by Yu Hua
Just think, with one hundred thousand sweaty people crowded together on a summer evening, how the stench of their sweat permeated the atmosphere of Liu. One hundred thousand people were exhaling carbon dioxide, and among them were five thousand who also had bad breath; one hundred thousand people meant two hundred thousand armpits, including six thousand armpits that reeked of BO; one hundred thousand people meant one hundred thousand assholes, of which at least seven thousand were farting, some more than once. The slower the cars drove, the more exhaust they emitted, but at least the car exhaust was gray and made the street look like a steam-filled sauna. Much worse were the streams of billowing black smoke coming from the tractors, as if they were burning houses.
The polluted atmosphere of Liu Town contaminated the three thousand beautiful virgins. For three hours they had to stand with their chests out and their hips swiveled, smiles plastered on their faces and flirtatious looks in their eyes, all in an attempt to have the country bumpkins riding in the trucks and tractors select them. Each of those five thousand bumpkins thought of himself as a competition judge. This was particularly true of those riding on the tractors, who, though they were crowded together like cattle, were actually the world s most conscientious judges. As soon as they pushed aside the heads in front of them, their own heads would be pushed aside by the people behind them, but they all nevertheless kept their eyes wide open, wanting to examine the virgin beauties carefully, and—holding their papers and pens above their heads—they recorded the pretty ones. They recommended and critiqued the virgins as earnestly as if they were investing in stocks. The spectators standing in the back were particularly conscientious, even though often, as soon as they glimpsed a virgin beauty with a decent face and physique, the tractor would drive past before they had a chance to see the number on her chest. Therefore, they would call out anxiously to the people in front and ask what was the number of the virgin who looked a certain way, acting as if they were afraid they might miss out on a stock that was about to open big the next day.
The three thousand virgin beauties had been standing all afternoon. They had spent about two hours simply lining up along the street and three hours more posing for the spectators. Whether they had started out wearing heavy or light makeup, by this point sweat had melted everything on their faces into a multicolored puddle. After the two-plus-mile caravan of convertibles, trucks, and tractors had driven by, the exhaust added a layer of black on top of the color. As a result, they were all as black as chimney sweeps, and the delighted crowds said that they looked like African virgin beauties.
The carnivalesque first round of competition finally concluded at nightfall, but the five thousand country bumpkins were still very excited as they went, with their sweat-drenched papers, to line up in front of the organizing committee s building and waited there until the middle of the night to turn in their ballots. They felt that they had purchased not merely inspection tickets but, rather, the opportunity to serve as judges for a national competition; this was an experience they planned to savor for the rest of their lives. PR Liu gazed out at the passionate and foolish lot of them and thought scornfully that bumpkins will be bumpkins, and even if you were to plop them down in New York or Paris, they would remain unqualified bumpkins. And it was precisely these bumpkin judges who eliminated two thousand of the virgin beauties, leaving only one thousand to enter the semifinals.
Of the two virgin beauties living in Poet Zhao's house, only one managed to qualify for the semifinals. Therefore, she happily checked into a hotel, now that they had some vacancies, while the other beauty packed her bags and left in a funk.
By this point Wandering Zhou had slept on the straw mat under the open sky for seven nights straight. He had managed to sell forty-three artificial hymens, and therefore now had some cash in his pocket. He paid Poet Zhao 140 yuan, explaining that it was his bed fee for the past seven nights, emphasizing the fact that he was treating Poet Zhao to his portion of the charges. Then he turned and walked into the snack shop across the street, sat down, and proceeded to chat intimately with Missy Su while sipping from his straw-embedded buns. The straw-embedded buns had been perfected, and consequently he couldn't continue sampling them for free on the pretense that he was testing them out. Therefore, he started to run up a tab at the snack shop, saying that it was too much trouble for him to pay such a small amount of money each day and that he would pay everything off when he left.
After Wandering Zhou emerged from the snack shop, Poet Zhao thought that he, too, was going to get a room in a hotel, but instead he came to stay at Poet Zhao's house. Upon entering he took one look at Poet Zhao's cramped home and said, his voice dripping with disdain, "Fine, I'll just sleep on your tattered couch."
Poet Zhao said, "This is simply too humiliating. You should go and stay in a hotel."
Wandering Zhou shook his head, crossed his legs and made himself comfortable on the old, tattered sofa, as if he were in his own home. He said, "I'm not used to sleeping in a regular hotel room. When I stay at hotels, the cheapest room I ever get is a suite, but the suites here have all been rented out to the political leaders and judges."
Poet Zhao suggested, "You could rent two rooms, and that would make a suite."
"Nonsense," Wandering Zhou replied. "How can you call two rooms a suite? How can I sleep in two rooms?"
Poet Zhao said, "You could sleep in one room the first half of the night, and in the other room the second half."
Wandering Zhou laughed out loud, saying, "To tell the truth, I'm not really comfortable in a regular suite. When I stay in hotels, I only use the presidential suites."
Poet Zhao said, "Then why don't you rent an entire floor? You could take a nap in every room. Wouldn't that be a presidential suite?
Wandering Zhou glared at Poet Zhao. "Don't start with me. I just want to sleep on your old, tattered couch. I've had my share of abalone and shark fin, and right now I'm in the mood for some pickled vegetables and rice gruel."
Though this charlatan was Poet Zhao's temporary boss, he hadn't yet paid him. If Zhou wanted to hang out in Poet Zhao's home, therefore, Poet Zhao had no choice but to grin and bear it. After all, if he were to shoo him away, he might also be shooing away his own wages.
CHAPTER 64
THE SEMIFINALS of the Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition were held two evenings later. Once again, tens of thousands of townspeople streamed into the streets to watch the excitement. This time, however, there weren't any trucks or tractors, nor were there any country bumpkins serving as judges. Instead, a giant platform covered with sponsors’ ads had been erected in the middle of the street, which was lined with billboards advertising everything from cell phones to tourism, beauty products to laxatives, underwear to quilts, toys to health products. There were ads for things to eat, to play with, and to use; things for living people and dead people; things from China and things from abroad; things for people and things for pets. Even if you were to rack your brain like a high school student preparing for the college entrance exams, you wouldn't be able to come up with a product not covered by these ads.
Baldy Li and the organizing committee's political leaders and judges all sat on the platform, joined by Yanker Yu and Popsicle Wang. Under Yu's careful tutelage, Wang was now also dressed to the nines. Pop music blared from loudspeakers, but after every two lines or so the crooning would be interrupted by a commercial. After one ad concluded, the song would play for two more lines before being interrupted by another commercial. Each song would be interrupted at least four times, with the result that the famous stars singing through the loudspeakers were transformed into stuttering singers. One thousand virgins lined up, and each paraded back and forth three times in front of the platform to the beat of the stuttering music and the blaring commercials. This time the crowds were roped off, so the men couldn't grope the contestants’ bottoms but could merely harass them from a distance with lecherous gazes and salacious comments. By the time each of the virgin beauties had paraded b
ack and forth three times, the sun had set behind the mountains, thus concluding the semifinals of the competition. Baldy Li, the political leaders, and the judges all left, as did the one thousand virgin beauties and the tens of thousands of spectators. The loudspeakers, however, continued blaring commercials late into the night.
The semifinals eliminated nine hundred more contestants, leaving only one hundred to compete in the finals. The finals would be held in a movie theater, thereby allowing Baldy Li to sell more tickets and stuff his pockets with more wads of cash. Baldy Li had become a professional escort—escorting party leaders, judges, and sponsors to eat, play, and admire female beauty. As a result, the formerly awe-inspiring Baldy Li now simply spent the entire day smiling broadly as he escorted people around, to the point that he even began to resemble PR Liu.
The original three thousand virgin beauties had left him blurry-eyed and dizzy; the one thousand semifinalists had left him blurry-eyed but no longer dizzy; the one hundred finalists left him completely clear-eyed and clearheaded again. He summoned PR Liu, saying that if he didn't get his hands on some of these virgins now, he would lose his chance. He was sure that as soon as the competition concluded, they would disperse, and his only chance to bed one of them would be in his dreams. He remarked that all of the one hundred remaining beauties were quite fine, and he would be interested in sleeping with all of them; but since only a few days were left, he had to make some choices. The first one who caught his eye was contestant #1358—a beauty six feet two, perfectly proportioned, with a red-hot body. Baldy Li said that the tallest woman he had previously slept with had been just six feet, and therefore he was now in a position to break two personal Guinness records at once: his record for the tallest woman he had slept with, and also his first virgin.
Despite being busier than ever, PR Liu immediately made time to meet with contestant #1358. PR Liu, blurry-eyed and hoarse from overwork, had long since become inured to beautiful women, but the moment he saw the tall and sweet-faced #1358, his pulse started to race. Though he had been associating with the virgin beauties for quite a while by that point, he had never noticed this one. Liu decided that Baldy Li was truly formidable, being able to pick her out of a group of women more numerous than the hairs on a cow, thus demonstrating that Baldy Li's womanizing skills were truly in a class of their own.
PR Liu didn't arrange to meet contestant #1358 in the temporary office that the organizing committee was using. Instead they met in the company's café, the most ridiculously overpriced coffee shop in all of China. Naturally PR Liu footed the bill. He first smiled and congratulated #1358 on reaching the finals, then began to beat around the bush. This being the first time he had acted as a pimp for someone, he didn't know how to get to the point. He couldn't speak too baldly, but at the same time he needed to make sure that she knew what he was getting at.
PR Liu didn't realize that Virgin Beauty #1358 wasn't actually a virgin anymore but was in fact already a mother. After spending three thousand yuan having hymen-recon surgery, she had traveled to Liu Town to participate in the competition. Upon arriving, she immediately figured out what the competition was really all about. Especially after they entered the semifinals, each of the contestants went and slept with the judges. There were only ten judges, so with several thousand virgin beauties vying to sleep with them, by the end the poor judges had been reduced to skin and bones. Contestant #1358 regretted that she had spent three thousand yuan on her surgery, feeling that that was a case of using an ox knife to slaughter a mere chicken. She realized now that she could have just gone to Wandering Zhou and bought either a Joan of Arc or a Lady Meng Jiang artificial hymen, and that would have done the trick. When she saw that the other contestants were using one artificial hymen after another to refashion themselves into born-again virgins to secure their positions with the judges, #1358 began to feel extremely anxious. Her own hymen, which she had spent good money to reconstruct, still had not been of any use, while the women with those cheap artificial hymens were all running wild. She felt that she needed to take some initiative and could no longer afford to wait for the judges to come to her. Those judges, their heads spinning from sleeping with so many women, were so exhausted that even if #1358 had been a goddess on earth, they wouldn't have had the energy to give her a second glance.
When PR Liu came for her, therefore, she was delighted. At first she thought that he himself had taken an interest in her. From all these days of observation she had deduced that he was certainly not a mere PR person but someone who could influence the outcome of the competition. Therefore, after she sat down in the café, she looked up at him with a charming smile. She never spoke first but only responded when he spoke to her, all the while secretly analyzing his every remark. From Liu's comments, she came to the realization that the person who was interested in her was not this man in front of her but, rather, his boss, Baldy Li. PR Liu repeatedly told her that Boss Li had a very high opinion of her and sincerely hoped that she would be one of the three finalists. Of course, she should work even harder. But how? PR Liu smiled but didn't answer; he was hoping that her increasing anxiety would leave her no choice but to guide the conversation to its ultimate point. As soon as he remarked that Boss Li liked her, she feigned bash-fulness and demurred, "Why would Boss Li like me?"
PR Liu smiled and said, "Boss Li likes you a lot."
She acted as if she couldn't believe this and said, "He hasn't even said a single word to me."
PR Liu leaned forward and said, "Actually, Boss Li wants to speak to you tonight."
"Tonight?" she asked happily. "Where?"
PR Liu noticed her excitement and responded slowly, "At Boss Li's home."
She appeared even more pleased and said that she very much wanted to take a look at Boss Li's mansion, then asked whether he was hosting a large-scale event at his home. PR Liu shook his head, smiled mysteriously, and said, "No, this will be just an intimate affair, consisting only of yourself and Boss Li."
She wiped the smile from her face and sat without saying a word. PR Liu tapped the armrest of the couch with his finger and waited patiently for her decision. At this point she took her phone and stood up, explaining that she wanted to call her mother, then proceeded to walk out while dialing. PR Liu watched her as she paced back and forth, and eventually she shut her cell phone and walked back with a huge smile on her face. What she said next made PR Liu very happy: "My mother gave me permission to go to Boss Li's home."
That afternoon Baldy Li ceased work as a professional escort and, to prepare himself for an evening of carnal combat, spent the entire afternoon at home napping. When he woke up, PR Liu was standing there in his living room holding a bag. Baldy Li asked what he had in the bag, whereupon Liu carefully opened it and took out a magnifying glass, a telescope, and a microscope and explained, "I bought the magnifying glass and the telescope, but I borrowed the microscope from the hospital."
Baldy Li still didn't understand. He asked, "What do I need these for?"
Writer Liu answered, "They are for you to examine her hymen."
Baldy Li laughed, very satisfied with his PR chief. He patted Liu on the shoulder and said, "You're a fucking genius."
Baldy Li's praise made PR Liu glow with pride. He complimented Baldy Li's extraordinary eye and said that #1358 was not only unusually beautiful but furthermore was quite pure. He told Baldy Li that before Virgin Beauty #1358 had accepted the invitation to his home, she had first called her mother to ask permission. Baldy Li nodded and praised her mother, saying, "Her mother really knows what she is talking about."
At eight o'clock that night, PR Liu personally escorted Virgin Beauty #1358 to Baldy Li's mansion, taking her all the way to his bedroom before turning around and walking out.
Baldy Li had bathed and changed into his pajamas. When he saw #1358 come in, he thought that since she was a virgin, he should act like a gentleman. He turned off the television and stood up, nodding to her and bowing slightly. He wanted to say some romantic th
ings but wasn't able to get anything out. Instead, he angrily pounded his bald head and said, "Fuck, I can't do the sweet talk."
Baldy Li saw #1358 standing there bashfully and thought that he shouldn't waste any time but should get directly to the point. He pointed to the bathroom and said gently, "Go wash up."
Virgin Beauty #1358 uneasily stood rooted there, as if she hadn't understood what Baldy Li had said. He realized that he had forgotten to say please and therefore quickly added, "Please go wash up."
Virgin Beauty #1358 asked bashfully, "Wash what?"
"Take a bath," Baldy Li replied.
Virgin Beauty #1358 again asked bashfully, "Why should I take a bath?"
"Why?" Baldy Li said. "Because I want to see your …"
Baldy Li didn't say the final word, hymen, but swallowed the end of his sentence. Virgin Beauty #1358 again asked bashfully, "See my what?"
Baldy Li stood there fidgeting for a while and finally had no option but to spit it out: "I want to see your hymen."
Virgin Beauty #1358 cried out in surprise when she heard this, and immediately her tears started flowing. She said, "How could you say something like that?"
"Fuck," Baldy Li cursed and pounded his head. "That's the only way I know how to talk."
Virgin Beauty #1358 was hurt and embarrassed. She looked at Baldy Li beseechingly, saying, "You shouldn't speak to women that way."
Baldy Li felt that he had in fact been too coarse, and therefore he bowed to Virgin Beauty #1358 and offered his apologies. "I'm sorry."
