Land of Big Numbers

by Te-Ping Chen

  Afterward, the adults went back to quietly chatting, struck by seeing so many strangers after so many months. “That was strange,” the professor said aloud, as though to himself.

  “They looked so unhappy,” someone said.

  “It’s not easy, being outside,” the calisthenics woman said, nodding.

  Someone turned on the television: the evening newscast was starting up again. Jun and two women on duty moved around and began collecting plates and stacking them on platters for the guards to remove the next day.

  That night the newscast was about the job losses being suffered at two steel refineries that were shutting down. For several weeks, the news had all been in a similar vein, a steady drumbeat; the economy was slowing. There was a crime spree in certain neighborhoods; news anchors advised viewers to lock their doors. “Sad,” the construction worker said with a sigh, and the others agreed.

  After that, trains started coming into the station every day or two. Sometimes they arrived with horns blaring, other times they silently sped through, all their lights off. Twice they saw that the cars had people inside: once, another group of commuters, and another time, a man in an orange repair suit who stood alone, tinkering with a light.

  Each time the train never slowed, never stopped. While most of them learned to ignore the trains’ appearances, their repeated arrivals seemed to drive one woman, with a spotted face and a badly knitted sweater, over the edge. After each one departed, she would sit in a corner rocking back and forth by herself, muttering. When the next train arrived, she would chase it and pound her arms against the swift-moving body of the locomotive, terrifying those around her, who eventually began forcibly restraining her whenever one arrived. “She could hurt herself like that,” they said to one another. “She could fall onto the tracks.” But the trains came at all hours of day and night, and it wasn’t possible to watch her. Eventually they asked the guards for a short length of chain with which to tether her to a drainpipe by the bathroom.

  They moved her mattress and placed a television set in front of her. “It’s for your own good,” they told her. “We don’t want you to get hurt.” The woman howled at first, but eventually quieted.

  The woman reminded Pan of her father. In the afternoon, she would sit and draw pictures by her side as the woman watched, fascinated. She began bringing her plates of food during meals, to make sure she ate properly.

  “More celery,” she’d say, imitating herself when she was with her father. “Eat some fruit.” The woman would make an assortment of pleased-sounding noises at Pan’s attentions. It could not be determined if she had always been so incoherent, or if it was life at Gubeikou that had made her so.

  When the trains came, the woman would rise up and lunge at them, as though the locomotive had wronged her family in a past lifetime, her chain rattling. The other passengers speculated about her in hushed tones: Where had she been going the day they’d been stranded, anyway? What would happen to her when they were freed?

  “Poor thing, no work unit would want her. She’s lucky she wound up here.”

  The professor had the bright idea of finding the long-ago newspaper article that had listed all those stranded. Together, they located her picture wonderingly: it said she was an accountant.

  A chorus of indignation broke out. “Not possible—​look at her,” the professor said.

  “It must be an error,” the others said.

  Then one day, the train snuck up on them. It was late in the evening. The kids were playing down at one end of the platform, by the badminton net. They had just finished eating their dinner, roast pork and steamed rice and braised bamboo shoots, and now that the plates had been stacked and put aside, most of the group was congregated around the television, watching a detective show. Pan was leaning back in her chair, her legs casually slung over Jun’s lap, comfortably encased in one of the newly donated sweatshirts the guards had unpacked the other day, which read GUBEIKOU SPIRIT across the front. It was a Friday, but it might as well have been a Tuesday or a Wednesday; it made no difference—​all the days ran together. The atmosphere was warm and convivial: the retired professor was already nodding off in his chair, and around the table, some of the others smiled at the sight.

  The volume on the television was turned up, and it was only the sound of metal rasping against metal that made them look up. Across the way, a beam of light was streaming through the tunnel: another train was coming through. Down the platform, the woman was on her feet, yanking futilely at her chain and lunging forward, her chain clanging noisily against the pipe. The group frowned. “Calm down!” the middle-aged woman with the perm shouted.

  The rushing sound of the train was quieter than usual, though, and in another moment the group realized why. The train wasn’t moving that quickly; in fact, it was slowing down. It had stopped. In another moment the train’s doors had opened with a merry chime. The train car was empty. Its insides had a faintly yellow cast, the carpet dirty and worn.

  “It’s stopped!” someone cried. Pan stood and gazed at the open doors, heart pounding, joy and fear coursing through her veins in equal measure.

  The group was silent. On the screen, a detective was rushing down a set of stairs in pursuit of a woman in flight. Pan turned toward her sleeping pallet to grab a few possessions. No, there wasn’t time. “Jun!” she called. “It’s here!”

  He was still seated, slowly tying his laces, not looking at her. “It might not be safe,” the professor warned. No one moved.

  “We should ask first,” one of the others muttered. “Find out what’s going on.”

  “This could be our only chance!” cried Pan. A few wary pairs of eyes glanced over from the television. “Come on, get up! What have we been waiting for?”

  The train’s warning chime sounded: in another moment, the doors would close. “Hurry!” she yelled, but the others stayed seated. Incredulous, she wrenched her eyes from the group and hurtled toward the train, socked feet flashing white. Farther down the platform, she heard the sound of the woman’s metal chain rasping and felt a twinge of guilt, but kept running. Two of the teenage boys rose and joined her. The doors slid shut. “Pan, wait!” Jun shouted.

  She didn’t hear him. She stood panting, exhilarated and afraid. She was already through the door.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all the people who opened their hearts to this manuscript and worked tirelessly to deliver it into the world, especially to Rayhané Sanders, for her sharp insights and early belief in these stories, to Naomi Gibbs, for her graceful edit, and to the rest of the wonderful Houghton Mifflin Harcourt team, including Taryn Roeder, Lori Glazer, Michael Dudding, Mark Robinson, Laura Brady, Millicent Bennett, and Jenny Xu, as well as Michael Taeckens, Jade Wong-Baxter and Amy Edelman, Chris White and the team at Scribner UK, and all of Massie & McQuilkin’s coagents. I am deeply indebted to you for your help and many kindnesses.

  Thank you to the Fulbright program and the Wall Street Journal for the chance to live in so many places that fired my imagination, and thank you to the friends and colleagues who made those years so special. Thanks in particular to Tom Pellman for his thoughtful comments on these stories, and to Kate Lloyd for her surefooted advice throughout.

  To my parents, thank you for teaching me the importance of words, for countless childhood trips to the library and for showing me what love and hard work look like. You gave me my first home and opened the door to so many more through books. For that, and more, I’m very grateful.

  Above all, I owe my greatest thanks to Ben, who read each story as it was written and encouraged me to keep going: without you, these stories wouldn’t exist, and would be immeasurably poorer. I still can’t believe I get to share my life with someone so brilliant, funny, and kind; every day with you and JK is a gift and an adventure. I love you so much. Thank you.

  About the Author

  © Lucas Foglia

  Te-Ping Chen fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin Hous
e, and the Atlantic. A reporter with the Wall Street Journal, she was previously a correspondent for the paper in Beijing and Hong Kong. Prior to joining the Journal in 2012, she spent a year in China as a Fulbright fellow. She lives in Philadelphia.

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