An Internet Baby
By Xiaolu Guo
Sunday, July 27, 2008; B03
Xiaolu Guo was born in a fishing village in southern China in 1973 and now divides her time between London and Beijing. In both fiction and in film, her work traces the paths that young people from China's countryside take toward the promise of a more glittering future in a city. She is the author of "A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" and "Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth," forthcoming in English next month. Her feature film "How Is Your Fish Today?" was an official selection for the Sundance Film Festival last year. She wrote this short story in English for Outlook.
Here are the reasons why Weiming and Yuli have to sell their baby on the Internet, a baby who first saw the light of this world five days ago.
Yuli is still at school, in her first year at Chongqing Technical College. For an 18-year-old girl from a rural village, the scandal would be huge. She would certainly be expelled and lose all the time and money she and her parents have invested in getting her where she is, on the way to a better life. She has lied to everyone -- from the dean of her department to her class and dormitory mates. She told them all that she got hepatitis and needed to stay home for a while to recover. That was after she managed to hide her growing belly in a large coat for five months. And now, in a shabby clinic in a suburb of Chongqing, she's given birth to a screaming little thing.
Yuli is a determined girl; she will study, get her diploma and start a career in a big city. She won't raise a child now. Therefore she won't let anyone from her village know that she had a child. She's from a mountain region in Sichuan where the only income anyone has comes from growing chili peppers, and the villagers take family things too seriously. If they learned she'd given birth to a son, they'd come to Chongqing straight away and do everything they could to keep the child. Yuli's mind is clear and certain as the baby sucks at her nipples with its small wet face. She won't keep it.
Yuli's boyfriend, Weiming, has a very simple motive for selling their baby: money. Weiming is from the same village as Yuli. They are childhood sweethearts. As a 19-year-old man, he's had trouble surviving in this city ever since he left his hometown to follow her here. There's no way he can imagine helping Yuli with her college costs, sending money to his family back in the village and bringing up a baby at the same time. Not possible. He's already working nearly 19 hours a day, with two jobs: During the day he cleans cars, private ones and government ones, and at night he's the doorman at a karaoke parlor. He can only sleep from 3 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. He's been exhausted from the day he arrived in this city, his vision is blurry, and his mind is as foggy as the permanent haze hanging over the Yangtze River. But he understands: To help his girlfriend and his poor family in the village, he has to work like a donkey. A donkey can sleep on its feet, and Weiming has to learn to do that too. He has no choice. He doesn't complain.
So the young lovers agree to sell their baby on the Internet. Yuli has studied computer technology at college, she knows how it works. What people normally sell online are machines, things like TV sets, bicycles, cameras or sometimes a banned book. Selling a real baby is not very common. "But what's so different?" Weiming says. "Selling a baby is the same as selling a car, the only difference is the price. If China could sell some of its population to the West, then there would be fewer people here, and we would have more money."
Yuli takes some photos of the baby and chooses the cutest one to put online. After a discussion with her boyfriend, she also puts up a price.
Healthy newborn baby boy for sale -- 8,000 yuan.
Contact: 13601386243.
The number is Weiming's mobile phone, given to him for his night job. They both know that 8,000 yuan (about $1,000) is really much too little money for a healthy baby boy. But most people in the provinces are not rich, and they are in a hurry to get rid of the baby. Asking for a small amount can sort things out much more quickly. Weiming also thinks that his girlfriend can always get pregnant again if this works out.
After posting the ad online, Yuli feeds her son a bit of milk and changes his wet diaper. What she's worried about is that if the baby doesn't go soon, she'll miss her end-of-term exam. Then she will not get her diploma.
The Internet ad proves effective. After just a few hours, Weiming's phone starts to ring continuously, interrupting his work. The first few people want to know whether the whole thing is just a joke, which makes Weiming shout back at them impatiently. He's got no time to joke about life, he needs cash. Sounding like a snappy businessman, he yells back that if they're not interested he'll just hang up, while his grumpy boss curses him behind his back.
But then a woman with a shaky voice explains on the phone that she's from a seaside town near Qingdao, that she is 46 years old, her husband has been very ill, that's why they didn't have a child, and now he just died, and she would like to buy the baby; a boy would be ideal. She sounds nervous.
"Can you pay 8,000 yuan cash in one go?" Weiming asks hastily.
"Yes. But first I need to check whether the baby is really healthy."
Weiming assures the woman that his boy is in perfect shape and that he'll call her back after talking to his girlfriend. Weiming knows that he shouldn't say yes to the first interested person. If you negotiate, the price will always go up.
A few more useless calls later, a couple rings from Wenzhou, a rich industrial town in Zhejiang province. They want the baby as soon as possible: "We can get on the first morning flight to Chongqing and meet you." The couple speak on two handsets at the same time. Weiming learns that they run a shoe factory in Wenzhou, that they're wealthy but cannot have children.
"Well, I have some other interested customers. How do you want to convince me to go with you?" Weiming asks, a clear hint that an auction has begun. The couple are quick businesspeople; they immediately offer double the price to get the boy.
So the deal is done. Weiming will receive 16,000 yuan in cash. But he doesn't want the couple to come to Chongqing where he and Yuli live, to avoid any risk of being found out by neighbors, Yuli's school or his own colleagues. So they agree to meet in a city where no one knows them: Shanghai. The meeting point will be Shanghai's People's Park, the next day at 4 p.m. in front of the park gate.
The young couple grab a bag, wrap their sleeping baby and hurry to the station to get the next train to Shanghai. Both Weiming and Yuli have rarely taken the train before, and they are like over-excited children, eagerly observing every station the train passes, picturing themselves ending up working in Shanghai thanks to those 16,000 yuan. From time to time, Yuli feeds the baby, but the moody little thing doesn't appear to like the trip and keeps screaming. Every passenger hates them. At one point, the conductor even comes to ask whether they need some medical assistance.
After 14 hours, the young couple arrive, pale and exhausted, in the shiny city of Shanghai. Yuli is deeply impressed. People here are more beautiful, fashionable; the houses are much taller and more luxurious than in Chongqing. But Weiming can't enjoy the new city. He's starving and feels even more powerless on Shanghai's busy streets than he was in Chongqing. They go to a wonton restaurant and down two bowls of soup each. Weiming devours half a roasted duck as well. They eat quickly, brutally and silently. The baby sometimes coughs in Yuli's arms, and no one knows why.
Twenty minutes before 4 p.m., Yuli and Weiming are standing before the iron gate of Shanghai People's Park. The baby is crying again, and Yuli has to rock him in her arms, wearily, until he falls asleep.
The Wenzhou shoemaker couple arrive on time. They are both about 35 and look more humble than they sounded on the phone to Weiming. He thinks they look even more sleepless than he does, worn out. But as soon as they see the baby in Yuli's arms, their eyes start to glisten. The woman can't help but scream: "What a beautiful little boy! How sweet he is!" Her husband stretches out his stiff finger, which must be overworked from polishing his factory's shoes, and touches the baby's red cheeks and caresses his soft hair. He seems to be fond of the boy, too. The woman takes the baby from Yuli. She holds him and starts to feel how a mother feels when her son is asleep in her arms.
The little baby wakes up from his nap. His big eyes stare at the strange woman who keeps kissing him and speaking some incomprehensible Wenzhou dialect.
"What about the money then?" Weiming asks cautiously.
The man opens his leather suitcase, takes out a heavy blue plastic bag but doesn't give it to Weiming straight away. Instead he says:
"Let's go into the park. We need to check if the baby is as healthy as you said." The two couples agree and enter the People's Park. It is May, the willows are green, the bamboos lush, flowers blooming. Kids are flying their kites as their grandparents run after them.
The baby boy is now in the Wenzhou couple's arms. In turn, the wife and husband thoroughly check him, studying him like a pair of newly made shoes. They turn him upside down, check his ears, eyes, teeth, nostrils, fingers, legs, toes, as well as his bottom and his front. Oddly enough, the baby doesn't cry this time. He seems to enjoy this sudden attention, and he starts to giggle.
Finally, the Wenzhou woman is satisfied and asks the young couple:
"Do you have a name for him?"
"Not really. Just for the hospital registration, we've called him Wei Yu, that's the combination of our family names," Weiming answers.
"In that case we will give him a great name, the best name a man can bear!" the Wenzhou man says in an inspired voice.
They find a quiet area of the park, beside a lake surrounded by leafy willow trees. There, no one can see what's going on. The water is clear; one can see red carp swimming on the bottom. Lotus grows dense, dragonflies are skating on the surface of the water. The Wenzhou woman volunteers to stand guard and walks away from their little group. The Wenzhou man puts his suitcase on the ground and takes out the blue plastic bag. Grabbing a bundle of money, Weiming starts to count, carefully. From time to time, he also checks whether the notes are fake.
It takes too long, half the money is still uncounted. The Wenzhou man begins to look impatient, and Yuli gets restless too. She lays her baby on the ground, facing the lake, and starts counting a bundle of notes.
After minutes of intense silence filled only with the swishing of the bank notes, they reach the conclusion: exactly 16,000 yuan, no cheating. Weiming starts to gather up the money, when suddenly there's a scream:
"Where is my baby?" Yuli cries, panicked.
The three scan the surroundings, but there is no baby, only a suitcase lying empty on the ground.
The Wenzhou woman is just returning. As she approaches, her face changes color. Everyone follows her gaze toward the water. As their eyes settle on the glassy surface, they see a baby sinking silently toward the bottom of the clear, beautiful lake.
Please paste HTML code and press Enter.
(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation