A Girl Named Faithful Plum Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lao,” Zhongmei said. “But nobody will listen to me. What else can I do?”
    “Well, you can eat something,” Lao Lao said. She gave her granddaughter a conspiratorial look as she took a small bowl of dumplings from behind her back.
    Zhongmei looked at her uncertainly.
    “Go ahead,” Lao Lao said. “Eat. I won’t tell anybody.”
    Zhongmei wolfed the dumplings down, feeling both greedy and guilty.
    “Your ma and ba are worried about you,” Lao Lao said in her soft voice when Zhongmei was finished.
    “Ma told me she’s going to give me away to the Wongs,” Zhongmei said, “so how much does she really care about me?”
    “Oh, you know that’s just talk,” Lao Lao said. “She loves you very much and she’d never, ever give you away. You can be sure of that.”
    “If she really cared about me, she’d figure out a way for me to go to the audition.”
    “Well, let me try to explain to you why that’s not exactly right.”
    Lao Lao had such a sweet way about her that nothing she did could make Zhongmei angry. When she had come from Shandong, she had brought a small statue of the Buddha and a bronze incense burner with her. Such things had been strictly banned during the Cultural Revolution, and even now they certainly weren’t encouraged by the government. China’s government wanted Chairman Mao to be the country’s only god, not the Buddha or Jesus or anybody else. Still, Buddhist shrines at home were permitted. Every morning Lao Lao lit an incense stick, held it in her hand as she bowed to the Buddha, and then placed it in its holder, where it gave an agreeable sandalwood scent to the whole house. Zhongmei had been taught at school that such practices were nothing but old people’s superstitions, and maybe they were, but she liked them anyway, and sometimes she asked if she could light an incensestick and bow to the Buddha too. It couldn’t do any harm, she figured.
    “Your parents are like any other parents,” Lao Lao said, “and they care about you a great deal. But do you know how hard they’ve had to work just so your family could survive?”
    “Yes, I know they work very hard,” Zhongmei said. She had learned a little about the history of Baoquanling in school, and her mother had told her stories of what it was like in the beginning. Her father had been a soldier in China’s army when he was a young man. His whole division, many thousands of men, had been released from the army and sent to this place on the border with Siberia, where almost nobody lived, in order to build it up. When they arrived, there was nothing, hardly any people, no towns, no houses, no electricity, just a vast desolation of thick forests and parched fields.
    “It used to be called the Bei Da Huang,” Zhongmei said, meaning the Great Northern Wilderness. “They had to cut down the trees and dig out the stumps to make the fields. For a long time the soldiers lived in tents, even in the winter. They had to build a brick kiln to make the bricks so they could build our houses. We learned all that in school. But what does it have to do with whether I can go to the audition in Beijing?”
    “Well, this,” Lao Lao said. “It seems strange to your mother and father that, after all the work they’ve done, you’re not happy to be here. They’re a bit insulted that it doesn’t seem good enough for you, and you want them to spend money they don’t have to try for something that’s probably impossible.”
    “Well, maybe it is selfish,” Zhongmei admitted, “but therewas an advertisement in the newspaper. It said anybody could go as long as they’re eleven years old. Lots of girls and boys will go. Why is it selfish if I want to go also?”
    “From your point of view that’s all very understandable,” Lao Lao said.
    “Baoquanling is good enough for me,” Zhongmei continued, “except I can’t be a dancer here, a real dancer.”
    “Is it your true dream?” Lao Lao asked. “Is it what you want more than