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daring than the others. She wears silver lipstick and a white silk qipao with a red rose embroidered on the breast that, at first glance, makes her look as if she's been struck by bullets but has survived. High breasts, like doves. She looks like a siren. She walks up to the man, jumps into the air, her stiletto heels leaving the muddy ground, and grabs hold of his large ear. ‘Xiao Lan, you're an ungrateful dog!’ she curses in a sweetly husky voice. The man called Xiao Lan responds with an exaggerated scream: ‘Ouch, Mamma, I might be ungrateful to others but not to you! ‘How dare you argue with me !’ she says, squeezing harder. The man cocks his head and pleads: ‘Mamma, dear Mamma, not so hard. I'll be good from now on. Why don't I make it up by taking you out for a late-night snack?’ The woman lets go: ‘I know your every move like the back of my hand,’ she says spitefully, ‘and if you think you can get frisky with me, I'll get someone to cut off your balls, you dog bastard!’ Cupping his crotch with his hands, the man shouts: ‘Spare me, Mamma, I need these little treasures to carry on my line! ‘You can carry on your old lady's thighs’ she curses. ‘But I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself for the sake of my sisters out there. Where will you take us?’ ‘How about Heaven on Earth?’ he asks. ‘No. They've hired a new bouncer, a foreign devil with terrible BO. Just a whiff's enough to make me ill,’ says a woman with big eyes, a pointy chin and a shrill voice. She's in a purple qipao with tiny flowers and has tied her hair with a purple silk band. Lightly made-up, she has a refined, cultured look, a sort of cornflower elegance. ‘Then let Miss Wang decide,’ says a woman so fat she's nearly bursting through the seams of her yellow silk qipao. ‘She's shared meals with Xiao Lan in every eatery in town, so she must know where to go! Miss Wang manages to keep smiling, though there is the trace of a sneer. ‘You can't beat the shark's fin soup at Imperial Garden. What do you think, Mrs Shen?’ she says, seeking the opinion of the woman who'd pinched Xiao Lan's ear a moment earlier. ‘If Miss Wang likes Imperial Garden, that's good enough for me,’ replies Mrs Shen with aristocratic nonchalance. ‘Then let's go!’ cries the man says with a wave of his arm as he sets off in the company of the women, his arms circling the nicely rounded buttocks of the two closest to him. They're gone before I know it but their fragrances remain, saturating the air in the compound and merging with the smell of the man's urine to produce a strange, irritating, ammonia-tainted odour. The sound of a car engine and they're off. As tranquillity returns to the temple and its compound, I cast a glance at the Wise Monk and know what's expected of me: to continue my story. ‘Since there's a beginning, there has to be an ending.’ So I say —

    There were only a few people waiting for trains, which made the waiting room seem bigger than it was. Father and his daughter were curled up on a slatted wooden bench near the central heater. Another dozen passengers sat here and there. Warm sunlight filtering in through the dirty windows lent a silvery sheen to Father's hair. He was smoking a cigarette; white wisps of smoke rose from both sides of his face and seemed to hang in the air round his head, as if they hadn't emerged from his mouth or nose but had oozed from his brain. His cigarette smelt terrible, like burnt rags or rotting leather. By then he'd fallen on such hard times that he was reduced to scrounging cigarette butts off the street, no better than a beggar. Worse, in fact. I knew of beggars who lived extravagant lives, who ate good food and drank good wine, who passed their days in the lap of luxury, smoking high-class cigarettes and drinking imported whisky. During the day they dressed in rags and walked the streets and used a number of tricks to get alms. At night they changed into Western suits and leather shoes and headed off to karaoke parlours to sing their hearts out, and then set off to find a girl. Yuan Seven in our village was one of those high-flying beggars. Traces of him could be found in every big city in the country. A man of the world, he'd seen it all and done it all; he could imitate a dozen or more domestic dialects, even a few phrases in Russian. The minute he opened his mouth you knew he was someone special, and even Lao Lan, the supreme authority in our village, treated him