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scrunched-up ball of paper, then showed everyone the Chairman Mao badge that was wrapped inside it. His grimy neck began to redden.
    The chairwoman cleared her throat and spat onto the ground. ‘Dai Changjie, as a rightist, you should be keeping a close eye on your children’s ideological education to make sure they don’t follow the same path as you,’ she said, then glaring at my mother, added, ‘And Huizhen, you must be stricter with your younger son. He’s been spotted playing with the bells of the bicycles parked over there on several occasions.’

‘I know that my ideology still needs some more remoulding,’ said my father, twisting his fingers. ‘I want to learn from people like you who have a high level of political consciousness.’ Then he rose to his feet, walked over to me and slapped me in the face. Lulu, who was standing next to me, jumped back in fright. I began shaking uncontrollably. The noise of the slap shuddered through my body like a clap of thunder.
    I hated him. My teacher had told me that even if my father gained rehabilitation, I would still be banned from joining the army. I wanted the police to arrive immediately and drag him back to the labour camp.
    As you shrink back inside your body, your childhood fears flicker through your mind. All the feelings you’ve felt in the past have been sheltering inside your flesh.
    I can see my body soaking in the hot pool of a public bathhouse. My memories seem as muddled and random as the contents of a rubbish bin . . . It was a cold winter night. With a padded jacket draped over my shoulders, I walked towards the bathhouse, carrying my soap and towel in a plastic string bag. I usually took my brother with me, but this time I was going alone. I’d made up my mind that tonight I’d lower myself straight into the hot water and wallow there for some time, rather than edging myself in hesitatingly before quickly jumping out again, as I usually did.
    I glanced at the chestnuts roasting in the wok of a street stall outside the entrance, and breathed in their sweet fragrance. Just as I was about to enter the bathhouse, I caught a whiff of the mutton skewers cooking on the stall’s charcoal grill. The smell was so mouth-watering that I turned round and went to buy myself one. I sprinkled the mutton with cumin powder and sat down to eat it on a wooden stool under the street lamp.
    I paid for the mutton skewer with the money a shopkeeper had given me for returning our old bottle-tops. My mother had let me keep it. After my father passed away, she often gave me small amounts of pocket money.
    A strong wind was blowing around that street corner. It never seemed to let up.
    I stared at the lamp on the other side of the street. The parts of the road that it illuminated were busier than the rest. The food stall’s awning rustled in the wind. The air below it smelt of hot brown sugar, mutton and charcoal smoke. People on their way home from work stopped off to buy punnets of dried tofu.
    Behind me was a brightly lit shop window, pasted with wedding photographs. The peasant squatting below it turned up the sheepskin collar of his jacket and hunched his shoulders against the wind. All I could see of his face were his sparkling eyes. He was selling a basket of large, pink-fleshed radishes. The radish he’d sliced in half and displayed on the top of the pile was as red as a lamb’s heart.
    When I finished the skewer, I pushed through the large quilt that hung across the bathhouse’s entrance, and stepped into the lobby. Immediately, my skin softened in the warm, humid air. There was a synthetic scent of moisturising cream which stung my eyes, and behind it, a fouler stench that reminded me of boiled pigskins. Having just consumed so much greasy mutton, I was struck by a sudden wave of nausea.
    Two large portraits of Chairman Mao and Premier Hua Guofeng hung in the lobby. Below them was a freshly painted red box in which to post reports of political misconduct and