leisure reading

        Ms. Ling was, of course, a product of the Hsa cold hand, but she took her role as Mailgirls supervisor seriously.  From snatches of various conversations they already knew her father was a Tienanmen Square protestor who had been imprisoned; she was aware of the ill effects of enforced boredom.  That was their explanation for her appearance one day with a large bin of books.  The books had been lying around in various offices and perhaps were no longer needed, or so smoky smelling that they were no longer acceptable.  Indeed the odor permeated their partition, but it was not so bad.  Yingtai said it reminded her of her uncle’s mountain cottage.  Strange to say, in this sterile white tent, they actually got to imagine they were in that cottage, snow falling outside, while they snuggled their nude bodies against each other in front of the fireplace, reading by firelight.

        The books were surprisingly diverse.  Not all were in Chinese; a good many were in Russian, some were in English, some in Korean.  Books were exotic artifacts to the Chinese girls, except for Xifeng, whose mother was a temple keeper.  They were somewhat less strange to Tami.  Not all were technical manuals or official PRC histories.  Their favorites were short novels, like those of Kurt Vonnegut (in Chinese) or Tie Nin.  They would read one together, clustering around, turning a page only after everyone had gotten to the last line.  “Oh -- my -- God!!” they would say when there was a plot twist, or something shocking.  These Chinese teenagers were easily shocked.  They were the product of the rigorous but constricted Communist education system.  Their innocent eyes widened as they were exposed to new worlds.

        The big dusty bin had perhaps two hundred books.  “I can’t believe it!” Huiqing cried, rummaging around the bottom -- Mr. Tang’s book on Taoist sex!!  Evidently he wasn’t even given the chance to clear out his office.  They devoured it, fighting over how quickly to turn the pages.  But it was a huge letdown.  The philosophical stuff they had mostly heard before; they were looking for tips on how to induce stronger and more numerous orgasms.  Taoist men who weren’t allowed to have any orgasms themselves, and had to concentrate solely on their wives’ pleasure, might know a few things . . . but the techniques shown were, to them, lame.  The Mailgirls knew a lot more than the book.  “There’s nothing about anal, nothing about circling the clit, nothing about four-finger,” Ngo-kwang pointed out, this last referring to her specialty of playing two fingers in the vagina off against two in the anus.  “We should write a book,” Xifeng said.