Five Star Billionaire. Tash Aw

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СКАЧАТЬ girl. She wasn’t in trouble, she was in China. She’d just decided that enough was enough, and left one morning without telling her boyfriend. She’d saved enough money to go to Hong Kong, where she’d been a karaoke hostess for a while – she was not ashamed to say it because everyone does it, but it was not for long – and now she was working in Shenzhen. She was a restaurant manager, a classy international place, not some dump, you know, and she was in charge of a staff of sixteen. She even had her own apartment (photo attached – small but bright and modern with a vase of plastic roses on a glass table). Thing is, she’d met a businessman from Beijing who was going to marry her and take her up north, and she wanted to make sure everything was OK at the restaurant before she left. They always needed good waiting staff at New World Restaurant. Just come! Don’t worry about visas. We can fix that. There were two smiley faces and a winky one at the end of the email.

      Those days were so exciting, when they emailed each other several times a day. What clothes shall I bring? What is the winter weather like? What kind of shoes do I need for my uniform? Each email that arrived from China made Phoebe feel that she was one step closer to lifting herself up in the world and becoming someone successful. It made the hair salon where she was working at the time seem so small – the clients were small people who did not realise how small they were. When they said to her, Hey, Phoebe, you are not concentrating, she just laughed inside because she knew that very soon she would be the one giving them orders and leaving them tips. She was going to experience adventures and see things that none of them could even dream about.

      It took her a few weeks to get enough money together for the ticket to Hong Kong plus a bit extra to get her to Shenzhen, but from then on it would be plain sailing, because she had a job lined up and she would stay with her friend for the first couple of months until she found her own place. She didn’t need all that much money, she would start making plenty once she got there, her friend assured her. From then on anything was possible. She could start her own business doing whatever she wanted – some former waitresses at the restaurant were already going around in chauffeur-driven cars just a year after they quit their jobs. New China was amazing, she would see for herself. No one asks too many questions, no one cares where you are from. All that counts is your ability. If you can do a job, you’re hired.

      People say that it is hard to leave their lives behind, and that when the time comes for you to do so you will feel reluctance and longing for your home. But these are people with nice lives to leave behind. For others it is different. Leaving is a relief.

      The emails continued, full of !!! marks as usual, but they were less frequent, and finally, at the internet café near East Tsim Sha Tsui station, waiting for the train to Shenzhen, Phoebe logged on for the first time in four days to find not a single email from her friend. Not even a short message that said, Hurry, too excited, followed by lots of smileys. When at last she got to Shenzhen it took her some time to locate the restaurant. The sign was proud and shiny. New World International Restaurant, it read above twin pillars of twisted gold dragons – Phoebe recognised it from the photos her friend had sent her. The menu was in a glass case outside, a sure sign of a classy joint. But as she approached, Phoebe’s heart began to experience a dark fluttering in her ribcage, the way she imagined bat wings would feel against her cheek. It was a sensation that would stay with her for the rest of her time in China. The glass doors were open, but the restaurant inside was dim even though it was the middle of the afternoon. When she stepped inside she saw an empty space without any chairs and tables. Part of the floor had been ripped up, and on the bare concrete she could see messy patches of glue where carpets had once been laid. There was a bar decorated with scenes of Chinese legends carved in bronze, cranes flying over mountains and lakes. Some workmen were shifting machinery and tools at the far end of the restaurant, and when Phoebe called out to them they seemed confused. The restaurant had closed down a few days ago, soon it would be a hotpot chain. The people who worked there? Probably just got jobs somewhere else. No one stays in a job for long in Shenzhen anyway.

      She thought, This is not a good situation.

      She tried calling her friend’s mobile phone number, but it was dead. This number is out of use, the voice told her, over and over again. Each time she dialled it was the same. This number is out of use.

      She checked how much money she had and began looking for a cheap guesthouse. The streets were clean but full of people. Everyone looked as though they were hurrying to an appointment, everyone had some place to go. Amid the mass of people that swarmed around her like a thick muddy river, she started to notice a certain kind of person, and soon they were the only people she really saw. Young single women. They were everywhere, rushing for the bus or marching steadfastly with a steely look on their faces, or going from shop to shop handing out their CVs, their entire lives on one sheet of paper. They were all restless, they were all moving, they were all looking for work, floating everywhere, casting out their lives to whoever would take them.

      So this is how it happens. This is how I become like them, Phoebe thought. In the space of a few hours she had passed from one world to another. One moment she was almost an assistant manager in a classy international restaurant, next moment she was a migrant worker. Her new life had materialised out of thin air like a trick of fate. Unattached, searching, alone. Some people say that when you find other people who are just like you, who share your position in life, you feel happier, less alone, but Phoebe did not think this was true. Knowing that she was the same as millions of other girls made her feel lonelier than ever.

      She went back to her lodgings. The door wouldn’t lock, so she slept with her handbag tucked into her belly, curved into a tight C-shape.

      Those first few months in Shenzhen passed very quickly. During this time Phoebe did a number of jobs that she would rather not talk about right now. Maybe some day, but not now.

       You can only rely on yourself. There are no true friends in this world. If you place your trust in others you will open yourself to danger and hurtfulness.

      She got a job at a place called Guangdong Bigfaith Quality Garment Company, a factory that made fashion clothes for Western brands – not the expensive labels that Phoebe had heard of but lesser ones that sold shiny, colourful clothes, though the other girls told her that these were trendy shops even though they were low-cost. Apparently in the West even rich people buy cheap clothes. Personally Phoebe did not want any of the skirts or jackets or blouses that were made at the factory; they looked unclassy even to her. Her job was to match up the orders to the delivery notes and make sure that everything tallied. It was not a difficult job, but still she cried every night. The hours were long and at night she had to endure being in a dorm with the other girls, so many other girls. She hated seeing their underwear strung up on washing lines in every room, even in the corridors, drying in the damp air. Everywhere you went in the dormitory block all you saw was lines of damp underwear, and the whole place smelled of detergent and sweat. All day and night there was arguing and crying. She hated this, especially the night-time sobbing. It was as if everyone thought that when it was dark no one could hear them cry. She had to get away from them, she was not like them. But for now she had no choice.

      The other hard thing to deal with was the jealousy, the things that were said about her. (How did she get such a good job straight away? Why was she in admin and not on the production line when she had only just joined the company? I hear she hasn’t even been out for long.) Well, Phoebe wanted to explain, first of all it was because she could speak English and Cantonese, the language of all the rich factory-owners down here in the south. And, quite simply, it was because she was better than the rest of them. But she knew to keep silent. She was afraid of the large groups of girls who came from the big provinces, especially the Hunanese girls who smuggled things out of the factory to sell outside and threatened to kill anyone who reported them. They liked to fight. Everyone had their own clan for protection: the Sichuan girls looked after each other, even the Anhui girls were numerous enough to have support. Only Phoebe was alone, but she would rise above them all because she was smarter. A line stuck СКАЧАТЬ