She works off a muddy street in the far northeastern outskirts of Beijing in the scrappy, dirty slums that aren’t on any tourist maps. Along the road are one-story linoleum-floored buildings where people live in rooms that are bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens all rolled into one. In front of many of them are bicycle tire fixing shops or tables where the inhabitants sell liquor and cigarettes. The street is more of a track where dirty rainwater and human and other waste collects in the troughs between the buildings, wide enough for one car. Since there are no sidewalks jumping from front step to front step is advisable. Down a ways there’s a putrid public restroom surrounded by a murky pond of effluvia and urban detritus, and between the cigarette stands and tire shops are storefronts with faded red awnings. At these shops the doors are open and two or three women in their 30s can be seen listlessly staring out the window, talking on their cell phones, or watching TV. Even though the environs are distinctly third world, everyone has a television set. A few doors down under another faded red awning a woman is sitting on a couch, eating noodles with a young girl who at a word promptly gets up and skips down the street. The room is about 12 feet wide by 18 long, with a plastic green curtain separating the front three-quarters from what is in the back.

On the wall there is a calendar adorned with pictures of kittens and a poster showing an old man with a Fu Manchu beard. There are plastic food containers, some green, blue, and pink plastic tubs, a sink, and a tired old chair next to a tattered red felt-covered desk that looks like it’s about to fall apart. Hair products are lined up in front of a mirror, three hangers dangle on a string, one cooking pot is on the floor, a little can with a toothbrush in it is under the table, and a head of lettuce sits on the desk. Surprisingly, there is no TV in this particular room. A fake leather purse hangs from a nail near the mirror and the pale green paint is flaking off the walls and ceiling.

The room’s floor is weathered, though a straw broom and grey mop against the wall are evidence the yellowed linoleum has been swept and mopped many times. Now alone, the woman sits on a dingy foldout bed that doubles as a sofa beneath a photograph of her in the mountains north of Beijing. There is a smile on her round face and a gleam of happiness in her eyes, and she appears to be on the verge of laughing. For all intents and purposes just another typical Chinese tourist on a typical day trip, getting her picture taken with the mountains as a scenic backdrop. The photo was taken by one of her customers, a computer technician who later became a friend. The woman on the couch is about 35 years old, with a kindly, pretty but not beautiful face, and she wears an athletic sweat suit with “Cidhlia” written in white lettering across the front. Her jet-black hair is tied in a ponytail and she possesses a slightly mischievous, coquettish manner. The room is a supposed hair salon, though no haircuts have been given here in quite some time because this is the woman’s place of business where customers who might turn into friends come to pay for her favors. She is a prostitute, and behind the green curtain there is a single bed, or more accurately a cot, and a knee-high stool next to it. The stool is where she sits to perform oral sex on men lying on the cot. The service costs 50 yuan, about seven dollars, and she says she always uses a condom.

The woman is from the southeastern province of Zhejiang and came to Beijing about a year ago. Back home she mended clothes, but there wasn’t any money in that. She worked as a clerk in a grocery store for a while but could still barely make enough to survive, and then a friend suggested washing hair and that segued into turning tricks. She gets one or two customers a day and her usual busy time is from seven to nine in the evening. As she talks she stretches, luxuriates, puts her feet on a customer’s legs, and stretches some more. “Some are good, some are bad,” she says about her clients, very matter of fact. If they come in stinking of liquor she send sends them away, and 30 percent of her earnings go to her pimp who comes by once a day to collect. She lives in the room with her nine-year-old niece who is in Beijing for her summer vacation—the girl who was sent outside. She is curious to know if “they have people like her” in America and seems mystified and slightly suspicious that anyone would be interested in what she does. But then she shrugs off her doubts and says, “It’s OK to talk about life.”

Part of her motivation for getting into this line of work is that she needs to make money to help a sick relative back in Zhejiang who has some sort of kidney problem that requires a 30,000-yuan operation. She says the word “kidney” but can’t write it down because she is illiterate. When asked she won’t reveal her name because “They’ll catch her.” The Police, that is, who haven’t demanded any bribes lately. Once someone robbed her with a knife and took her phone. The whole time she holds the phone in her hand as if it was some kind of talisman and while she’s talking the little stuffed teddy bear attached to it by a small chain bounces and jumps. She mentions that she misses her six-year-old daughter who lives with the woman’s husband in their home province, and that he doesn’t know what she does for money but that she still loves him. Does she like some of the customers? “Some.” What’s her big dream? “To sell clothes,” she says with a shy smile. She doesn’t like doing this and isn’t happy, but there is no other choice. She says she’s only going to do it for a few more months, and then she wants to go to Hong Kong or Taiwan to sell clothes.

JOCKO WEYLAND

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