by Xinran Xue
As we drove, the female taxi driver said to us: "I can hear you speaking a foreign language. Which kind of English are you speaking? Which English-speaking country are you from? What have you come to do in this dirty old street?"
We wanted to make sure she was not one of those Chinese taxi drivers whose "alertness and vigilance" might lead to trouble from the local police, so we earnestly told her about educational charity work we were involved with. She was so moved by our description that she refused to charge us. We wrangled for some time before we could get her to accept the fare.
We went into the side street, past a store selling cigarettes and other sundries, a stall selling home-cooked flatbreads from a cooker, two carts with general household items, a fruit stall, and a cart selling cold dishes from a glass box mounted on it, before arriving at the shoe-mender's stall. This consisted of a crudely made cart topped with an old oil-paper umbrella. On the cart lay a collection of insoles, and an assortment of creams and folk remedies for foot problems, together with bits and pieces for repairing shoes, such as soles, heels, heel tips and so on. Her stock, while not large, was neatly arranged. A few customers waited by her stall, apparently queuing to have their shoes repaired. A man in his early forties sat opposite, and there was a middle-aged woman, and a girl in her teens.
Mrs Xie did not look much more than fifty. Her dry, wispy hair was tied into a ponytail and she wore a Western-style, mixed-fibre purple top over a pair of very cheap denims. On her feet were a pair of ill-fitting leather shoes – which I guessed were someone's cast-offs – and her arms were covered by a pair of flower-patterned oversleeves. Nothing she wore appeared to match, city-style, but she was clean and neat.
The friend who had set up the meeting for me went over to greet her: "Big sister," – country folk respectfully call women in the towns, big sister, and men, big brother, sometimes even when they are younger than them – "I often come and get you to mend my shoes. But you have so many customers, do you remember me?"
***
MRS XIE: Of course I remember you. You never try and bargain my prices down. Your husband is in the army. You're a good person.
FRIEND: This is my friend Xinran, whom I've known for nearly thirty years.
XINRAN: Hello. I'm delighted to meet you.
MRS XIE: Hello. I've got a job in hand. Why don't you sit down?
XINRAN: Can you mend my shoes? They've come unglued inside at the bottom.
MRS XIE: I'll have a look. [Gives a quick glance.] Yes, I can, it's very simple. Wait till I've finished this pair, and I'll do them for you.
***
But the middle-aged woman customer sitting on a stool objected that she had been there first. And I quickly agreed.
***
MRS XIE [to the woman customer]: Don't worry, her shoes just need gluing. They'll only take a second to stick. Yours need new heel tips. She'll have to wait half an hour or more, and everyone's busy…
XINRAN: No, really, I'm happy to wait my turn. It gives me a chance to learn your craft and chat to you. My friend told me that you've scrimped and saved your shoe-mending money to send your children to university. You're amazing!
MRS XIE: Aren't all Chinese mothers like that?
XINRAN: When I came here looking for a shoe-mender, everyone said you were the best. They all sing your praises.
MRS XIE: They look after me. They look after poor people like us.
XINRAN: When did you start mending shoes here?
MRS XIE: In 1978.
XINRAN: Nearly thirty years! Where do you come from? Did you come alone or with your family?
MRS XIE: From Hubei. I came with my husband.
XINRAN: And your children?
MRS XIE: It was only my son then. He was just born. We left him at home, for the grandparents to bring up. We left to earn money.
XINRAN: Why did you leave?
MRS XIE: We were so hard up there. The land was truly poor and barren.
XINRAN: You have one son and one daughter?
MRS XIE: Yes.
XINRAN: Where are they at university?
MRS XIE: My son works, my daughter is at university.
XINRAN: Where does your son work?
MRS XIE [maternal pride in her voice]: He's doing his doctorate at Xi'an Communications University [one of the top science and engineering universities], and he has some teaching work there.
XINRAN: And your girl?
MRS XIE: She's doing a master's at Beijing University.
XINRAN: Do they come and see you?
MRS XIE: Of course! My daughter comes more often than my son. She's good at getting jobs to pay for her fare. My son has a girlfriend, so he's busy with her family too!
XINRAN: Why did you decide to come to Zhengzhou to earn money?
MRS XIE: In 1978, you weren't allowed to leave your home, and if you just left, you would be arrested. It's not like now, when you can go wherever you want. But where we were was poor and there was no education, so when my son was born, we discussed it and decided we definitely wanted to leave so that my son could go to school.
XINRAN: Was there no school in your village?
MRS XIE: There was, but it was a disgusting place! A primary school needs a schoolhouse and a teacher, but this one had neither. A relative of the village accountant just took it on for a bit of money. For middle school you had to go to the county town. Hang on a minute and I'll tell you a story about the county middle school!
MRS XIE [to the middle-aged man]: These shoes are ready. Thank you.
MIDDLE-AGED MAN: We agreed on the price, four yuan, isn't it? Here, four yuan.
MRS XIE: Thank you for giving me your business. [The middle-aged man does not respond and leaves. She turns to the middle-aged woman.] Your shoes?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN: Last time you put a new heel on. I've worn them six months, and the heel tip has worn through again. Can you put a better one on this time?
MRS XIE: What I used last time was the best. You walk on the outside of your foot, so you wear away the outside of your heel. You've had those shoes at least two years now, and the leather has stretched and the shoes have lost their shape. Now when you walk, your foot moves in the shoe and wears it down even faster. I can put in an insole so the shoe and your foot fit better, and that should improve it.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN: How much will the insole cost?
MRS XIE: One yuan each.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN: So expensive! Other people charge one yuan the pair!
MRS XIE: That's the price. Go and ask someone else if you don't believe me. I pay eighty fen per insole, so if I let you have one for fifty fen, I lose thirty fen on each insole, and I'm not doing that! Otherwise I can just reheel them for you, and you go to a cheaper place for an insole.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN: OK, just reheel them for me.
***
I watched as Mrs Xie rifled through heel tips of all sorts in an old shoebox and found a couple of metal ones which matched the old pair in size and colour. She rubbed them clean with a cloth, and put them on a wooden box beside her. Then she dexterously pulled off the heel tip with the hammer claw and carefully filed the bottom of the worn-down heel until it was quite flat. Finally she used her apron to give the surface a good rub and get rid of the flecks.
Then she applied a layer of viscous rubber solution and put the shoe down on the tip. She repeated this procedure with the other shoe, and when she had completed the repair work on both shoes, she reinforced the heels with a kind of square-headed shoe tack.
She was eager to tell me the story of the county middle school as she worked on the shoes.
***
MRS XIE: Wasn't I going to tell you about the county middle school?
XINRAN: Yes, if it doesn't interfere with your shoe repairs, please tell me.
MRS XIE: Not at all. When I talk about it, it gives me more energy and more qi. Did you know that the more qi you have, the more energetic you are?
XINRAN: OK, tell me then!
MR
S XIE: When I was at the county middle school, I was an excellent student. I came top in the county results. But when it came to university, they wouldn't let me apply. In those days, the middle school put your name forward, and they said I had a bad class background, that I was from a rich peasant family and so I couldn't go to university.
That was a muddle my mother had made in 1951 – it was nothing to do with me. Just after Liberation, when property was registered and people were put into class categories, the recorder didn't do the figures properly and they came out wrong. My mother had just got married. She was illiterate, and also didn't hear what was said. It was only when the class categories were announced that she found out that the family had been put into the "rich peasant" category. How could that be? If we'd been rich peasants, why would my father have gone to make revolution? He'd have been making revolution against himself!
My father worked in the county government offices, and the cadres told him the mistake had been corrected, but they were bad guys and they deceived him. During the Cultural Revolution, someone made it known that my father had misrepresented his rich peasant background, and said they'd found the original testimony. The original cadres hadn't written an explanation of the mistake on his documents, they'd just put a line through his name and left it at that! So my father, after working for the revolution for twenty-something years, was turned into a "counterrevolutionary covertly working within the ranks of the revolutionaries". Just like that, it was over for my family, and I couldn't go to university. I was furious! Ever since I knew about it, I had been absolutely desperate to go to university. I liked literature, I liked history, I loved anything in books; I was the best in the county but they wouldn't let me go to university. When I sit here every day mending shoes, I think about that, and it still makes me angry!
You couldn't go to university somewhere else and get on in life, like you can nowadays. You couldn't do that then. Once my father had "become" a counter-revolutionary, the family had no means of earning a living, and very soon we were packed off back to the village to work on the land. All my studying had been a waste, hadn't it? I wouldn't ever be able to go to university, would I? I wasn't reconciled to this, I really wasn't! Every evening as I watched the sky grow dark, I would think to myself, I should just wait, the sky will get light again. Even if I can't go to university, my children will definitely be able to go, and to the best ones!
XINRAN: And the sky did grow light. Your son went to the best university, your wish came true.
MRS XIE: Well, it didn't all come true. Xi'an Communications University isn't as good as Qinghua or Beijing University, and Qinghua and Beijing University aren't as good as Oxford and Cambridge. If it were me, I would definitely want to go to the best university, to show those people who wouldn't let me go. I've told my daughter, when she's finished her master's, she should go on studying. Mum'll support you, I said. We don't want the government's money. People say we're poor, but that poverty's given us ambition, and out of poverty has come university learning. That'll show those people who look down on us! Neither of our children applied for a grant. I told them: "You're not allowed to borrow money or ask the government for money. If you've got talent, you'll fight your own battles! Don't compare how you eat and dress to other people. Don't worry that people will laugh at you if you look less smart or work harder than they do. The only thing you should compare is how educated you are!" I sit here repairing shoes and lots of people look down on me, but I think to myself: Have you sent your son to do his PhD? I'm not talented, but my children are talented. And I've earned every penny of their fees and their living expenses!
***
Once more I was left speechless, struck dumb by the indomitable spirit of the mothers of China, by their soaring aspirations. As a race, we really are like the wild grasses in the poem by Bai Juyi: "Wild fires cannot consume them, they grow again in the spring breeze." In fact, I was not the only one to be quite overwhelmed by the shoe-mender woman's straight-talking. I could sense a silent surge of feeling from everyone around her, and I believe it was because of our mothers that we felt that way.
I realised that the middle-aged woman had been listening as she quietly chose two pairs of appropriate insoles from the pile on Mrs Xie's cart. She put down five yuan and was about to leave with her reheeled shoes when the shoe-mender stopped her: "I told you, the insoles are one yuan each, two yuan the pair, you've given me too much!" "Take it, buy your daughter a pen," said the customer. "No, no, I can't take it," said Mrs Xie. "You're helping them just by bringing me your shoes to mend. I can't charge anything else!"
Back and forth went the argument, just as I had so often seen women in Chinese restaurants fighting for the right to pay the bill. The shoemender woman won, and only accepted four yuan. The customer left, and I saw that she really was bandy-legged. I turned to the girl and said: "It's your turn." She was embarrassed and told me to go first, she wasn't in any hurry.
***
MRS XIE: Let the girl sit here a bit longer, and I'll glue your shoes. She comes with a pair of shoes every weekend. She says it gives her something to do.
XINRAN: Is this true?
GIRL: Yup. My mum and dad are divorced and neither wanted me, so I'm with my grandparents. They only have two rooms, and they use my room to play mah-jong every day, so it gets very smoky. When I'm out at school it doesn't bother me, but at weekends there's nowhere to go, so I come here and watch people.
XINRAN: Watch people?
GIRL: That's right, watch people. This lane may be cramped and higgledy-piggledy, but you can see all sorts of people here, even big cadres. There's one big noise whose mum and dad live in that building, and sometimes he comes in with his arms full of packages to see them. He can't drive in, so he stops the car at the entrance, making all the passers-by swear.
XINRAN: But how do you know he's an important cadre?
GIRL: It may seem a mess here, but we have public security patrols every day. They say it's so that "the regulations are obeyed". If anyone else's car blocked the entrance, the PSB would put a stop to it. I've heard people say that the numbers on his car number plate are low ones, and the lower the number the higher the cadre's rank.
XINRAN: And what other kinds of people do you see?
GIRL: Just ask her. She can tell who's walking past her without even looking up. We often play "guessing people" games. She tells me what kind of a person someone might be and why. I point out to her anyone I see from far, far away, and how they walk and hold themselves. Some of them are my neighbours. She gets lots of them right. It's fun!
MRS XIE: It's just a bit of nonsense, like a dog scrabbling away at a hole, as we say. It's just a game I play with the girl to keep her entertained!
XINRAN: OK, tell me. Entertain me. Too bad that just now there's no one coming.
MRS XIE: If you think about it, I've sat here for twenty-eight years mending shoes, and that's twenty-eight years' worth of lessons, learning to watch people. Shoe size depends on the person's height, everyone knows that. OK, that's a generalisation. There are some tall people with small feet, but not many short people with big feet. Big wide shoes usually belong to someone who's done a lifetime of manual labour which has splayed their toes. He may have come up in the world, but you can tell he has lots of poor relatives. If someone has wide shoes, you should look at their trouser legs too. If their trousers hang above their ankles, they're usually old – I reckon it's because their old bellies stick out. If the trouser bottoms drag on the ground, they're either kids or nouveau riche who haven't learned how to wear their trousers properly. When it's a small foot with narrow shoes, the person's family have been city folk for generations, and their toes haven't been splayed through hard work. If they have a good life, then they have a slow gait. If they're poor, then they stride along. If they tread on someone's foot and can step back and give way, then they're educated, good people. Then there are people who don't know how to give way, people who wear designer shoes, fakes too. But human beings
are not made by the clothes they wear. If they have no feelings and no talent, they're useless!
The man whose shoe I just mended only knows about what he wears, and doesn't know about people.
XINRAN: Why?
MRS XIE: His shoe was a designer fake, a particularly cheap one. If you've got learning, you can tell by looking that real and fake labels are not the same. He can't, so he falls right into the trap. Besides, does smiling at a woman make you lose face? He's been coming to have his shoes mended for a few years now, and he's never said more than a word or two to me. He wants you to understand that he's a city gent, higher up the social scale than you, and a man. But he hasn't managed to have a son. If a man wants a son, he needs to be strong-willed, he needs to be daring, and show his goodness in his face. A man who's only good at being a bully boy can only produce daughters.
XINRAN: And what can you tell from these feet? What kind of learning does this woman have?
MRS XIE: You want the truth?
XINRAN: Of course I want the truth.
MRS XIE: Then I'll tell you. As soon as I caught sight of your feet, I knew you were a poor person from a posh family.
XINRAN: A poor person from a posh family? I don't understand.
MRS XIE: You don't understand what that is? It means your forebears were posh, but you don't have any money. If you were posh now, you wouldn't have bought yourself those cheap shoes. The soles are very thin and the shape's not good. I guarantee you've got corns!
XINRAN: You're amazing! I do have corns on my feet – they've been killing me the last couple of days!
MRS XIE: I've got cream here specially for treating corns. Do you want to have a try? Don't put your feet in water for two days, and they should be better on the third day.
