Moona Wu
On the day of the winter solstice, snow began to fall in New York City. The wind began to howl like a dying wolf. However, inside of an apartment, it was as warm as spring. The early-blooming daffodils were exquisite and their sweet fragrance filled the room.
Wang Yong came to the kitchen to boil water. He said to his wife, Fei Ge, “It’s the winter solstice today. Look outside and see how big the snow is. Let’s eat dumplings at home. Why don’t you call Sister Sun, and let’s them know you have a sore throat today.”
The winter solstice is a traditional Chinese festival and it is called “Winter Festival” in China. On Winter Festival, the family will gather together to eat dumplings.
Fei Ge said :” Sister Sun is an Association for the Protection and Defense of Women’s Rights. Right now they are protecting a group of Chinese women. I have promised them no matter what happens, I will go.”
Fei Ge and Wang Yong had been New York city for eight years. They had worked so hard for their bright future. When the couple first landed in the United States, he worked as a chef in a Chinese restaurant. She worked at a nail salon run by Vietnamese. As time went by, they grew their savings and he started to cooperate with a Chinese New Yorker in real estate, and also engaged in antiques trading. His business was quite successful.
Wang Yong loved garage sales and yard sales. To him, it was a treasure hunting journey. Once, he met an American seller who had no idea about the ancient Chinese copper coins and bronzes. He sold everything to Wang Yong for 10 dollars. However, this kind of luck only came once, and the probability of it happening again is very small. Later, he went to an estate sale, which is known as the Heritage Auction. An Americans passed away, the family cleared up his estate and the things they didn’t want were auctioned out.
Wang Yong’s eyes sparkled. There were so many treasures at this estate sale! The butterfly-shaped jade from the Han Dynasty, the famous paintings of the Tang Dynasty, and the blue-and-white porcelain of the Qing Dynasty…… he almost jumped for joy upon seeing them.
Most of the time, Americans did not appreciate these Chinese antiques. They preferred bright modern art. However, they were happy to see that more and more Chinese bidders raised their prices at the auction. Afterward, the Americans really appreciated their own ancestors – the hobby of collecting Chinese antiques actually made the next generations richer.
When Wang Yong and Fei Ge got more savings, they decided to purchase an apartment in Queens. The apartment building was very old and the room was small. The couple made an effort to create a bright and warm home. After establishing a stable life, Fei Ge felt secure and safe. She asked the nail salon manager to transfer her from full-time to part-time, so that she would have time to take a yoga class. Fei Ge loved to dance when she was little and she had a flexible body. After obtained a certificate in Yoga, she started to teach yoga at the local library as a volunteer. Although she received no money from teaching, she gained respect and love from people. This made her very happy, and made life feel more meaningful.
After Yoga class one day, a librarian asked her: “I wonder if you have some time? Sister Sun needs you since you can speak Chinese. Sister Sun is an Association for the Protection and Defense of Women’s Rights.” Fei Ge asked:”What can I do for Sister Sun?” The librarian said: “The Women’s correctional center in Queens is holding a group of special women who were prostitutes from mainland China. Sister Sun is trying to help them.”
Nobody knew who wrote the complaint letter to New York Police Department, detailing the prostitution and chaos in Chinatown. Needless to say, New York officers were more concerned about terrorist attacks and drug trafficking, and did not pay special attention to prostitution and gambling. However, complaint letters kept coming, so the New York Police had to take action.
It was a bleak night in New York. Police arrested all the suspected Chinese prostitutes in Chinatown. The police’s approach was quite inhuman. All the photos of the customers and prostitutes were posted on the Web. In Chinese tradition, face is greater than life. Moreover, Chinese women are very sensitive to reputation and social standing.
How could they survive having their images posted on the web? Ugly news would soon be passed to their hometowns and their relatives. Some of Chinese women were in a state of mental breakdown. Sister Sun made a big effort to help them. In addition to providing psychologists, they also had a yoga teacher to teach them classes, soothe their minds, and relieve their stress and fear. It was clear that Fei Ge would become a volunteer yoga teacher of Sister Sun.
Through the iron barred windows in the prison, Fei Ge saw fluffy snowflakes fell down from the bleak sky. The barbed wire in the distance divided the sky into pieces. There were more than 20 women standing indoors, ranging in age from 20 to 50. Their eyes were full of anxiety and distrust. When the peaceful and relaxing music rang out, sadness and despair gradually slipped away. They followed Fei Ge’s instruction to open their arms, mind and heart, reaching a place of deep inner peace.
Immersed in the music and the yoga, Fei Ge’s memories came flooding back. The memory of the past was like a painting, which overlapped many people’s faces. As a Yoga teacher, she seems to be more respectful than her students – who were prostitutes. Was she formed without any stain? Not at all! To Fei Ge, She had the same shame of darkness as they had.
Now she is in the United States, and no one knows her history in China. Many years ago in China, Fei Ge was a “beer maid” who promoted beer at a nightclub. However, the commission was too small, and the income was far less than the “night lady” who provide entertainment to male guests. This entertainment usually included chatting and drinking, but most of the time it was just about sexual services.
Very soon, Fei Ge became a night lady in the club. She was not willing to fall and lose her dignity. Her family burdens were too heavy. Her father’s factory was bankrupt, and her mother was seriously ill. Her brother was idle – he enjoyed eating, drinking, and gambling. Her sister in law didn’t want to live with her brother and had a boyfriend outside. The brother got in a fist-fight with her boyfriend and was severely injured and was taken to the hospital. To Fei Ge, life was very cold and very simple – her family needed money badly!
Wang Yong was Fei Ge’s colleague. He worked as a “night boy” at the same night club as her. The Chinese slang for a female sex worker is “night lady” or “chicken.” The Chinese slang for a male sex worker is “night boy” or “duck.” In other words, a duck’s job is to provide sexual services to wealthy women.
Wang Yong and Fei Ge were not lovers at first. As the night lady and night boy (gigolo) of the same night club, they understood each other . They sympathized with each other. They knew what they had done was dark and disrespectful. However, they were in the same unpleasant boat. When the big winds came, they had to take care of each other.
Wang Yong said to Fei Ge, “I am from a very poor family. The goal of my work is very clear, and that is to earn money. Hopefully, one day, I can start my own business.”
“What kind of business do you want to start?” Fei Ge asked him.”
“I love to collect copper coins and collect coins from all over the world – I want to be a collector,” he replied. “How about you?“
“My family is deeply in debt, so I have to help them. After paying off the debt, I want to take a yoga class. One day, I hope to be able to run my own yoga studio,” Fei Ge told him.
As a night lady, Fei Ge had her bottom line: she was there to work. So she seldom went out socially with club guests. For her, a man is a dangerous kind of animal. To Wang Yong, though, the situation was different. He was a powerful man who was not afraid of anything. He got used to hanging out with rich “cougars” anywhere they went.
Most of the time, this worked fine for him. But one night, he got into big trouble. In the VIP private room of the night club he was among a group of drunken rich women. These cougars ordered him take off all clothes except his underwear. Then, the cougars started to laugh at him because they thought he had such a bad taste in underwear. They told him to pole dance and do different poses based on their whims.
In the corridor, Fei Ge heard the cougars laughing in the room. While the waiter was delivering fruit trays for the customers, she saw from the door that the cougars had ordered several cases of beer and poured bottles on Wang Yong. They taunted him, “You are such a delicious beer duck. We want to eat you! ” His face was grey and his fake smile was miserable.
Fei Ge decided to save him. She steped into the room tactfully and said, “Hello, sisters, I just saw a big man outside who looked like a detective. He seems to be looking for you. He was wearing black clothes and dark glasses. He came to the door and suddenly turned around and left. The leader of the cougars clenched her teeth and cried, ”What a dick weed who dares to follow me! I am going to drag him to the pig pen.“ Although her voice was strong, stress and worry showed on her face. The rest of the cougars looked scared and kept silent. Very soon, they all flew away like a frightened flock of birds.
Wang Yong appreciated her for her bravery and decisiveness. Since then, they had become close to each other and had been concerned about each other. This was a most beautiful feeling to them both. One day, on the way to his work, he passed a fashion shop and saw a long dress of snow-white elegance. He started to imagine how beautiful that dress would look on her. He immediately bought it without hesitation.
Fei Ge happily accepted the dress. She put it on and twirled like a dancer. She did not change back, but went directly to work. Wang’s heart, though, was full of bitterness and sourness. He hated knowing that the dirty hands of strange men would soil her beautiful white dress. He wondered, though, whether he was he entitled to tell her this. Did he have the ability to take her and run away from the night club?
Though she didn’t usually go out with guests, Fei Ge was persuaded one night by a girl friend, who said, “ I have known this gentleman for years, and he’s really good. Let’s the two of us go out with him.” Reluctantly, Fei Ge agreed. Then, she and her friend followed a group of people into a waiting car.
The car arrived at a high-rise apartment building. As soon as she entered the door, she felt trapped. They wanted Fei Ge to accompany an ugly middle-aged man with squinty eyes and yellow teeth, with an obscene smile on his face. She resolutely refused to go with him. The ugly man said, ” I know you are a chicken, you are a night lady, so don’t pretend to be some kind of virgin. He laughed and pulled Fei Ge into a small room. She raised her hand and slapped him. He was so angry that he tore her her white dress in the struggle.
She gave him a vigorous kick that caused his face to contort. He responded by shouting for his drunken cronies to come and help him. When she saw the crowd coming at her, she jumped onto the windowsill. People laughed at her and said, “If you can jump down from there, then the chicken will become a white swan.” She did not want to be humiliated by this mob, so she jumped out of the window, twelve stories from the ground. The crowd burst out shouting and groaning in shock.
It was a windy night, her white dress billowing like a parachute as she plummeted downward, landing feet-first in a small, swan-inhabited lake that adorned the rear of this high-class,high-rise apartment building. Miraculously, she splashed and sputtered to the surface with only the smallest injuries. She later told reporters that her mind was blank. She felt she was floating lightly through the clouds.
After the interview, the reporter sighed, “God must have saved her, because this martyr’s courage must have touched God’s heart, even though the woman was a prostitute. From this we can see the complexity of human nature: good and evil, ugly and beautiful, these are always intertwined. The world is not simply black and white.”
When Wang Yong finally saw Fei Ge, he told her, “If you had died that night, I would have fought with those gangsters and killed them all.” Fei Ge experienced the moment between life and death, which changed her mind dramatically. She wanted to live for herself. She said to him, “I have a friend who can help me go to the United States. I always dream I could go to a land of the free to start over.” He hugged her tightly and said, “You can’t leave me. I want to be with you.”
The two decided to set off together. The road to America that they took was a smuggling road. The route was to Vietnam first , then from Vietnam to Thailand. The agent arranged them to meet an elderly couple in Thailand so four of them pretended to be a family. The family learned Japanese for half a year in a small town in Thailand. Afterward, they flew from Japan to the United States with a tourist visa. Moreover, the day they entered the United States agent had internal connection with US custom. On the whole, the fake family entered the United States smoothly.
For Fei Ge and Wang Yong, Early days in the United States were difficult, but were full of hope. Ten years have passed in a twinkling of an eye. They love their life and their new homeland in America.
Back to the Women’s correctional center, the music of yoga slowly faded out. Fei Ge gently raised her head. Outside the iron window, the sky was dark and the snow was still falling. She saw these girls faces, so quiet and serene, and there was no initial anger or sadness. A pretty young girl said to Fei Ge, “the night in New York is so long!” Fei Ge replied, “Night will be shorter every day, because today is the winter solstice. Spring is not far away, and the sun will be warmer and warmer. You’ll see.”