Free The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran Page A

followed. Choosing a scavenger as a nanny became a subject of fevered conversation among my female colleagues for several days. Since all their children were of different ages, they thought they might find someone they could share. They made detailed plans about how to supervise and assess her, and what kind of rules to set.
    Soon after, I was asked to attend a ‘women’s meeting’ in the small meeting room next to the women’s toilets. No sooner had I sat down and asked uneasily if they had not called the wrong person, than they announced that I had been unanimously chosen as their representative to pick a nanny from among the scavenger women living by the radio station. In a militant manner that brooked no argument, they set forth the criteria that had led them to choose me as their representative. This was the first time my female colleagues had displayed any approval of me. They said that I appeared sincere, that I had the human touch and common sense, and that I was thorough, thoughtful and methodical. Despite suspecting them of ulterior motives, I was touched by their estimation of me.
    Over the next few days, I started inventing excuses to go over to the scavenger women’s huts. But the results of my observations were disappointing: looking at the women rooting around for salvageable rubbish, it was difficult to imagine them as caring, reasonable people, let alone think of inviting them into the home. They wiped their snot on to anything within reach, and those who had children tucked them under their arms to leave their hands free for picking rubbish. With only a piece of paper to shield them, they relieved themselves by the roadside.
    The only scavenger woman worth considering was the owner of the scrap castle. In her daily activity, she seemed to display kindness, cleanliness and warmth. After several false starts, I worked up enough courage to stop her on her way home.
    ‘Hello! My name is Xinran, I work at the radio station. Excuse me, but may I have a word with you?’
    ‘Hello. I know you. You’re the presenter of Words on the Night Breeze . I listen to your programme every night. What can I do for you?’
    ‘It’s like this . . .’ I, the radio presenter who could talk endlessly in front of the microphone, suddenly grew so incoherent that I could barely follow my own babbling speech.
    The scavenger lady was quick to grasp what I had in mind. She replied calmly, but decisively. ‘Please thank your colleagues for their good opinion of me, but it would be very hard for me to accept their generous offer. I like to live an unfettered life.’ She swept away all the persuasive talents my colleagues had seen in me with one quiet sentence.
    When I reported back to my colleagues, they could not believe their ears. ‘The great radio presenter can’t even talk a scavenger round . . .’
    There was nothing I could have done. The look in the scavenger lady’s eyes prevented all argument. I felt that there was more than simple refusal in her expression, but did not know what.
    From then on, observing the scrap castle and its owner became part of my daily routine. One evening in the second month of autumn, I finally got another chance to get close to the little hut. After I had finished my programme, I walked past the scavengers’ shacks as usual. When I passed the scrap castle, the faint sound of singing drifted out – it was the Russian folk song ‘Grasslands’. I grew intensely curious. After the Cultural Revolution, China had been through another Cold War with Russia, so not many people knew this song; even fewer knew it well enough to sing it. My mother had studied Russian at university and taught me the song. How had the scavenger woman come to know it?
    I drew closer to the scrap castle. The singing suddenly stopped, and the specially designed window opened silently. The scavenger lady, dressed in a home-made nightdress, asked, ‘What is it? Do you need something?’
    ‘I’m . . . I’m