Red Mandarin Dress

the fried oyster. “The maxim that ‘beauty is not edible’ was a favorite one for her parents. On the wall above her cradle was a poster of Chairman Mao’s ‘iron girl,’ tall and robust, muscles hard like iron. Indeed, when people have a hard time feeding themselves, beauty is like a picture of cake. In her elementary school, she drew a magnificent restaurant as her dream home, which she didn’t step in until she was fifteen.
    “Her beauty blossomed in the mid-eighties. While her parents’ maxim might no longer be universally true, it still applied to her. In an age of connections, it took much more than looks to become a model or a star. She had no connections. For a girl from an ordinary worker family, a state-run factory job was considered an ideal ‘iron bowl.’ So upon high school graduation, she started working in a textile mill, a job made available through her mother’s early retirement.
    “There, her beauty meant nothing. She worked three shifts, dragged her tired feet around the shuttles, back and forth, like a fly circling the same spot. Back home, she kicked off her shoes and clasped her callused soles. Outside the window, the willow shoots barren in the autumn wind, she knew one thing for a fact: a textile worker grows old quickly. Soon, the spring splendor fades / from the flower. There’s no stopping / the chill rain, or the shrill wind.
    “But that was also the period when things started changing. Deng Xiaoping was launching China’s reform. She started to have dreams unimaginable to her parents. Looking through fashion magazines, she couldn’t help feeling left out. In the descriptions of the neighborhood matchmakers, she made the clothes beautiful, rather than the other way round.
    “So she came to a decision. She would make the most of her youth. An elaborate plan evolved out of Shanghai dating conventions. Young people would customarily dine out on their first one or two dates. The expense varied in proportion to his wallet or to her glamour. As in a proverb, a beauty’s smile is worth a thousand pieces of gold, especially at the early stages of a possible romantic relationship. The man would be generous with his money like a Sichuan chef with his black pepper. Once the relationship grew more stable, a Shanghai girl would urge her lover to save for their joint future. Occasionally, they might still go out to a good yet inexpensive place, like Nanxiang Soup Bun in the Old City God’s Temple Market, where they would spend two hours contentedly standing in a long line, waiting for their turn to savor the celebrated buns. It was only for a short period, she concluded, that a working-class girl like her might enjoy herself.
    “Her mother was worried about her showing no sign of settling down. ‘I’m not ready yet,’ she said to her mother, ‘for a life with my family squeezing in a room of nine square meters, the baby crying, the wok smoking, the diaper dripping, and the walls peeling like irrecoverable dreams. No, I’m not looking forward to it. I will marry, eventually, like anybody else, but let me first enjoy life a bit.’
    “And she enjoyed herself by trying those dates out in restaurants, insisting on expensive food and wine in the company of each man. The bill cut like a sharp knife, but if he winced, it was his problem. She kept her relationship with each man short and sweet. Well, short, though not that sweet when he could no longer afford her company. She had oyster sauce beef in Xingya Restaurant, roast Beijing duck in Yanyun Pavilion, baked crab meat with cheese in Red House, sugar silk apple in Kaifu Hotel, sea cucumber with shrimp ovary in Shanghai Old House, and so on and on.
    “Her fifth date, allegedly with a wealthy uncle in Hong Kong, proved capable of taking her to one restaurant after another. At the end of two months, however, he, too, failed to show up in front of the Cathay Hotel. She was a little disappointed, but the next week, she met her sixth date in Spicy and Hot Pot, enjoying slices of lamb, beef, eel, shrimp, and all other delicacies imaginable, in a boiling pot of chicken broth between them. ‘The spring bamboo shoot looks so shapely,’ she said, picking one with her chopsticks. ‘So do your fingers,’ he said fatuously, holding her other hand. She did not withdraw it. After all, he spent so much for the meals. The following month, she met her seventh date in Yangzhou Pavilion, billing and cooing over a turtle steamed with ice sugar