Peach Blossom Pavilion. Mingmei Yip

precious gate. After that, the man will spill out a slimy liquid (it sounded to me like a form of concentrated pee mixed with milk, but Pearl insisted that they were completely different) into the woman’s body so that she’ll make a baby – but that only worked for women outside the turquoise pavilion; flower girls here were not allowed to have babies. That was why Mama made me drink that tonic – or toxic as Pearl called it – soup.

      But Spring Moon already knew everything. I asked, ‘How did you find out about all this?’

      Her expression turned sad. ‘From my fiancé. Yuguan is a very handsome man and a very good lover. He would do anything to please me. Anything at all.’

      ‘You mean like sucking your tongue, savouring your saliva, biting your ear, and letting his tall peak play around your jade gate?’ I got out in one breath.

      I couldn’t believe that she actually nodded.

      ‘Aii-ya, Spring Moon, don’t you find these sickening?’

      She blushed, yet her voice turned vehement. ‘No, of course not! They are the most pleasurable things in the world!’

      Judging from her vehemence, there might be some truth to what she’d said, but somehow I had to deny it. ‘No, it’s sickening,’ I spat, ‘and perverse!’

      ‘Then your parents did sickening and perverse things, too.’

      My ears on fire, I felt obliged to defend my parents’ honour. ‘No, they did not!’

      ‘If they didn’t, then what do you think you came from? Unless you didn’t crawl out of your mother, but burst from a stone, or were picked up from a rubbish bin.’

      This was exactly what Little Red had said.

      As I was struggling to think of a clever reply, images of my parents flashed through my mind. On the Wu Mountain, my quiet, demure mother and my scholarly, elegant father were passionately sucking each other’s tongue, tasting each other’s saliva, and then … that stalk of my father’s was nearing that crevice of my mother’s.

      While my whole body felt hot, another image forced itself into my mind – I, a baby, without a single thread on my semened and secretioned bloody body, crawling out from that valley of my mother – like a crab scurrying out from a crevice. Instantly my parents picked me up and huge grins broke out on their faces. I had never seen them look happier.

      Spring Moon’s voice woke me from my reverie. ‘Xiang Xiang, what are you thinking about?’

      Now I felt like a punctured frog. ‘Maybe you’re right after all.’ A silence, then I asked, ‘Where’s your fiancé now?’

      ‘I heard that he is engaged to someone else. He comes from a respectable scholarly family, but they’re very poor. So I don’t think he has the money to pay my debt to leave Peach Blossom. And even if he did, how could he disgrace his family by bringing a flower girl into its household?’

      Seeing that she was on the edge of crying, I hastily said, ‘It’s too hot here, so let’s go out!’

      Spring Moon remained silent while twisting her handkerchief. Then she changed the subject. ‘Xiang Xiang, has Mama told you who is going to chop open your melon?’

      ‘I think it’s the old and all-wrinkled Big Master Fung.’ I made a face. ‘What about you?’

      ‘There’s some rich businessman … anyway, I’ll find out next week. Mama said he wanted me the moment he saw my feet.’

      I looked down – Spring Moon did have the tiniest feet of all the sisters in the pavilion. Pearl had told me some customers liked to kiss, even suck their women’s feet. And the smaller the feet, the more desirable, since these perverse chou nanren could stuff the whole ‘three inches golden lily’ into their mouth to savour its taste.

      ‘Aii-ya!’ I spat.

      ‘Something wrong, Xiang Xiang?’

      ‘Oh no.’ I quickly changed the subject. ‘But I thought you’re not a … virgin anymore.’

      ‘But I am.’

      ‘Then what about all those things you did with your fiancé?’

      Spring Moon blushed. ‘His jade stalk never entered my jade gate. He mostly used his other stalk.’

      I nodded knowingly, although I had no idea what ‘his other stalk’ was. Since I felt too intimidated to further inquire, I asked instead, ‘Spring Moon, why don’t we go out now?’

      ‘But we can’t leave this place without Mama’s permission.’

      ‘We can go to that old temple in the garden. Since no one goes there, no one will see us there.’

      ‘Because it’s haunted! One time they stripped a sister naked, then hung her upside down and whipped her thirty times till her bottom rotted. Then they cut her down and left her in the garden. The next day Mama found her body, in a red dress, dangling over the altar in the temple.’

      ‘But you told me she’d been stripped naked.’

      ‘Mama didn’t whip her to death. The sister was so humiliated that she committed suicide.’ Now Spring Moon lowered her voice as if there were an invisible third party in the room. ‘People said she deliberately wore a crimson outfit on her way to the Yellow Springs to see the King of Hell so she’d return as a bloodthirsty ghost!’

      My heart began to pound. Spring Moon went on, ‘Another time when a sister was pregnant by her secret lover, she went and jumped into the garden’s well. I heard Mama felt very sorry when she died.’

      ‘Was Mama specially fond of her?’

      ‘No. But because right after she died, a customer came and asked for a pregnant sister.’ Spring Moon lowered her voice. ‘Over the years at least three sisters have ended their lives there.’

      ‘But Sister Pearl told me that since Mama can’t bear to lose her investments, she won’t let the sisters die.’

      ‘Exactly. That’s why they killed themselves – to spite her.’

      A long, ghostly silence fell in the room. Finally I spoke. ‘I don’t think there are any ghosts anyway.’

      ‘Xiang Xiang, you must be really out of your mind!’

      ‘Spring Moon, don’t be a coward. Let’s go!’

      ‘Then what if there really are ghosts?’

      ‘Then I’ll protect you. I know kung fu.’ I shot up from the bed and did a high kick.

      The moon was luminous and the stars burned glittering holes in the sky. Spring Moon and I held hands as we inched cautiously along the meandering path through the bamboo groves. The night noises of the pavilion – chatting, singing, laughing, pipa playing – receded as we walked deeper and deeper into the heavy-foliaged alley leading to the haunted garden. After fifteen minutes, all we could hear were cries of insects, the rustling of leaves, and faint, mysterious sounds. The moon was half-veiled by bands of clouds – like wisps of long hair streaking the face of a woman ghost. The air was hot like Mama’s tonic soup; I felt Spring Moon’s palm sweating in mine.

      ‘Xiang Xiang,’ her voice came out as a whisper, ‘I’m scared; why don’t we go back?’

      ‘Too late now.’

      ‘Xiang Xiang! I thought you knew your way!’

      ‘No, I’ve never been here. I only heard about it from Pearl and the other sisters.’

      ‘Xiang Xiang, take me back, right now!’

      ‘But Spring Moon,’ I lied, ‘you can’t turn back midway.’

      ‘Why not?’

      I racked my brain for a good reason. ‘Because … because I was told those who’d turned back