Leaving It All Behind — page 4

The next morning, Mo got on the wrong bus and found herself heading in the opposite direction from Longhua. She had wasted a 3-yuan fare, about 40¢. We crossed the street, paid another fare, and Mo spent the hour-long ride with her head in her hands, feeling carsick. On the back of each seat was an advertisement for the "Special Career Recruitment Pages" of a local newspaper. "Look for work every Monday in the Southern Metropolis News," it read. But I wasn't sure if she noticed. At the Longhua stop, Mo squatted on the sidewalk for nearly half an hour. Behind her was a giant sign for the Star River Talent Market, an employment agency. For a long time she seemed not to see it.

The Star River office had a giant bulletin board cluttered with hand-painted and computer-printed job listings. Most adhered to a standard format: the number of people required, the age limits, in some cases height requirements, whether the job included food and lodging, and the salaries. Mo wrote down the address of a factory looking for "ordinary workers" and we tried to find it. The search for the Meiyu Electric Works ate up the rest of day. First we walked, passing factory upon factory with signs on their doors advertising vacancies. Then we took a bus in the wrong direction. We reached Meiyu four hours later on motorcycle taxis. The guards at the gate told Mo she had to register at a different office. It took us an hour to walk there. By the time we arrived, the job Mo wanted had been filled.

Looking for the bus stop to get back to Shenzhen, Mo got lost again. Eventually, in desperation, she overcame her aversion to asking directions and we boarded our last bus of the day. By then Mo had spent more than $2 on bus fares. She hadn't had lunch. "Longhua isn't what I'd expected," she said as we headed back to the boardinghouse. "I thought it would be smaller and the factories would be easier to find. It's a bad place." Tomorrow, she said, she would stay closer to her base. As we neared Gangxia, she leaned in to my ear. "There was a moment today," she whispered, "when I didn't think I'd find my way back."

That night, I left Mo and went to find an Internet café. When I called the boardinghouse to say I was on my way back, Mo sounded giddy: "Can I tell you something? While you were out, I found a job." The next morning, she bounced in her chair as she related the story. On the bus back from Longhua, she had spotted a restaurant with a "Help Wanted" sign in the window. Later, she retraced the route, found the restaurant and waited an hour for the manager. He offered her a waitressing job on the spot. The salary was only 500 yuan, or $60, a month, but the job came with free room and board. "I was so happy last night," said Mo, "I thought I was going to die."

I walked with her to the restaurant, which was on a bustling, tree-lined street. While Mo went inside to put down a 260-yuan ($30) deposit for her uniform, I noticed the restaurant was open 24 hours a day and also had rooms for rent. I worried it might be serving more than food. But there were grandparents playing with babies right outside, and the neighborhood seemed safe. A cab driver said the restaurant was known for 24-hour dim sum and nothing more exotic.

Mo emerged a few hours later with a shiny tag stamped with her employee number—and an enormous smile. She seemed more like herself than she had since we'd left Yangshuo. She elbowed Mark mischievously when he took her picture, and sang along to pop music emanating from a CD shop. That afternoon, we shopped for necessities. Mo weighed each purchase heavily. She bought a ceramic mug for 3 yuan instead of a 5-yuan plastic mug with a cartoon character. After buying a towel to use as a blanket (22 yuan), she decided she could live without a pillow. A blue plastic bowl to wash her clothes cost 4 yuan—twice as much as it would have been at home, she said. As we walked, she pulled it out of the bag to admire the pictures of a dolphin and an elf stamped inside. "Beautiful," she sighed. Her one extravagance was a fork. It cost more than a pair of chopsticks, but for some reason she wanted it badly. Her bill for the day came to $5—the most money Mo had ever spent.

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