flickering winks of new streetlamps. A single, soaring spire rises before the mountains, its point brushed into softness by dusk. The cathedral, her uncle tells her, was built by Europeanswho were part of Wuhu’s small community of foreign traders and missionaries. When antiforeigner feeling ran highest during the Boxer Rebellion, they had to hide in their building. They boarded up the candy-colored windows, nailed the elaborate doors shut. The townsfolk, goaded on by the Boxers, stood outside shouting Hairy devils! and Mother-sexers! They called the Europeans washed-out ghosts and eaters of our babies. Eventually they destroyed most of the structure. The foreigners and orphans fled down the river.
‘The foreigners eat babies?’ Xiuqing says now, horrified.
‘No,’ her uncle says. ‘But people thought they did. They thought when they took the children in, they were planning a holiday feast. It didn’t help that they were feeding them pig food. Cow’s milk. Boiled potatoes and corn.’
Xiuqing shudders. Chewing wax, she thinks, would have more flavor.
The launch is being hailed by bobbing lights. A swarm of sampans approach like vengeful bugs, all eyes and wriggling arms. As they draw nearer, Xiuqing sees that the eyes are just paint: white-and-black dots with the sharp points of bows as noses. The arms belong to people, whole families shouting urgently as though they’re coming to put out a fire:
Three yang for baggage and transport, good deal! Good deal!
No, no; that dog-fart is lying. He’ll steal you blind. Don’t listen to him!
Come with me – my boat is brand-new! You’ll ride in the lap of luxury!
When the boats reach them, a riverman with an egglike nose grabs their bundle and smiles a foul-smelling smile. Another takes Xiuqing’s arm, his hand squeezing around it in a greasy clamp. The launch rocks, water spilling over both sides. The navigator shouts, ‘Who are you pushing, snout-face! Were you born in the year of the boar? You’ll drown us!’
‘I was born in the year of the boar,’ Xiuqing murmurs. But no one pays any attention.
Somehow her uncle manages to negotiate through the chaos, and soon Xiuqing finds herself sitting beneath the arched bamboo of a boat. The riverwoman who steers has big shoes with strange, sharp points and smells of sweat, salt, and drying fish. When she sees Xiuqing, she smiles and says something in a tongue as incomprehensible as that of the gulls, still crying overhead.
3
In the morning she awakens from thick, disturbing dreams to the sound of her uncle’s knuckles on the door: crack, crack, crack. ‘Up, up, little Xiu! An inch of time is an inch of gold.’
Xiuqing opens her eyes. The door opens a sliver. Her uncle peers in, pupils swollen from smoking.
‘Why don’t you put on your dress?’ he says. ‘Brush your hair. Look pretty for breakfast.’ He shuts the door with a bang.
Xiuqing stands and stretches. She pushes back the window’s shutters. Outside, two sparrows bathe, twitching and fluttering in a puddle by a pump. Xiuqing thinks, Come on, walk. Lina says that when sparrows walk, it’s good luck.
One of the birds bobs its head, takes a drink. Droplets fly from its beak like flung diamonds.
Downstairs, her jiujiu sits at a cluttered table across from a man in an emerald-green silk coat. The man looks up as Xiuqing stands in the doorway. He takes in the red cheongsam, her carefully combed hair. The directness of his gaze shames her slightly.
‘There you are. Join us. Have some tea.’ Her uncle pats the seat next to him.
‘This is the niece,’ the green-coated man says blandly.
‘It is.’
Xiuqing spends the short silence that follows rubbing her teacup’s rim against her lips. The man studies her some more, his jaw wagging from side to side like a goat’s as he chews. Crumbs of prawn paste stick pinkly to his mustache.
‘This is Master Gao,’ her uncle eventually says. ‘He’s helping us to secure your position.’
‘There