A Loyal Character Dancer

trouble.”
     
    “Don’t send me back home, Comrade Chief Inspector. They will force me to have an abortion!”
     
    Catherine cut in for the first time. “What? Who will do that to you?”
     
    “The village cadres. They have birth control quotas to meet.”
     
    “Tell us everything,” Catherine said. “We won’t get you into any trouble.”
     
    Chief Inspector Chen looked at the two women, Qiao sobbing, Catherine fuming, himself standing by helplessly like an idiot. “What is the story, Comrade Qiao?”
     
    “We have two daughters. My husband wanted to have a son. Now I’m pregnant again. We were fined heavily for the birth of our second daughter. The village committee said a heavy fine would not be enough this time, I would have to have an abortion. So I ran away.”
     
    “You’re from Guangxi,” Chen said, aware of Catherine’s close attention. “Why have you come all the way here?”
     
    “My husband wanted me to stay here with his cousin, but she had moved away. Fortunately, I met Mrs. Yang, the owner of the restaurant. She hired me.”
     
    “So you work for your room and board?”
     
    “Yang also gives me two hundred Yuan a month, in addition to tips,” Qiao said, putting a hand on her belly. “Soon I will not be able to work out front. I have to earn as much as I can.”
     
    “What’s your plan?” Catherine asked.
     
    “I’ll give birth to my baby here. When my son is two or three months old, I’ll go back.”
     
    “What will your village cadres do to you?”
     
    “After a baby has been born, they cannot really do anything. A heavy fine, probably. We’re not worried about that.” She turned to Chen, pleading in a trembling voice. “So you’re not going to send me back home?”                         
     
    “No. Your problem is with your village cadres, not with me. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for a pregnant woman like you to be so far from home.”                          
    “Do you have a better idea?” Catherine said sarcastically.
     
    A man entered the restaurant, but at the sight of the chief inspector and his American partner, he left immediately without saying a single word.                             
    “You have my card. Take good care of yourself,” Chen said, standing up. “If you need help, let me know.”              
     
    They walked out of the restaurant in silence. The tension between them did not improve as they got into the car. He started the engine with a screeching sound.                
    The air inside the car felt stuffy.
     
    It was a shame, he admitted to himself, that the local cadres had put so much pressure on Qiao, and that Inspector Rohn happened to be a witness. It was not the first time that he had heard stories about pregnant women going into hiding until after their deliveries. It was nonetheless unpleasant to hear it from somebody’s own mouth.
     
    His American partner must have been thinking about China’s violation of human rights. The world in a drop of water. She did not say a single word. His hand accidentally hit the horn.
     
    “Well, the local cadres may have overdone it,” he tried to break the silence, “but our government has no choice. The population control policy is a necessary one.”
     
    “Whatever problem your government may have, a woman must be able to choose to have her baby—and at her own home.”
     
    “You can hardly imagine how serious the problem is here, Inspector Rohn. Take Qiao’s family for example. They already have two daughters, and they will go on having more—until they finally have a son. The continuation of the family name, as you probably know from your Chinese studies, is the most important thing to these people.”
     
    “It’s their choice.”
     
    “But in what context?” he retorted. Last night Li had warned him not to go out of his way for the American. And here he was, being lectured to by an American about China’s human rights problem. “China does not have a lot of arable land. Less than ninety million hectares, to be exact. Do you think poor farmers like the Qiaos can afford to take good care of five or six kids in an impoverished province like Guangxi?”
     
    “You’re using the numbers from the People’s Daily.”
     
    “Those are facts. If you had lived as an ordinary Chinese for more than thirty years, you might view the situation