believe it was because of our mothers that we felt that way.
I realised that the middle-aged woman had been listening as she quietly chose two pairs of appropriate insoles from the pile on Mrs Xie's cart. She put down five yuan and was about to leave with her reheeled shoes when the shoe-mender stopped her: 'I told you, the insoles are one yuan each, two yuan the pair, you've given me too much!' 'Take it, buy your daughter a pen,' said the customer. 'No, no, I can't take it,' said Mrs Xie. 'You're helping them just by bringing me your shoes to mend. I can't charge anything else!'
Back and forth went the argument, just as I had so often seen women in Chinese restaurants fighting for the right to pay the bill. The shoemender woman won, and only accepted four yuan. The customer left, and I saw that she really was bandy-legged. I turned to the girl and said: 'It's your turn.' She was embarrassed and told me to go first, she wasn't in any hurry.
MRS XIE: Let the girl sit here a bit longer, and I'll glue your shoes. She comes with a pair of shoes every weekend. She says it gives her something to do.
XINRAN: Is this true?
GIRL: Yup. My mum and dad are divorced and neither wanted me, so I'm with my grandparents. They only have two rooms, and they use my room to play mah-jong every day, so it gets very smoky. When I'm out at school it doesn't bother me, but at weekends there's nowhere to go, so I come here and watch people.
XINRAN: Watch people?
GIRL: That's right, watch people. This lane may be cramped and higgledy-piggledy, but you can see all sorts of people here, even big cadres. There's one big noise whose mum and dad live in that building, and sometimes he comes in with his arms full of packages to see them. He can't drive in, so he stops the car at the entrance, making all the passers-by swear.
XINRAN: But how do you know he's an important cadre?
GIRL: It may seem a mess here, but we have public security patrols every day. They say it's so that 'the regulations are obeyed'. If anyone else's car blocked the entrance, the PSB would put a stop to it. I've heard people say that the numbers on his car number plate are low ones, and the lower the number the higher the cadre's rank.
XINRAN: And what other kinds of people do you see?
GIRL: Just ask her. She can tell who's walking past her without even looking up. We often play 'guessing people' games. She tells me what kind of a person someone might be and why. I point out to her anyone I see from far, far away, and how they walk and hold themselves. Some of them are my neighbours. She gets lots of them right. It's fun!
MRS XIE: It's just a bit of nonsense, like a dog scrabbling away at a hole, as we say. It's just a game I play with the girl to keep her entertained!
XINRAN: OK, tell me. Entertain me. Too bad that just now there's no one coming.
MRS XIE: If you think about it, I've sat here for twenty-eight years mending shoes, and that's twenty-eight years' worth of lessons, learning to watch people. Shoe size depends on the person's height, everyone knows that. OK, that's a generalisation. There are some tall people with small feet, but not many short people with big feet. Big wide shoes usually belong to someone who's done a lifetime of manual labour which has splayed their toes. He may have come up in the world, but you can tell he has lots of poor relatives. If someone has wide shoes, you should look at their trouser legs too. If their trousers hang above their ankles, they're usually old – I reckon it's because their old bellies stick out. If the trouser bottoms drag on the ground, they're either kids or nouveau riche who haven't learned how to wear their trousers properly. When it's a small foot with narrow shoes, the person's family have been city folk for generations, and their toes haven't been splayed through hard work. If they have a good life, then they have a slow gait. If they're poor, then they stride along. If they tread on someone's foot and can step back and give way, then they're educated, good people. Then there are people who don't know how to give way, people who wear designer shoes, fakes too. But human beings are not made by the clothes they wear. If they have no feelings and no talent, they're useless!
The man whose shoe I just mended only knows about what he wears, and doesn't know about people.
XINRAN: Why?
MRS XIE: His shoe was a designer fake, a particularly cheap one. If you've got learning, you can tell by looking that real and fake labels are not the same. He can't, so he falls right into the trap. Besides, does smiling at a woman make you lose face? He's been coming to have his shoes mended for a few years now, and he's never said more than a word or two to me. He wants you to understand that he's a city gent, higher up the social scale than you, and a man. But he hasn't managed to have a son. If a man wants a son, he needs to be strong-willed, he needs to be daring, and show his goodness in his face. A man who's only good at being a bully boy can only produce daughters.
XINRAN: And what can you tell from these feet? What kind of learning does this woman have?
MRS XIE: You want the truth?
XINRAN: Of course I want the truth.
MRS XIE: Then I'll tell you. As soon as I caught sight of your feet, I knew you were a poor person from a posh family.
XINRAN: A poor person from a posh family? I don't understand.
MRS XIE: You don't understand what that is? It means your forebears were posh, but you don't have any money. If you were posh now, you wouldn't have bought yourself those cheap shoes. The soles are very thin and the shape's not good. I guarantee you've got corns!
XINRAN: You're amazing! I do have corns on my feet – they've been killing me the last couple of days!
MRS XIE: I've got cream here specially for treating corns. Do you want to have a try? Don't put your feet in water for two days, and they should be better on the third day.
XINRAN: But it's thirty-nine degrees, so hot, and I sweat buckets every day! I can't put my feet in water?
MRS XIE: Well, you're not home yet… see how they hurt then…
XINRAN: And what can you tell about other women?
MRS XIE: The ones in high heels are most worth looking at. If they jab their heels into the ground as they walk, it's because they don't know how to wear them, or they've put them on for the first time. You don't need to look at them to know that they're sticking out their bums, which is really unattractive! You have to walk slowly in high heels – walking fast looks hideous. The higher the heels they're wearing, the less willing they are to give way to other people – these are shoes that can only go forwards not backwards. The high-heeled slippers that are fashionable nowadays are really funny. The foot often slips out of them, and then the slipper is just looped over the foot, which makes it completely useless. Everyone knows that women have small, delicate feet, but with these high heels now, the toes are very pointed, not for putting your foot in. It makes the whole shoe big, and a small woman striding along with a pair of big feet looks ridiculous! And something else: not a lot of women look after their feet. Sometimes you smell her perfume, what a lovely smell! But she walks past you and her feet are really ugly with yellow calluses at the back of the heels and the feet all wrinkly. If I look up, the face is bound to be plastered in thick make-up. Quite repulsive. I can't bear to see that. Then…
A man who was cycling past paused with one foot on the ground. 'Hey, are you here this afternoon?' he asked. 'I'm always here, in all weathers, apart from when I'm eating and sleeping. If my stall's here and I'm not, it's because I'm in the toilet.' 'I'll come back this afternoon then,' said the man, and he cycled off.
XINRAN: So, in your twenty-eight years here, what changes have you seen in the shoes you've repaired?
MRS XIE: Twenty-eight years ago, the money came in a few jiao at a time, everyone was poor then. In the early days, I was mending rubber and plastic shoes for a few jiao a time, and putting plastic soles on cloth shoes. There were some leather shoes that people had for a lifetime. Leather shoes then were sturdy, not like shoes now
