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money and felt a creeping fear. She called her mother.
    Her stepfather answered, “ Wei .”
    “Is Ma there?” she asked.
    “Jieling!” he said. “Where are you!”
    “I’m in Shenzhen,” she said, instantly impatient with him. “I have a job here.”
    “A job! When are you coming home?”
    He was always nice to her. He meant well. But he drove her nuts. “Let me talk to Ma,” she said.
    “She’s not here,” her stepfather said. “I have her phone at work. But she’s not home, either. She went to Beijing last weekend, and she’s shopping for fabric now.”
    Her mother had a little tailoring business. She went to Beijing every few months and looked at clothes in all the good stores. She didn’t buy in Beijing; she just remembered. Then she came home, bought fabric, and sewed copies. Jieling’s stepfather had been born in Beijing and she thought that was part of the reason her mother had married him. He was more like her mother than her father had been. There was nothing in particular wrong with him. He just set her teeth on edge.
    “I’ll call back later,” Jieling said.
    “Wait, your number is blocked,” her stepfather said. “Give me your number.”
    “I don’t even know it yet,” Jieling said and hung up.

    The New Life company was a huge, modern-looking building with a lot of windows. Inside it was full of reflective surfaces and very clean. Sounds echoed in the lobby. A man in a very smart gray suit met Jieling and the recruiter, and the recruiter’s red suit looked cheaper, her glossy fingernails too red, her buckteeth exceedingly large. The man in the smart gray suit was short and slim and very southern looking. Very city.
    Jieling took some tests on her math and her written characters and got good scores.
    To the recruiter, the human resources man said, “Thank you, we will send you your fee.” To Jieling he said, “We can start you on Monday.”
    “Monday?” Jieling said. “But I need a job now!” He looked grave. “I … I came from Baoding, in Hebei,” Jieling explained. “I’m staying in a hotel, but I don’t have much money.”
    The human resources man nodded. “We can put you up in our guesthouse,” he said. “We can deduct the money from your wages when you start. It’s very nice. It has television and air conditioning, and you can eat in the restaurant.”
    It was very nice. There were two beds. Jieling put her backpack on the one nearest the door. There was carpeting, and the windows were covered in gold drapes with a pattern of cranes flying across them. The television got stations from Hong Kong. Jieling didn’t understand the Cantonese, but there was a button on the remote for subtitles. The movies had lots of violence and more sex than mainland movies did—like the bootleg American movies for sale in the market. She wondered how much this room was. Two hundred yuan? Three hundred yuan?
    Jieling watched movies the whole first day, one right after another.

    On Monday she began orientation. She was given two pale green uniforms, smocks and pants like medical people wore and little caps and two pairs of white shoes. In the uniform she looked a little like a model worker—which is to say that the clothes were not sexy and made her look fat. There were two other girls in their green uniforms. They all watched a DVD about the company.
    New Life did biotechnology. At other plants they made influenza vaccine (on the screen were banks and banks of chicken eggs), but at this plant they were developing breakthrough technologies in tissue culture. It showed many men in suits. Then it showed a big American store and explained how they were forging new exportation ties with the biggest American corporation for selling goods, Wal-Mart. It also showed a little bit of an American movie about Wal-Mart. Subtitles explained how Wal-Mart was working with companies around the world to improve living standards, decrease CO2 emissions, and give people low prices. The voice