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inflatable plastic swan. A calendar issued by the local family planning office was pinned to the wall above.
    ‘Wang Long’s mother works in a foreigners’ hotel,’ Lulu said. ‘She told me that foreigners are really wasteful. They throw away the tea bags after just one cup. And the tea isn’t good enough for them – they have to add milk before they can drink it.’ Then Lulu said that the police were knocking on people’s doors and confiscating any hand-copied novels they found, so she didn’t want to keep the book. She said that she was sure it was pornographic.
    ‘Lots of our classmates have read hand-copied books,’ I said. ‘This one is quite short. There’s another one called Tidal Wave , but it’s over two hundred pages long. I haven’t got round to copying it yet.’
    ‘Don’t you know what could happen to you? During that last mass public trial, a young man was executed for copying banned books.’
    ‘But he printed hundreds of copies on a mimeograph machine, and so was accused of poisoning society. I’ve only made one handwritten copy to give to you as a present. You’re the only person who will see it.’
    ‘Those aren’t family photographs,’ she said, looking down at the table. ‘I cut them out from a magazine.’
    ‘If you don’t want to read it, I’ll take it back home with me.’ I leaned back against the table, let out a long sigh and stared at the thousands of dust particles floating across a beam of sunlight.
    ‘If you want me to read it, I’ll read it. But don’t tell any of our classmates. Where’s the dirtiest passage?’
    ‘On page seven.’ After I’d copied that page out on the first night, I’d had to hide under my bedcovers and masturbate.
    ‘I won’t need that one then.’ She tore out the page with her delicate fingers, folded it up and handed it back to me. ‘Read me a bit, will you? If you get to a dirty passage, just skip it.’
    I opened the book and read: ‘“. . . Most eighteen-year-old girls are as pretty as flowers. At eighteen, I was enchanting. It’s no exaggeration to say that my figure was at least as beautiful as any film star you could name. I had large, glistening eyes, shiny black hair, cheeks as smooth as eggshell and eyebrows curved like fine willow leaves. My pert, ample breasts juddered gently as I walked . . . It was soon after my eighteenth birthday that I fell in love with my cousin. He was twenty-two, and had returned to Fuzhou for the holidays. He was tall and suave, with a dark moustache which gave him a mature and masculine air . . . To be honest, what really attracted me to him was the magnificent cock that bulged from between his thighs. When I think about it now, my vagina becomes so hot and itchy that it feels as though some liquid is about to spurt from it –”’
    ‘Stop!’ she cried, turning her red face to the wall. ‘That’s disgusting!’ Reading the passage aloud had made my heart thud with excitement.
    I stopped reading and glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. Once I’d assured myself that she wasn’t really angry, I pulled out my mother’s hair tongs from the pocket of my padded coat. A smell of scorched hair instantly filled the room.
    ‘Look, I’ve brought them,’ I said, changing the subject.
    ‘So that’s what they look like!’ She took them and weighed them in her hand. ‘They’re not that much lighter than my mother’s charcoal tongs.’
    These tongs were made of pig iron. If you heated them in a fire, took them out just before they turned red then wrapped them around a lock of hair, they’d produce a curl that would last four or five days.
    ‘The Chinese actresses who play foreign women all use these to curl their hair. Look, this is how you do it.’ I took a section of her hair and curled it around the tongs.
    ‘Get them away from me!’ she laughed. ‘They’re frightening!’ I’d told her I’d pop round and give her the tongs when I’d bumped into her in the department