delicious and humiliating trouble. And though suffering plenty, he weathers his self-inflicted misfortune, and it’s no surprise that it’s Ji-lan who loses all in the end, everyone learning a harsh lesson in what can happen when you stray too far beyond your circle.
It’s funny, for although Ji-lan is nothing at all like Fan in either person or her situation (Ji-lan being a tall, statuesque femme fatale, mercurial and passionate, who would not hesitate to wreck the lives of others if it meant her gain), it’s almost impossible not to think of our petite, gentle Fan as the inspiration for her character. Perhaps it’s the actress’s Fan-like hairstyle that’s a cue for us, or the similar way she sometimes rides sidesaddle on her scooter (though in Ji-lan’s case it’s clearly due to the very short cut of her skirts), but whatever it is, the impression is unmistakable. Fan, of course, never knew of these developments in the show, if she ever watched the show at all. Being as modest as she was, she probably would have shaken her head at the notion of any perceived concordances, maybe even chuckled at the huge gap between the sinister sparkle of Ji-lan’s exploits and the dismal reality of her situation, what with her profound injury and the ragged conditions and being under the care of the ill-tempered Loreen and the mysterious and seemingly volatile Quig, whose standing in the Smokes, it would turn out, was much higher than he cared to let on.
When Fan awoke the next morning in the room of spare parts, she felt sick to her stomach and leaned over the side of the cot and gagged, though only a slick of spit fell from her mouth onto the dingy, scarred floorboards. It was nausea in the wake of the night’s painkillers, and probably some hunger, too, as she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous afternoon. Her leg was in the splint Quig had rigged, but she couldn’t quite bear to examine it yet and so didn’t remove the blanket. Instead she looked around the room. It had a salvaged clerestory pane installed near the top of the wall, which let in a good amount of the morning light; one could see the various plastic and metal and wire-sprouting parts set off by type with an unexpected neatness, stationed in rows rather than jammed in; in fact, the feel was somewhat similar to a parts room the maintenance workers have at the grow facility, though theirs is obviously much larger and cleaner and brighter, the atmosphere scrubbed of any foreign matter or organisms that could taint the planting beds or fish tanks. Here the air was closed off and smelled of dust and chainoil and dry-rotted wood and was laced, as was everything, with a rank counties perfume, but it was the sensibility of order, if only an order masked by roughness and grime, that Fan latched on to and could quell the brunt of her fear with and so attempt to keep her mind composed and steady. For she had to believe what we all would have believed, given our schooling and our shows, which is that she would be used up in hard labor—if not much, much worse—and only after an interminable sentence of such use, disposed of. In fact, one of the sayings B-Mors will sometimes offer to someone on an errand or trip outside the gates is Don’t become
xiãng-cháng
!—Don’t become sausage!—a bit of black humor that comes from a famous episode of a now classic evening program in which a group of foolhardy B-Mor teenagers goes camping out in the counties before the commencement of their facilities careers and end up having their livers cut out and made into you know what.
That’s sensationalized, to be sure, and yet there are all sorts of rumors and anecdotes and semiofficial reports that over the decades have grown into a bank of lore about the counties that each of us adds to whenever we repeat that saying or others with which we admonish our naturally curious children. Thank goodness they are curious! It’s a sign of healthy minds. And while it may be
It’s funny, for although Ji-lan is nothing at all like Fan in either person or her situation (Ji-lan being a tall, statuesque femme fatale, mercurial and passionate, who would not hesitate to wreck the lives of others if it meant her gain), it’s almost impossible not to think of our petite, gentle Fan as the inspiration for her character. Perhaps it’s the actress’s Fan-like hairstyle that’s a cue for us, or the similar way she sometimes rides sidesaddle on her scooter (though in Ji-lan’s case it’s clearly due to the very short cut of her skirts), but whatever it is, the impression is unmistakable. Fan, of course, never knew of these developments in the show, if she ever watched the show at all. Being as modest as she was, she probably would have shaken her head at the notion of any perceived concordances, maybe even chuckled at the huge gap between the sinister sparkle of Ji-lan’s exploits and the dismal reality of her situation, what with her profound injury and the ragged conditions and being under the care of the ill-tempered Loreen and the mysterious and seemingly volatile Quig, whose standing in the Smokes, it would turn out, was much higher than he cared to let on.
When Fan awoke the next morning in the room of spare parts, she felt sick to her stomach and leaned over the side of the cot and gagged, though only a slick of spit fell from her mouth onto the dingy, scarred floorboards. It was nausea in the wake of the night’s painkillers, and probably some hunger, too, as she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous afternoon. Her leg was in the splint Quig had rigged, but she couldn’t quite bear to examine it yet and so didn’t remove the blanket. Instead she looked around the room. It had a salvaged clerestory pane installed near the top of the wall, which let in a good amount of the morning light; one could see the various plastic and metal and wire-sprouting parts set off by type with an unexpected neatness, stationed in rows rather than jammed in; in fact, the feel was somewhat similar to a parts room the maintenance workers have at the grow facility, though theirs is obviously much larger and cleaner and brighter, the atmosphere scrubbed of any foreign matter or organisms that could taint the planting beds or fish tanks. Here the air was closed off and smelled of dust and chainoil and dry-rotted wood and was laced, as was everything, with a rank counties perfume, but it was the sensibility of order, if only an order masked by roughness and grime, that Fan latched on to and could quell the brunt of her fear with and so attempt to keep her mind composed and steady. For she had to believe what we all would have believed, given our schooling and our shows, which is that she would be used up in hard labor—if not much, much worse—and only after an interminable sentence of such use, disposed of. In fact, one of the sayings B-Mors will sometimes offer to someone on an errand or trip outside the gates is Don’t become
xiãng-cháng
!—Don’t become sausage!—a bit of black humor that comes from a famous episode of a now classic evening program in which a group of foolhardy B-Mor teenagers goes camping out in the counties before the commencement of their facilities careers and end up having their livers cut out and made into you know what.
That’s sensationalized, to be sure, and yet there are all sorts of rumors and anecdotes and semiofficial reports that over the decades have grown into a bank of lore about the counties that each of us adds to whenever we repeat that saying or others with which we admonish our naturally curious children. Thank goodness they are curious! It’s a sign of healthy minds. And while it may be
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