Little secrets of Wanhua Page #2

As children, we shared little secrets, in big ways, which were often spontaneous and couragous.

• Short story

								


Now back to the homework. Suddenly, in the middle of working, Xuejin stood up and walked over to the window. “Do you see it?” he pointed to the Red Light District in the far distance below. “My family have business there,” he said. “There, in Bao-Dou-Li (Happy Island),” I asked hesitantly. “Yes, right in the middle of Bao-Dou-Li. My family owns a prostitute shop,” Xuejin continued calmly. “Oh, yeh…..my, my family also live right next to a brothel,” I carefully replied, trying to speak with equal sincerity to what he just revealed. It was as if I were trying to comfort him by saying, “Oh, this is not a big deal. Owning a prostitute business is just like driving taxis and selling vegetables.”

Xuejin took a deep look at me, holding his stare for a long time, as if trying to digest what I had just said, then slowly turned and fixed his gaze toward the Red Light District in the distance in silence. 

A couple of weeks later, he asked me whether I would be interested in doing homework after school, not at his home, but at his father’s office. “What office?” “You know, the office. My dad’s workplace.” “Oh, yes, his office! Shall we make it a homework party then?” I replied. 

There were six of us, with Ting Ting being the only girl. She lived a few blocks away. Ah-xian, Furong, Guangxin were classmates from my neighborhood. We often walked to school together in the morning and after class, loved taking the longest possible routes home, exploring nearby neighborhoods and comic bookstores. We all lived near the Red Light District but other than Xuejin and Ting Ting none of us had ever set foot inside one.

The main street was lined with women in their twenties, shouting salacious invitation at onlookers, mostly men of different ages. Some could not resist a good grab or a gentle push from an aggressive one and reluctantly disappeared with the girl into the half-shut doors. 

Most brothels had small doors and windows, with reddish pink lights shining through. All stayed open through early morning hours, around 1 or 2 am and started business in late morning. 

Xuejin led us to an area off the main street, known for housing older female prostitutes and male prostitutes servicing mostly men. 

As third graders ended school early, we were at Xuejin’s in mid-afternoon, a slow time for the business. I was surprised to see the large wooden door, which one only saw in the movies. A slim elegantly dressed middle-aged woman, whose light blue dress contrasted sharply with the tall red door in the background, smiled her warm greetings at us. She introduced herself as Xuejin’s mother, and said this was the first time Xuejin had friends over at the work place - yes, she said, the ‘work place.’ We followed her into a courtyard garden, with flowers and bushes on three sides. Ting Ting turned to me and said she had never seen a ‘tea house’ like this. “I cannot believe such a brothel exists,” she marveled. 

The courtyard branched into two paths, one leading to a waiting room, with two large four-seater sofas, surrounding a large wooden table, flanked by a few heavy wooden stools. I reckoned this must be one of the areas for customers waiting their turns. Everything in the room was decorated in red, the happy color reserved for weddings. 

Sandwiched between the main courtyard and a small garden, the room had four doors, two for the gardens and the other two hidden behind screens opening to a long hall with small partitioned ‘work’ rooms on each side. The small garden was well hidden but could be glimpsed through the crack of the half-closed double red doors. 

This room now became our homework area, set up with small wooden stools surrounding a large low rectangle table, decorated with yellow and red chrysanthemum flowers and plates of cookies and fruit, next to a pot of fragrant jasmine tea. I had never seen a nicer homework reception! As soon as Xuejin’s mother left, we quickly swooped down on the cookies and the fruits, forgetting the homework. It was the host who kindly reminded us of the true purpose of the visit. Reluctantly, we reached into our dark green heavy school bags for the assignment. Meanwhile, a sudden commotion in the hidden court yard helped continue with this collective distraction. Some of us jumped into our feet and peeped into the crack. One could almost make out a small group of women squatting about the court yard, with red plastic wash bins, bending, kneeling, spreading their legs wide apart, splashing water repeatedly into their private parts. “What are they doing?“ Guangxin cried out. “They just finished their business and are trying to clean up and to flush men’s stuff out if one of the socks (condoms) accidentally broke,” explained Ting Ting calmly, as if she had seen it many times before. Xuejin added there were a few water spouts set up around the garden as well, nodding his approval of Ting Ting’s comment and urging us to come back to the task of homework doing. 

With my homework notebook wide open facing me, I could not help seeing the water jetting out of the spouts, trying very hard to picture how it may work to wash the stuff off. What men’s stuff was Ting Ting talking about? My third grade understanding of human anatomy and sex in general was too poorly installed to help me picture the mechanics but my curiosity was piqued. 

I turned to Ting Ting and Xuejin, knowing the others would not be of any use in these matters, and sheepishly ventured my question, “what is men’s stuff and how does it get there?” 

They looked at each other, turned, and eyed their surprise at me, “We though you live next to a brothel?” “I do. But living next to one does not me a sex expert make!” I protested. 

A poll then taken among the five boys revealed how little we understood what really was going on there. Xuejin and Ting Ting decided an en situ “sightseeing” education was urgently needed, and led us quietly into the garden, all six in a line. Some of the women were surprised to see us, gave us a welcome smile and yelled out, “Are you guys on a school outing? Where is your teacher?” 

The dimly-lit storage closet was small but tall, stacked with all kinds of boxes, trunks, baskets and old news paper. Quietening us down with his finger pressed against his lip, Xuejin stepped onto a large wooden trunk hidden toward the corner. He signaled me to climb up. Standing next to me, he showed me a small hole in the wall and asked me to look into it. Voila! The bed almost filled up the room, with a naked man pushing up and down on a woman half dressed. They were panting loudly as the bed was shaking with high-pitched squeaks that matched their every move. After I-do-not-know how long, I was pulled down by an impatient Ah-xian. He pointed to his chest anxiously, “My turn!” Thus we took turns looking into the working room a couple of times until the commotion stopped. We waited until the woman escorted the man down the hallway to bid goodbye.

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