She didn't want to go home for 21 years.

One.

After college, I went through years of turmoil and finally had a steady job. When I was single, I had plenty of time to pay with different business partners. After dinner, a bunch of our bachelors are going to go to the second game, looking for a bathhouse or KTV. I'm in a northern city with a windy day and a sandy face, just trying to speed up the road. By nighttime, several small and medium-sized shower shops lit neon lights, radiant and festive. One night in October 2015, I met the technician Linko at a bath shop. Linko's head is equal, taller than a metre, and clean. Her hair was wrapped on her shoulder, she worked so well, she was warm, and she put a Chinese bag in her shower, and every one of them gave me a general effect. Look at me as if I understood, she showed me the overpack: "You see, you can check the composition on the Internet, I'm not lying to you." She spoke softly, with a smile, and felt good. In order to pass the time, a lot of guests talk to the mechanics. I talked to Linko. She's four years older than me. She's been in this city for 78 years. And then we find out that we're from the same city, that there's probably a lot of that old town, and that we're a little closer. She asked me why I came to the store and I said I was paying for it and wanted to talk to someone. If she thinks about it, "I'll come back later, we'll talk more, I'll be bored every day." After that, she was embarrassed to laugh and looked up at me, and seemed to be waiting for an answer. For the next six months, I used to visit Lin's bathhouse. Because they went so far, and they knew the other technicians at the store, and they made fun of me, "Come to Linko again, do you like people?" Linko tried to beat them up, and for a while, she pulled me away. And when it was just the two of us, she said, with some apologies, "They're both inexcusable. It's boring and fun."

Linko told me that the technicians at the store, like her, were mostly rural women. It's hard to find a place in this city because there's no education, no craftsmanship. Some of them used to sell cosmetics at the mall, which was difficult to do, and came here to earn a part-time job; others were bored with their husbands and found a job at home in search of a foster care; and others lived alone after their divorce, taking into account the relative freedom of working at the spa, where they could take care of their children for several years. “Being a foot healer is a low-threshold, as long as people clean up, don't slack, always have a job.” Speaking of which, Linko has repeatedly stressed, "We are all professionally trained and specially trained by teachers."

After washing my feet, she told me to get on the ground and press me in a professional way. I turned around and found her sweating at the tip of her nose. Linko used to say that it's not bad to work in a bath and massage parlours just to earn money to feed yourself. But in many people's eyes, massage parlours are where the dirt is hidden. The guests are of all kinds, of all qualities, and they encounter a good temper, and if they're not, the technicians will have a hard time. When some guests came in, they pulled the technician or the boss to ask “Is there any such service?” and then turned their heads. There are also guests who ask, in the course of a massage, "Can you do what?" and they are often reluctant to do so. Others behaved rudely, moving in the course of massages, and felt that they had to make some money to make it back. The technicians say that they are suffering, that they can hide, push, and verbally warn when they behave. Unless it's too much, you can't really offend your guests. But it's been a long time and it's been a long time. I've had a lot of contact, and Linko's been telling me about his experiences. She was born in 1985 and was the youngest daughter of her family and was loved by her parents from an early age. When she was seven or eight years old, the village started a wave of work, and her parents went to Tianjin to work, and she lived with her two brothers. Since then, she has been free of parental constraints, playing after school, and her academic performance is naturally poor. On spring break, young people who were away from work went back to the village, dressed in fashionable clothes and said that they saw what was going on in the big city, and that the village people liked to gather. One of the girls, Nako, went to work in the south after graduation from junior high school. She was 20 years old, was tall, she was pretty, and she insisted on wearing makeup when she returned to the village. When she walked, she stepped on her heel with a twilight, and the clothes were bright and the focus was on one stop in the pile. She was afraid to come near, but only envied her, thinking, "I will go to the city and stay away." In 2002, Linko took the first green train to the south, full of excitement. The train took 14 or 5 hours and stopped many times before finally arriving in Guangzhou. Linko followed her country to the suburbs, where she only saw bright and closed factories, and a row of dormitories, where she sensed that the South was nothing like she imagined. After entering the factory, Linko was guarding the machine in the workshop and came down one day, and he was unconscious. At night, they returned to the dormitories, where eight people lived in each room, where they lined up for water and washing, then turned off the lights, slept in a narrow bed overnight and continued to work the following day. In 2003, Linko earned $600 a month. But even if you work late, it'll cost you more than $100. The holidays were her happiest time, when she and the little sister in the factory crowded up on the city bus and saw the high-rise building on television. They were afraid of being expensive and afraid to go to large malls and went to wholesale markets to buy clothes. Go back to the factory and see if it's all good. When Linko came home this spring, she was made up and dressed in the city's fashionable long feathers, and the whole person was bright. She was in charge of packing glasses at a factory, bought at a low price at the end of the year a big round of sunglasses, gave one to a neighbor's little friend, and the children came round, cheering, laughing, saying everyone had it. Nako also returned to the village for a new year, and she is married to a man from the same village who worked in the Zhejiang area after two small marriages. When she met at the village entrance, Nako was still so fashionable and radiant, but Linko was not surprised that she had already seen that dress in Guangzhou. After a while of chilling and exaggerating each other ' s clothes, Nazi asked her if there were any good jobs in Linzi Guangzhou. When she was different, she thought: Maybe I felt a little urban. Two.

In 2006, Linko, 21 years old, returned from Guangzhou to her home, and her parents, who worked outside the country for a long time, made time to arrange for a date. One of the two families was related to another town, more than 10 miles apart. After the blind date, Linko had no idea what he looked like, except that he said, "Let's go to the city, go to the county, don't grow in the home." Her heart was pierced. A week later, the man sent a matchmaker to the house and Linko's parents were happy to say that the boy looked good and could marry. Rinko felt a little hasty, after all, it was too short a time to get along. But this idea was soon put to rest by herself: “Everyone is getting married, getting married is a job, just like anyone gets married.”

In rural areas, many newly married couples choose to go to the city to work, but Lin has spent half a year in the mother-in-law's house before going south again.” His parents wanted me to stay at home and then work and take care of the children, which is not who I am.” She did not go to the factory where her husband worked, and they met only on weekends, because there was no emotional basis, and there was no one to say, “We were young, we didn't know each other how to do it, we didn't know each other, we didn't agree, and we ended up panicking.”

gradually, Linko started to regret getting married. Three years later, the marriage, which was so small, ended. At first, Linko told me the reasons for the divorce were unclear, and it was not until a long time later, in a chat, that she said with some inkling that there were many young men and women in the southern factories and it was normal to attract each other. She fell in love with a non-residential man in the factory, and she became more and more unable to live with her husband, who, she heard, was close to another woman in private. Linko's parents learned that their daughter was going to divorce, could not understand it, and very rarely the angry father spoke harshly: “You have to die of your own sex.” Mothers can't stop groaning except to cry. But then they all let go: "If you decide to leave, it's your life, you live well."

On the occasion of the divorce, Linko and her husband were calm, “We may have been able to read and write, so that we could leave without children”. In 2009, to get closer to her family, Linko left the South to work in this northern city. In large cities, rural women have few jobs to choose if they have little education and are not well informed. Linko went to small factories in the suburbs and went to the mall to sell, but did not earn much. Her savings were also small and, at worst, she lived in the city village, paid $150 in rent, ran out of food and sold more than a dozen bottles on the roof to buy and cook. Around 2011, Linko heard from new friends that there were now many young girls who worked as foot therapists, squeezed their feet, strangled their backs and made hard money, no worse than doing anything else. In the beginning, she was worried that she was holding someone else's feet every day, and that she could see some good-looking sisters working in a spa, and that she could save up a little, and there was no psychological burden: “Why can I? "Does it make you more dignified to work on the water line?"

Linko never told her family that she worked in a bath shop, and every time she was asked, she said that she worked in a beauty salon and that the family did not look into it. That's it. She's learning her skills. She'll come up with $67,000 a month. After work, she went to the mall with her sisters and now bought one or two of the expensive clothes she had been afraid to buy. On weekends, they traveled around and worked hard to give themselves days off — a life she had not experienced before. After years of drying, Linko felt good about herself. She had contacts with clients from all walks of life in the shower and met with different people, and everything was new and interesting. One time, she said to me, "I didn't know there were so many things in the world after I came out, unlike in the factory."

3

In 2014, the city ' s house prices had not risen, and houses in the city ' s ordinary areas were only $78,000 per square metre. Linko wanted to buy a house here, and for more than a year she went through a couple of rooms. She's going to buy a cheap little apartment, "Just cover the storm." However, none of the sisters around said they would have to buy at least a room and room, otherwise it would be difficult to live in. She counted the savings over those years, and over 50 square metres of a room, the down payment could barely be enough, but interest on more than $2,000 per month would be more than 20 years old. In addition, many of the rooms in the city are “scrambled” and the community environment is bad, and the sisters who went to the house with her are shaking their heads. There's a technician in the store who heard that Linko is buying a house and immediately told her to stop thinking, "You're 30 years old and you're looking for someone to buy. Now we're buying a house, we're getting married in two years. Do you buy it yourself, pay it back every month?

I've heard a lot about this, and Linko's heart is broken. I guess the reason why Linko didn't buy the house was because she was a little confused about where she was going to live. I had overheard her talking about a friend who offered her a job at home and could be paid over $3,000 a month. Although the wages are lower, the advantage is to be close to home. Her parents were old and had been working in Tianjin, Pao-ding, the gallery for many years, waiting for years to go back home. The decision has yet to be made by Linko, and in the second half of 2016, the city ' s house prices rose sharply, almost once a week. The average price was quickly broken, and by the end of the year, a large number of houses in the centre of the city would be in the order of 12,000. When people meet, they talk about high house prices and an opportunity to be rich. By the end of the week, the tourist car to the new building was parked in front of the agency and the community. At night, the dirt truck and the concrete mixer passed through the road and everything was hot and pushed forward. Linko has seen the house before and can't afford it now. One night in the fall of 2016, I stayed at the bath shop and asked Linko to eat without any other guests. We went to a carbs fish shop nearby, and the people in the shop had to come in and talk. When the pot came up, the coal fires were high, the heat was hot and the people were blurry. We drank two or three beers, and we started talking. "It's been so many years since we came to this city, some friends we met at work, and one hand can count." Linko toasted me, "We're friends now, too. I'll toast you first. Thank you for taking care of my business. I hope you're with the girl you like."

I returned to her: “Thank you for speaking with me during this time and wish you an early home”.

Linko shakes her head: "There's got to be something right. It doesn't fit. Otherwise it's too much, not happy. Unlike men, women do not really want to look for them after a divorce, but rather do not want their families to worry.”

We're all silent. After a while, I asked Rinko if she'd stay in the city? And until she answers, I say my own thoughts: "If it's just college, it's easy to change cities. When the job stabilizes, it's hard to leave. If we're going to change, we'll have to do it early."

And she thought, "I don't have any of these restrictions. There's no home, there's no business. But I don't want to go back home and not go anywhere else. It's so nice to be here, no one knows anyone, and free!"

Linko drank too much to talk about her family and to mention Na sis again. In previous years, Nako had two children and had been at home for several years. The village likes to play cards, there are a lot of people around, and Linko went to see it twice. On one occasion, she met Nako at the card table, and they said hello and did not know what to say except for the cold. Linko thought about several topics, but when she opened her mouth, she saw Nazi's focus on playing cards and didn't think it meant anything. Over the past few years, Nako's husband has returned to the village, where his and his wife have been busy running a supermarket. During spring, Linko went shopping and talked to Nazi. At the time, Nako was wearing an apron, and her hair was soared, that she was directing her husband to pick something out of the shelf while talking to the customers and taking advantage of the gap in the collection. The goods were dusty, she wiped them first and her hands on the apron. Linko noticed that Nako is a little old and that she has traces of powder on her face, but that she can't cover her loose skin and the wrinkles of her eyes. Linko was in the store for a few minutes, so she left because of the delay. Linko said to me, "Sometimes I think Nako's doing a good job, and I think I'm going to live in peace and security. But I don't know why I still want to stick it in this city, but I don't want to go back."

4

After that, I heard Rinko talk about the man she's "executed." For her, finding someone to marry in the city also seemed to be a way to settle down. She had a brief affair with her guests. Some people usually have a lot to say at work and in their lives, and they go to a bath shop, and they don't care. She's always been a friend to someone she met. One of them, a teacher at a secondary school, seemed to like her character very much, and only came to her every time and talked for a long time. The male teacher is under 40 years of age, wearing glasses, whispering softly, Sven. After his divorce he lived alone with his daughter. He and Linko had a few meals, and on one occasion he was at a well-known hotel nearby. Linko remembers that night, when the light was soft in the restaurant, the man in front of her was asking her for advice, with respect and kindness in his eyes, “I feel my marriage is coming soon”. She then spent the night at the other ' s home, together cooking and working in the kitchen for a moment when she felt like a normal, normal family. However, she also felt each other's hesitation. When she joked, "Shall we be together?" It's hard to accept new feelings when they laugh and don't respond. After a few tests, Linko became aware that he didn't mean that. She thought, let it go. But the teacher never came looking for her again. Of course, it's not that no one is after her. As the city was built, foremen often brought friends to the bath shop for massages. She had contact with a man who was running around with the project, who spent most of the year in the field and who, since meeting her in the shop, often invited Lin-ja out on weekends and sometimes sent her vague messages. Men are honest, they say they're married, but they have bad feelings for their wives. She was sober, and she said to me, "He just wants someone to stay with for a long time. Don't worry about it."

In spring 2017, Linko had a hard time. A few years ago, her father broke his waist on a construction site in Ange, Zhejiang, performed surgery and was able to return to his home hospital after a slight stabilization. The sister-in-law of Linko worked outside the home and had to take leave to look after her father. Outside the room, the mother looked at her, and she looked down on her eyes: "You're almost 33 and you're still floating." He then talks about who worked with the village who worked outside and now goes back to the county to do business or to work at the factory in the district, where he can be reunited with his family every weekend. The father was lying in bed, but occasionally mentioned that she had saved some money for her work over the years, and that if Linko wanted to find a job in the county, she would have to be a parent. Linko doesn't say anything. She doesn't say yes or no. During those two months, Linko stayed with her parents, heard them say they were three brothers and sisters when they were young, and said that if they went to college properly, they wouldn't have to suffer outside. Having said that, the two sides are complaining that they can't make big money and can't help the kids. It's too much talk, and Linko's heart is loose. That spring break, Linko's father was in the hospital. After the festival, the father went home to rest, saw his weak body, and the mother left alone, without saying anything. By spring, Linko had found a job as a life teacher at a lunch-care facility in her home town. Linko rents a house in the county city at $400, so she doesn't have to ride electric cars to her house every day. After her day off, she wandered the streets of County City, which she had not seen for years. During that time, she used to tan her home-grown flowers in the community of Weiss friends, as well as the big shopping malls in the county city, the new Internet-based red milk tea shop and so on. Thinking she's started a new life, I'm really happy for her. 5

After the National Day in 2017, her circle of friends showed that she was back in the big city. I'm curious, asking her on Twitter, and she said, "Do you have a minute, folks? I'll buy you dinner."

A few days later, we met at a mall. I haven't seen her for almost a year, and Linko's face is a bit dark and he's got a lot of problems, and he's got a black eye. When she spoke, she held her arms tight and shrunk into the sofa. She refers to her work in the county, where she earns less than $2,000 a month, and instead of saving money, she is overstretched. She complains to her parents, and they don't understand, "Why don't we just cut flowers?"

Life was becoming increasingly difficult and she increasingly felt that going back home was a mistake. She wanted to open a milk and tea shop, but watched the Internet blow up a lot of the milk and tea industry, fearing that she would spend years saving her savings and drifting away. In addition, the pressure to marry too close to her parents makes her more vulnerable. There is little secrecy and privacy in the village. Linko is almost 34 years old and has never married since she was divorced, and has now returned from the city to her home, naturally becoming a topic figure for the village population. Some of the elders actively introduced her to her and others went straight to her parents.

The men's conditions are different, whether they are divorced children or older, or they are poor at home, single for many years, and they find their way to find out who they are. Linko's parents listen very carefully, no matter what they think, always smile at the matchmaker. Linko twists her face to the side, and her heart is sad: In the eyes of outsiders, divorced women of their own age do not have a good job, and this is the only way to do it in the matchmaking market. “If you want to get married, it'll be quick. But I don't want to live that way. It's probably not ready."

After that, Linko was a little afraid to go home, and she sat in the town's new winner, looking out the window at the pedestrians and thinking about her life in the big city. In the afternoon of October, the sun came through the glass, and all of Linko fell in the shadows, feeling low: “It was harder to go back to a big city before I could do it, but it was harder to do so than in a big city. Think about it. I'm too old, no career, no marriage, no life for my parents, no future. Linko said her eyes were wet. I handed over the tissue, and I said, "A lot of people are the same, not all of them."

She wipes her tears: "It's just, it's nothing, there's more to be done."

On her return, Linko chose to stay at the bath shop, a familiar environment. But many things have changed. A new bathing shop was opened around the perimeter, which was highly competitive, and every time a guest came in, the boss asked the technician to leave the man behind. In the past, individual technicians secretly performed the swipe service, and the boss kept his eyes closed, as long as he could make money for the shop. Now, when a customer is unable to stay or only consumes the minimum set, the owner is also a face-blower. Not to mention when business is low, some of the guests are asking for a change of technician, and the replaced are not happy with their faces, for a long time, and relations between colleagues are very rigid. The atmosphere in the store was so heavy, Linko felt so weird, and she said to me once: "I really don't want to do it, it's getting more and more like selling it, and it's not funny. Stay here for a day."

She's been looking for a few part-time jobs, selling at the mall on weekends, and selling skin and wine in her friends' circles. I asked her if she could handle it. She said that the store was now short, paid less, and had to find a way to earn money. I suggest she learn to be a housekeeper, get a license to take up her job later and be a golden nanny. She contacted a home-based training school and went to one of her classes, after which she told me that most of her classes were with older sisters or retired aunts. I never heard her talk about it again. Six.

In 2018, I moved to my new home in four circles, and because I live far away, I don't see any old friends. From the circle of friends, Linko finally changed her job and worked at a hotel. On the eve of Mid-Autumn, Linko, who hasn't been in touch for a long time, sent me a text message saying she was going to Xiamen and wanted to buy me dinner before leaving. On Mid-Autumn Day, we met at a restaurant near her house. She was wearing a light yellow windie, her hair strangling, and she was very spiritual. She smiled in her eyelids, "How's my makeup today? I'm very careful. I'm not saying anything. She's sorry. In the restaurant, Linko ordered some regular food, probably infected by the holiday atmosphere, and she was more relaxed than usual and lazily fell on her back. She said she'd been in the city for nine years, and she didn't take root, and finally she left. She did not have a great deal to say to her, “The sisters there said good and called me to come, and I did want to go somewhere else”. I advised her to find a stable job, to keep her working for a long time, to save more money, and perhaps to find a home in this city. The atmosphere had become a little low, even though she was known to be. Later, she said, "I'm not like you, you have a degree, you have a steady job, I don't. I want to do it for a long time. There's nothing I can do. I've always had a strong feeling -- it's not my city, and I don't belong to it. It's where you work, where you live, where you go."

On the way home, we walked side by side in silence. It's cold, she's in her pocket and her clothes are tied. I turned my head in the middle, and the light was on her side and it was blurry in the dark. I counted, we've known each other for three years, we've seen each other's life, and we've had a much better-known feeling. And when we split up, Linko stood up, "Thank you, folks, I'll remember you." She didn't go down. I guess she said thanks, about warmer in the city. But I didn't even say "good luck, good luck". In 2020, the epidemic changed everything. We cut back on our way out, and even meeting friends and loved ones becomes a luxury. In restaurants, restaurants, bars, KTV, chess houses, bath and massage parlours, etc., they close from time to time, and many small shops can be seen on the luxurious streets of the past when the notice of transfer was blown up. Once, I had a chat with the owner of the shower downstairs, and he lamented the lack of work, the small number of guests, and the technicians were waiting for notice in the dorm. He was concerned about the loss of technicians, who could not afford to pay high wages and who had to pay basic wages to settle in first. The owner of the shop had been paying rent for a whole year, and he insisted that he should close the door one day. I thought of Linko all of a sudden. I didn't know how she was. After she left, I got married and had kids and had more to do. It's like it's been a long time and everything's gone. In June of this year, I went on a business trip to Linko's home town and opened my mail to find that I had little contact with her for four or five years, except for spring festival messages. I hesitated to send her a photo of the county. Linko will be back soon. After a few words, we'll just call. She's still so familiar, "Hello, folks! I'm so happy to see you married. We haven't been in touch for years, but I've been watching you on my voice."

Thirty-eight-year-old Linko is not married yet, which is somewhat unexpected. And she said, "Well, maybe at this age, it's not so urgent, so let it go."

Linko talks about her life after her arrival at the gate - she signed up for beauty skills, but later did not find a particularly suitable job. By 2020, a wave of the epidemic had struck, and she had decided to go home more securely with her fellow village sisters. At the end of the year, she travelled in a car to another city and to her hometown, where she was unable to pass the nucleic acid test and stayed. She sent a message in one of her hometowns about her dilemma and unexpectedly reaped a good job. One of the country ' s residents said that a private hospital in the city was recruiting front desk and telephone service, asking whether Linko was interested in an interview, and she was happy to go. The interview went well because of the homecoming. Upon entering office, she started from zero, called for marketing, pushed on the street, pulled clients online, performed a little bit and then made a smooth move. The company pays social security for its employees, minimum wages plus basic performance, and she receives more than $5,000 a month. She worked eight hours a day and had a weekend break, which was her most satisfactory job to date. "We don't have a video right now, or you'll see what I'm doing, and I'm standing on my feet at the company."

I congratulated her on finally stabilizing, and she said, "It's not like before. I might prefer the cities of the South, but I can still work, so keep doing it."

Unlike the dry and cold northern city, the southern city has sea winds blowing, the air is damp and the trees are dazzling. On weekends off, Linko and her colleagues went to the beach and saw the sea, trees and green lands, and she felt the city as beautiful as a view. In her business, Linko often travels to other cities, and she runs many places in Fujian. She is already very familiar with some of the city ' s landmark buildings. I asked her if she'd go back home again. She said, "Don't go back. It's the same as before. Even though I'm not good outside, what can I do when I get back? There's always a place in a city this big."

She planned to set up a house in the city and wanted to buy a small house in the centre of town, which was less stressful. However, it was difficult to save money, and she calculated the cost: “1 ,500 a month for rents, daily meals, shopping, all kinds of flowers, all kinds of money. I'm old and I work at the hospital again, and it's expensive once or twice a year." But she's trying to save money: "I'm always saving up for myself."

Hang up, let's see. More than 40 minutes have passed. More than two decades have passed since her first trip to the South with her dreams in 2002. She used to want to take root in the city, drifting from south to north, but never felt a sense of belonging. But this time, she seems to have finally found her own city. (Man, place names are alias)

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