SUPPLY CHAIN > FICTION
Everything sold in town had got so expensive these last few years, villagers couldn’t live nearly as well as they used to. But a bachelor in the prime of life who wasn’t afraid of work could get by easily enough.
Guisheng, Shen Congwen
In order to spend another day in the internet café, I have seen many sell their ID cards, their blood, or a pillow picked up from the street. They would even steal or rob or do anything.
The Vagabond Club, Du Qiang
***
Guisheng picked up cigarette butts from the plastic bottle outside the internet café and lined them up by length on the plastic table. He picked out only the longest ones as he waited for his friend to finish the last few rounds of League of Legends. He used to spend entire nights at the net café when he first arrived here, fresh from the countryside. He had been sixteen years old, and there was no one around to stop him – he’d gotten decent enough that he thought about going pro, but he was too hot tempered and easily distracted. Those pro-gamers had become respectable citizens, netting big contracts and winning huge cash prizes, but the Sanhe Gods had no ambitions. Eventually he’d lost his interest in gaming totally, although some of the younger kids occasionally asked him to teach them a thing or two. He didn’t even bother going inside anymore. When his friend finally finished, they rode rented bicycles along the riverside. Mulberries grew beside the bridge where some of the more hardened vagabonds slept. He remembered that Little Red loved mulberries, as red as her little lips. There were several trees growing on the riverbank, which was flooded with water as brown as milk tea, and lined with foam along the edges. The riverside was steep, and the trees grew every which way along the steep hillside. They were laden down with fruits sparkling bright against the cloudy sky. “Come on, let’s pick a few. Help me out,” Guisheng told his friend, enchanted at the thought of plucking a few of the berries to give as a present. “Fuck your mother, prick, get them yourself,” his friend told him and laid down on the still damp grass before hopping up, brushing himself off and laying himself back down a second time. “Give me something to smoke.” “Don’t ask me to light it for you,” Guisheng said and threw him one of the burnt ends. He scrambled down the hillside and made his way toward the mulberry tree, cap in hand to collect the fruit. But the ground around the tree was muddy and thick, and the branches of the tree were too weak to support him climbing them. All he could do was pull the branches down closer to him and pluck as many of the fruits as he could at once. Then he cradled his hat gently as he climbed back up the hill one-handed. By the time he got back up, the cuffs of his tastefully distressed tight jeans were mud-encrusted. His friend was on his feet in a defensive pose, standing down a feral riverside dog whose fur stood up on the ridge on its back. “City people,” Guisheng spit. “Scared of something as common as a dog.” He stamped his feet and yelled at the dog until it turned tail and fled. “Thanks, bro, you saved me there. I don’t know what he wanted from me.” The dog slinked back to lap something up off the ground; it was the mulberries that had fallen from Guisheng’s cap. “Help me get a few more of these,” Guisheng told his friend, shaking his hat. “Alright, I guess I owe you,” he said, and they scrambled back down to pick berries together under the grey sky.***
Guisheng was on his way to the convenience store with his gift in hand. He had “sourced” a plastic clamshell box with red plastic foam padding on which he had arranged the mulberries in orderly, slightly overlapping rows. They were glistening like jewels, delectable, and they looked as fine as those sold in any shop. He hoped Little Red would be delighted. She worked at a small convenience store set up in the front room of her aunt’s ground floor apartment, and he was certain she was the most beautiful woman in town. When he entered the store, her aunt was seated behind the counter, and he sheepishly held up the package of mulberries. “Present for you, big sis,” he said. “I know that’s not meant for me. But why are you here in the middle of the day? You get kicked out of the factory for slacking?” She said, and she motioned him over lazily, revealing a little gold bracelet that slipped down the still plump and firm flesh of her forearm. “Just taking a break between jobs.” “That’s no good for you, Guisheng. You’re not like the other so-called Sanhe Gods. I can tell you still remember how to work. I never hear you complain or angle for settlement money, or go be a money boy or run off gambling. Don’t get rotten. You’re one of the only good ones here,” she admonished him. “Well, you know, I like the freedom I have,” he said, hesitating. He was tongue-tied and peered behind Little Red’s aunt, trying to spot her. “Oh, you’re looking for Little Red? She went out to the movies with her new friend,” her aunt said in a loud voice, giving Guisheng a cool once over. Just then, Little Red appeared through the door to the storeroom, and Guisheng tapped the plastic box of mulberries on the table. “What new friend? I was just hanging clothes up in the back, and I heard Auntie out here making you squirm. I decided to have mercy on you. No one comes to this store just to get lectured,” she said and smiled at him, then pounced on the mulberries, cracking open the plastic loudly and popping one in her mouth. “Wow! These are unusually sweet! Where did you get these?” “I may not be the richest, but at the very least, I’m resourceful,” Guisheng boasted, giving a meaningful look to Little Red while her aunt burst into guffaws. “Not the richest – I’ll say! The way you talk, oh!” She covered her lipsticked mouth while she laughed. At that moment, the recruiter walked in. “A pack of Yu Xi cigarettes, boss,” he said with his characteristic swagger, smacking his hand down on the counter. A man in a dingy and ill-fitting Japanese suit followed behind him. The recruiter turned to Guisheng. “So this is where you ran off to today. Meet your next new boss. He just moved in from Chongqing as the new floor manager at Y Factory. You know the one, they make peripherals, headsets and keyboards. I can get you in there tomorrow if you want.” The recruiter peeled open his new pack of cigarettes and offered Guisheng the first. “How much would this be, miss?” the new floor manager asked Little Red as he pointed to a plastic comb. “I forgot to bring my own. I’ll probably need to come back here to pick up a few more things. I forgot so many things back home,” he told her. Little Red quoted him the price. Then, eager at the prospect of further sales of even cheap daily use goods, she showed him where the toothbrushes, undershirts, and soap were located, and offered him a discount on a set of everything. “Yes, sir. I’ll definitely be there tomorrow. What time? And how many days do you need me?” Guisheng answered the recruiter, a little more aggressively than he normally spoke, eager to attract Little Red’s attention back to him. “That’s excellent. It’s so good we ran into you here,” the floor manager said, clapping him on the shoulder.***
The week at the factory assembling keyboards left Guisheng’s fingers a bloody mess. All the skin peeled off the tips of them, and he wore double gloves to try to dull the raw sensation. He listened to some of his coworkers seated at the workstation next to him gossiping. “Did you hear about Miss Hsu’s miscarriage? I heard it happens to a lot of the factory women, but I say she got lucky with this one. Both are hazards of the job, really,” one of the women said and snickered to the other that was seated beside her. They turned on Guisheng next when he had no reaction. “Did you ever see a Sanhe God work like this? I clocked him right when he came in, that greasy hair and those dry lips, like he’d just walked in bleary-eyed from an all-nighter at the net café,” one of them said, poking fun at him. Guisheng just smiled to himself. He’d received a message just yesterday that the local government had given a settlement to his family for their village land, and since he was registered there too, he was entitled to some money. It was a windfall. He was planning to buy a new smart watch for Little Red and ask her what she thought he should do with the money. He was hoping that she’d want to open a shop together in another town. She could run it; he’d just provide the start-up capital. He had a feeling she’d like that idea. Shifts weren’t supposed to last over ten hours, but when they had an order to fill, they simply had to push through to fill the quota. Otherwise, the factory would lose the contract and no one would end up getting paid. There was no other way. And Guisheng desperately wanted the money from the job for the smart watch. So when they pulled him out of bed in the middle of the night, he got up and worked. And when they asked him to stay on an extra few days, even though his temporary position was up, he welcomed it. They paid him out for the initial period, and he ordered the smart watch. He could use the extra money he’d earn to buy a few more presents and a new shirt for himself, to replace the stained polo that he washed and hung out to dry nightly. He had examined his hands and decided to push through. They’d have time to heal later. After his last few days were up, he went to see the new floor manager who had agreed to hire him. Guisheng wanted to thank him for the opportunity – he had even bought him a cheap bottle of liquor, the most good-looking of the cheap bottles. But he couldn’t find him anywhere that day, so he left it on his desk and walked out, leaving a note where he only signed thank you and his name. He wasn’t confident enough to write anything more without misspellings. He had never been the type who was good with words. Guisheng walked out into the street, under the sun he’d seen so little of these past weeks, and honestly, hadn’t cared to, since it was so hot and humid. All the sun did was bring out the stench of the water that pooled in the alleys. He went to the market to buy a few things for Little Red, so they could share a meal together, a whole fine fish, some vegetables, more wine. He would have her aunt cook it for them all to eat, and he’d give her an envelope as well, for taking such good care of Little Red for all those years, and to ingratiate himself with her. Carrying all these items in colorful plastic bags over his arms, Guisheng ran into a guy he’d worked with in another electronics factory before. This friend came from a different village but his same county, so that they shared a similar dialect. Such differences and similarities mattered little in Sanhe’s territory, where everyone was severed from their pasts and lived day to day. “Have you heard about it? Little Red really hit the jackpot this time. A factory foreman. And they say he bought out the whole shop from the aunt so that all she has to do now is collect rent off him. Of course, she was eager for Little Red to pull him. They say he has a wife back in Chongqing but what of it? She’s not here, is she?” he told him and cackled. Guisheng spit on the street and then rubbed the back of his head with his hands, still chapped from those couple of weeks he’d endured on the job. “So what’s that mean? She’s still going to work at the shop?” “I doubt it. Maybe she’s there for a couple more days, but he’s moving her into one of those buildings.” His friend pointed to the skyline that rose up around Jingle Market – a skyline that was looking increasingly prosperous in contrast to their increasingly shabby looking street. “And what’s all this for? What’s the occasion?” he said, pointing out the bags. “Nothing, nothing. I just felt like it. I’m having a get together with a friend by the riverside,” Guisheng said. “You are? Can I join you?” “Sure, sure. I have something to do first but you can meet me down there tonight,” Guisheng told him. Despite what he had heard, Guisheng still went down to the store, around the back alley entrance where Little Red hung the clothes. He saw her sitting out there, on the little plastic stool, and the floor manager was squatting down beside her with his arm around her neck, and he was grinning like a fool. Guisheng dropped his bags right where he stood and walked off.***
Later that evening, a few of his friends came down to the riverside spot where they usually hung out to wait for Guisheng. There was an orange glow out on the horizon, visible just over the riverbanks, then they heard the sound of sirens. “What a sunset!” one of them said. “That’s fire, prick.” They scrambled up the bank to find out where the glow was coming from. After walking a block, they found a crowd gathered near the convenience store, which was all ablaze. Some people were pointing at the top of a nearby apartment building, which was also burning, but the two buildings were too far apart for a spark to have blown over and set the other fire. Firemen were arriving to put out the blaze. “Is it because it’s been so hot recently? Two fires in one night?” one old woman asked her neighbor. “They’ve lost everything in that shop. And right after that rich man bought it, so strange,” her neighbor said. One of Guisheng’s friends recognized the rooftop as the spot where Guisheng slept at night. It was in an apartment building where one could easily get onto the stairwell and climb up to the top. There was a covered area where one of the building’s residents stored paint and other tools of his trade, but the rest of the rooftop was open. He remembered it because when he had moved into the area around Jingle Market, Guisheng had invited him to sleep up there, too. There weren’t any mosquitoes, but he preferred the beds in the dorms and hostels to the hard concrete, even with a quilt spread on top of it. Little Red was in the crowd, watching the firefighters tear down the walls of her shop so that the fire wouldn’t spread. The floor manager was beside her with his arm encircling her sympathetically, and she was crying. “Missing your old home?” Guisheng’s friend thought to himself as he watched her cry. “You’ll have something a million times better than this. If you’re still crying then, you might as well kill yourself.” The firefighters determined that there was no one in either of the places where the fire was burning, so there was no one to save. It made their job easier. No one could figure out where Guisheng had gone.Victoria Giang is a low-level office admin assistant who has previously worked in restaurants, motels, schools, and once, in an optics laboratory. Having recently returned to her hometown in South Florida after a long stint in Taipei, she continues to write and edit a Chinese-English bilingual zine called Frisson