Chapter 58

"Xinyu, your skin looks a great deal better."

Chen Xinyu had barely started work when the colleague beside her, back from maternity leave, said it.

"Does it?" She touched her own cheek, pleased.

"It does. You used to have some patches under your eyes, and they're much lighter." Having come closer for a proper look, she was certain about it.

"I'd noticed too — and you haven't mentioned spots in a fortnight. You always used to break out when your period came." The colleague opposite nodded.

Which prompted Chen Xinyu to realise she hadn't broken out this time.

"None of us would have noticed if Sister Wang hadn't said. One doesn't look, coming in every day. Xinyu, go on — what are you using?"

"Yes, tell us. My skin's got so much worse since I was pregnant." Afraid of using anything that might harm the baby, she'd barely looked after it at all, and now that the month of confinement was over she needed to repair the damage.

Becoming beautiful being the subject women find most interesting, several of them collected at Chen Xinyu's desk, examined her, agreed her skin was markedly better, and demanded to be sold on it.

"It'll be the toner my cousin gave me. She said it was rose water — good for the skin." She thought at once of going home a fortnight ago, when Li Lan had given her and several of the cousins large bottles of something, saying it was good for the skin. She'd liked the smell and had been using it since.

"Rose water? What brand?" The colleague beside her opened a shopping site at once, typed it in, and got a great many products.

Chen Xinyu had no idea. Li Lan had given it to her in a large container and she'd decanted it into an empty cosmetics bottle. "I don't know. There's no brand on it."

"Come and see whether any of these look the same." The colleague moved aside so she could see the screen.

"No. What she gave me came in a big bottle, not a little one like these." A bottle that size would never have lasted her for daily compresses and daily use. She scrolled and didn't find it.

"Ah — this." Two flicks of the mouse and she found the words she recognised, and remembered what Li Lan had said. "I've got it wrong. It isn't rose water. She said rose hydrosol."

This was before information became universally available, and being the youngest in the room, nobody else knew what that was either — though it sounded promising.

"Do you know where your cousin bought it?" Sister Wang could hardly wait.

She shook her head. "No. I can ask her."

"Ask, then."

"Yes, ring her now."

Under her colleagues' urging, Chen Xinyu felt she pressed the keys faster than usual.

It connected quickly, and she went straight to it. "Lanlan, where did you buy that rose hydrosol you gave me the other week?"

Li Lan was puzzled. "I didn't buy it, I made it. Why?"

"You made it?" She was surprised. She knew her cousin was clever; she hadn't expected her to be making cosmetics — that visibly worked, at that.

"Oh. Never mind then. Some colleagues saw the effect and wanted to know where to buy it." She was rather sorry; if Li Lan made it, there was nothing to buy.

"I see. My mother's skin has improved a lot using it too. Actually — how did you find the taste?" Hearing about the skin, Li Lan thought: as expected. She had scanned her own hydrosol afterwards and the completion came out at an unexpected ninety per cent. Genuinely natural, genuinely harmless.

"The taste?" Chen Xinyu stalled. Wasn't it a cosmetic? How would one drink it?

Li Lan could tell she hadn't. Her mother had said the same thing about drinking cosmetics, and having been given a small glass of it diluted, had decided it was rather good and now drank a glass a day. "Hydrosol is drinkable. Neat it's a bit much, but with water and ice it's better than a soft drink — fragrant and sweet, better than rose tea."

Chen Xinyu was interested and would have carried on, and seeing her colleagues remembered she had work outstanding. "Right. I'll try it tonight. I'll let you go."

Hanging up, she reported regretfully. "You heard. My cousin makes it. There's nothing to buy."

"Why nothing? Xinyu, has she got any left? I'll pay for it." Sister Wang's eyes were bright.

Chen Xinyu knew nobody in that office was short of money; she worked for a state railway enterprise and was the only recent recruit, everyone else having been there years. Sister Wang, just back from leave, came from a comfortable family, and while this wasn't the first time she'd started a conversation, being this pleasant about it was rare.

She was the only one willing to buy, though. Hearing it was homemade, the others rather retreated. What if something went wrong?

"Your cousin makes cosmetics? She hasn't bought them somewhere and passed them on?" somebody said, doubtfully.

Chen Xinyu knew the voice: a colleague barely two years older who had arrived a year earlier and used the fact to find fault with her whenever possible. Silent until now, and speaking up in order to watch her look foolish.

She made a small noise. "Because you can't do it doesn't mean my cousin can't."

"Oh — isn't your cousin the one at Peking University?" Somebody remembered her mentioning it.

"That's right. She's studying pharmacy at Peking. What's surprising about her making a cosmetic?" Whether medicine had anything to do with cosmetics she didn't know, but the retort came first.

The colleague laughed thinly, as though nobody else had been to university. "Peking. If I remember rightly she's a first-year. Making things already — very impressive."

Chen Xinyu pretended not to hear the sarcasm and refused to be outdone. "She is. She's also a world champion. Making a toner in her first year is hardly remarkable."

Sister Wang had no patience for either of them. "Xinyu, ring her again and ask whether there's any left and whether she'll sell it. If she will, I'll buy."

Chen Xinyu hesitated. "All right."

Li Lan, taking a second call, had not expected to be sold on commission. "There is. How many jin does your colleague want?" Even after distributing a great deal to assorted aunts she still had over a hundred and fifty kilos; the refrigerator upstairs was full and so was the chilled cabinet in the shop.

Sister Wang was briefly at a loss. Cosmetics sold by weight? Being a first purchase, she'd start with two jin — and saying it, felt like a woman at a vegetable market.

"Er — two jin to start. How much is that?" Chen Xinyu relayed, watching her colleague's fingers.

"Two jin is one bottle. Sixty yuan, or seventy with postage." Li Lan quoted cost, thirty a jin being roughly what a jin of hydrosol cost her to make. Cheap labour indeed. Having done the arithmetic she was reminded again of how badly this experiment had gone.

"Right, send me two — no, four." Another colleague had indicated interest.

"Fine. I'll post it in the next day or two."

"Sister Wang, are you seriously buying an unlabelled product?" the awkward colleague said, once the call ended.

Sister Wang was in fact regretting it. She used Korean brands; what could thirty yuan a jin possibly be? Perhaps Chen Xinyu's skin had improved for some other reason. But it was too late to cancel gracefully, and it was only sixty yuan; she could write it off.

"I've bought it now. It's hardly expensive." Sixty yuan or not, she didn't want to be called wasteful, and said it with affected indifference.

Her colleague laughed inwardly. Pregnancy really does soften the brain. An obvious swindle, and somebody's fallen for it.

---

Text message received, Li Lan prepared to post it, and her parents were proud all over again that somebody was buying something she'd made — her father immediately offering to drive into the county town to send it. That would make the loss worse. "Dad, the town has a post office. Why drive to the county town?"

Collecting parcels there had been unavoidable; the courier companies weren't yet what they'd become, and apart from postal letters almost nothing was delivered to towns. Sending, however, was possible.

He was so used to collecting that sending had gone the same way in his mind, and he'd forgotten the post office. "True. I'd forgotten the one at the east end. Give it here and I'll take it."

On the way back he was humming, and near home heard somebody call his name. He turned to find a neighbour of many years standing in a doorway talking to a group.

"Quan. Quan. How many times did I have to shout?" the man said, laughing.

"Oh, it's you. What is it? It's dinner time, what are you doing gossiping out here?"

The man promptly used Li Quan's childhood name back at him. "Gossiping? We're discussing important matters."

"What important matters could you lot have?" He went over and joined them.

"Exam results. Is that important enough? Old Zhao's daughter checked at midnight — just over the third-tier line, and they're deciding where she'll repeat the year.

"And old Liu's boy — this was his fourth year, and I hear he's over the second-tier line, so he's not repeating." The man shared his intelligence readily. Never assume grown men don't gossip; their information was excellent.

"Though only old Liu's repeater made the second tier. Everyone else got a college place or third tier. Country children really do find university hard." The group turned it over.

"You're wrong there. Quan's eldest has been accepted by Peking already, hasn't she — and didn't you say she sat the exam as well? What did she get?" somebody said, seeing him.

"Yes, Quan, you said you went along to see her through it. What did she get? Over five hundred, surely — five hundred puts you over the first-tier line."

"Don't embarrass yourself. Five hundred? Quan's eldest? Six hundred at least."

"Not necessarily. Hasn't she been out of school the whole year? She might have forgotten it."

"Rubbish. Once it's in you it doesn't come out."

The others couldn't stand it. "What are you two guessing for? Pair of idiots. Quan's standing right here. Ask him."

Faced with the whole circle turning to him, Li Quan felt himself come apart. I have no idea what my daughter got either.