey.
Hugs, tears, and familiar smells crowded welcoming, familiar rooms. A dozen delighted voices cheered as she opened her bag and handed out cakes, of which only a few had been crushed. She slept through lunch, dinner, and breakfast the next day.
She was soon sitting shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen table making dumplings, meat pies, and savory pastries for the New Year’s feasts. No one could match her expert fingers. Amid music and enthusiastic chatter, she drew from steamers, ovens, and frying pots hundreds of sweet-filled sticky rice dumpling balls, lucky fortune sponge cakes, and spheres filled with red bean paste and coated in a thousand crispy sesame seeds.
Everyone complimented Yǔ Xī’s efforts, and piled her with too many gifts to fit in her bag. Her stack of red envelopes grew thicker than a book and contained more than enough to pay for her train tickets. But all through these few days of celebration, her smile never fully filled her face.
Her cousin let her borrow his scooter after she cleaned and packed the wheel bearings for him on Day Four. With gifts in her bag, she rode over a few rows of hills to a village where the familiarity of their subtly different accent made her swallow down tears. After many inquiries, she found Yáng Zǐ Xīn’s family home.
She told them her name, and they already knew her. She saw reflections of the boy who had written I love you in the faces of his mother, father, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She offered presents. Brief smiles faltered. The answers to their questions were nothing she could bear to tell them during New Year’s week. Instead, she promised to help them make more inquiries at the factory and the Shi Shùlín authorities. She told them that Zǐ Xīn would probably come home soon, and not to worry. She managed composure during the grim hour she spent with the Yángs, but a sobbing stream of freezing tears rippled her vision as she traveled back home.
On Day Five, when someone put on some old vintage operas, Yǔ Xī had to step outside to calm her suddenly jumping nerves. She could feel the cold red letters of the Shi Shùlín Tasty Cakes Baking Company dragging her back over the horizon. Her mind shuddered with bitter thoughts of packages in five languages, Processes One through Four, and the Chairman’s menacing leer. She dreaded the toilets, the workshop, and Mrs. Lǐ’s angry, bruised eyes hiding behind black lenses. How would she withstand another year in that place? But the family needed her to try.
On Day Six she arrived at the train station after breakfast and tearful goodbyes. The carriages grew more crowded with each stop, and the first transfer station was dense with migrants returning to work at the big cities. On the next train, she stood for half a day pressed against dozens of others also steeling themselves for the coming year of toil in factories across the country.
For half an hour she shoved through the terminal concourse to her final train. Despite the cold, sweat beaded beneath her wool cap as she ascended the stairs. She stood in the aisle, hugging her bag as the heavy squeeze of passengers mounted. Finally, the train lurched toward the torment of another year in Shi Shùlín, and she sighed in acquiescence.
Something sweet and warm flared deep inside. Yǔ Xī took another breath, sniffing the air. The thin scents of jasmine, rose, and cherry wafted through the doors as the train’s wheels turned. She smelled again, deeply, to make sure.
Suddenly, she turned toward the nearest exit and wedged through the bodies with all of her might. Voices shouted in annoyance, and she shouted back, “Out! Please, I’m going out!”
She tossed her bag onto the crowded platform sliding past. She leapt behind it, and the mass of people bundled in soft jackets cushioned her collision and stopped her tumbling. Ignoring the swell of angry protests, she stood, shut her eyes, and lifted her nose. That way.
She jostled through the shuffling masses and squeezed into a wide corridor. The scents intensified, and she pressed faster. She came to an especially long, dense queue. She tried to shove through them, but voices cried, “No cutting, you! Get in line.”
She fought to the front in a surge of determination. Hungry customers bellowed and yanked, but Yǔ Xī’s world fell suddenly silent. Behind a small, neat collection of bowls, trays, and cooling racks of slightly misshapen pastries, sat a makeshift portable oven and a boy that emerged like a dream from the shadowed millions. His face bore some small new scars, and his brow creased as he hunched and worked a piece of dough. A few of his fingers were a bit crooked, and his shaping was slow and imperfect.
He glanced up at the disturbance, and his hands stopped when his gaze found hers. After a long moment his eyes moistened.
“Zǐ Xīn,” Yǔ Xī breathed. The boy who had written I love you. Salty streams flowed down her cheeks.
Like ice melting, the boy’s features softened. He slowly lifted his hand and made a brief tucking gesture near his ear.
Yǔ Xī sobbed and laughed, then tucked the offending dark lock beneath her woolen cap. She squeezed around the racks and sat on her bag beside him. She gently coaxed the unfinished pie from his hands, wiped her eyes, and began shaping the dough into thirty-eight perfect crimps.
Photo by 汤 泽坤 on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Thirty-Eight Crimps - August 12, 2025