which come in fancy styles – you only wear them a few days and the seams come apart, the glue comes unstuck and the leather gets holes. In the eighties, more people were wearing leather shoes but when they bought new shoes, they'd come and get another sole stuck on so they could wear them for longer. Still, I could only charge a few jiao, less than one yuan, each time. In the nineties, it seemed like everyone was wearing leather shoes, but a lot of it was fake leather – there wasn't much real leather – so that was a real money-earner, I was charging by the yuan. Now we're in the next century, and it seems like there's hardly any repair work for real leather shoes – people wearing real leather shoes don't come – it's almost all fake designer labels. A lot of people who bring me their shoes for repair boast how good and how expensive they were. I don't say anything, but I think, like hell these are genuine! Would a genuine label shoe be so disgustingly badly made? Would the leather be such poor quality? But what's the point of saying anything? People pay to have their shoes mended, I mend them, take the money, and we each go back to our own homes. Why go looking for trouble!
XINRAN: You go home at midday?
MRS XIE: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
XINRAN: What do you usually eat at midday?
MRS XIE: I just buy a couple of fried pancakes or dumplings or something. [She laughs.] Nothing fancy.
XINRAN: Can the five of us come and join you for lunch today? Would that be all right? Can we share your meal?
MRS XIE: You can, though I don't have any kind of a home. There's not even anywhere to sit down. Doesn't that put you off?
XINRAN [I could see she didn't believe that we wanted to visit her home]: We really do want to go. I've got an appetite already.
MRS XIE:
XINRAN: Fine, we'll be here to make sure you don't lose anything.
Mrs Xie trotted off, and seeing how anxious she looked, I said guiltily: 'She looks like she was desperate to go.' A drinks seller on a nearby stall overheard and laughed: 'No one here worries about losing things if they leave their stall, because we all look after each other's stalls. There's no need to let anyone know. She'll have gone to buy food, because she can't give you pancakes and steamed bread when you get to her house!'
When I heard this, I rushed after her, and found she was indeed buying a fried chicken. I was too late – the chicken had already been cut into pieces and couldn't be given back. I knew we couldn't persuade her to let us pay, so all I could do was carry the chicken and go with her to buy vegetables.
When we followed her to her home, we were all struck dumb. We were in a small factory which had gone out of business years before. The ramshackle premises were secured by a big gate beside which stood an empty storeroom and toilet. This space, devoid of all furniture and fittings, was their home. The 'bedroom' was in the triangular space under the stairs, partitioned off and just big enough to put a board down. There they slept in winter, spring and autumn. The 'kitchen' was a gas cooker in the space beside the toilet. Water for washing, rinsing and drinking all came from the toilet cistern. It was stiflingly hot when she took us inside and, with some embarrassment, she moved their summer bed – a board sitting on some old wooden packing cases – outside so that she could free up a bit of 'cool' space.
We sat down to eat our meal with her and her husband, who repaired students' bicycles outside a technical middle school. She made us a Hubei-style dish of meat steamed with ground rice, some fried greens and some fried dried bean curd left over from a previous meal. Then there was the fried chicken she had bought, and rice and steamed bread. Afterwards, we worked out that our meal had cost the couple what the two of them earned in a month from shoe and bicycle repairs. That was the first time I had sat on an old tyre to eat a meal. They had no stools or chairs – in fact they had no furniture at all.
After we had eaten, Mrs Xie burst out crying and said: 'In twenty-eight years, no one has come to visit us or eaten a meal with us! City folk look down on us, no one respects us, in fact no one pays us any attention at all! We have nothing. We've used every penny to put our children through university! Every time my daughter comes back on holiday, she squeezes onto the plank with me to sleep, poor thing. In winter, she freezes like us; in summer, she swelters like us. If we give her money to go and stay with her grandparents for the holidays, she won't go. She says, 'My mum and dad live like this day in and day out so that we can go to university, why can't I spend the time with you?' She's very mature. She studies and has a job, and hasn't even got anywhere to go in the holidays, but we just can't do any more for them than we already do!'
Her husband had been standing beside her smiling silently. His eyes, too, reddened and he said: 'As soon as our children were born, we had to leave them with our parents to bring up. We've had such a hard grind, so very, very hard. We couldn't afford to send our children to school in the city. They had to go to school in the countryside, but they both did us proud! Just like their mum, they came top in the county results. I'll never forget when my son got his offer for Xi'an Communications University and came to show it to me at my bicycle repair stand outside the school. His clothes were so tatty the students thought he was a beggar. He didn't have the money to take a train, so he'd spent several days and nights on a long-distance bus to get here. When he saw me, he didn't have the strength to be happy any more, he just said: 'Dad, I'm hungry. I've passed the university exams!' And then he collapsed. I called some students over to help, and when they saw the offer letter for Xi'an Communications University in his hand, they were flabbergasted! This is one of the key universities that they dream of getting into! My… son… is… fantastic!'
He was unable to say more.
As I watched them, I thought – and you could not help but think – that this couple who lived worse than refugees had produced for the Chinese people two highly talented youngsters. You could not help but think that their savings, accumulated jiao by jiao, and yuan by yuan, had saved China's educational system two student grants. And you could not help but think that these two country people, despised by everyone, had brought up a son and a daughter who aroused admiration in everyone who saw them!
We all had tears in our eyes. I knew that my crew were feeling very emotional. This couple exemplified just the kind of Chinese self-respect and pride that we had been looking for.
Before saying goodbye, I asked them my final three questions.
XINRAN: How did you two meet?
MRS XIE: When I couldn't go to university, I refused to get married. Then we were introduced, and he said to me: 'You couldn't go to university, but if you have children, you can send them to university in your place.' Intelligent, wasn't he? Among all the men I knew, none of them understood me the way he did. So I married him, and we both earned the money to send our children to university!
XINRAN: What is your next wish?
MRS XIE: To help my children do advanced studies at the best universities of the world, and to help them see the world and further increase their learning!
This led us to put through a long-distance call to their son, establishing how we could keep in touch. I hoped I could look into the possibilities of helping this mother realise her dreams, and also help this young man who had fought his way up from the lowest level of society to the pinnacle of Chinese academic circles see a bit of this great and colourful world for his mother.
XINRAN: Who's more handsome, your son or your daughter?
