1
Since October 15, 2015, Zhang Ping has been a person who “does not exist”.
To this day, recalling the scene when she sent her husband away in a wheelchair at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, her deepest emotion is still the words: “I have never done anything harmful to god. Why did God lose my visa?”
Seven years ago, Zhang Ping and his wife, holding the good wish to seek gold in Japan, entrusted someone to apply for a fake chef visa (a kind of Japanese skill visa). They killed all the way from the northeast rural area to Hokkaido in Japan, and “went to the uncle’s sister-in-law who ran a restaurant here”.
“Since childhood, I have felt that I could not live worse than others.” This obsession is the source of Zhang Ping’s desire to break through the boundary. When she finished fifth grade, the youngest child had to drop out of school to take care of her ailing parents and go back to work in the fields, but she was still hungry for the chance to change her life.
When she was 20 years old, her husband’s uncle came to her house for marriage. Even though she knew that her future husband’s family was 30 miles away from her home and her future father-in-law was paralyzed in bed, Zhang Ping still chose to marry her without any reluctance. “I don’t want to farm any more.
However, after her marriage, her fate remained tied to the crops – “His family had only one big iceberg, he couldn’t even do it up. When I was pregnant, I had to go up in my belly.” Such a life makes Zhang Ping feel desperate. Therefore, when seeing some people in the village earn money by raising buses and running urban and rural routes, Zhang Ping persuaded her husband to donate money to buy a bus everywhere. “Who wants to choose a good route? After a few years, the couple owed $400, 000 to keep the car and pay a fine.
“What can I do? No time!” Trees move to die, people move to live, when the distant relatives and neighbors in a strip of water in the East “developed” the news, from time to time to their ears, the idea of going abroad for a fight was born in the heart.
According to the normal standards, to apply for a chef visa to Japan, you must have at least 10 years of working experience as a chef, and there are certain requirements for the level of the hotel the job belongs to. But those standards were untrue for zhang Ping, who grew up as a farmer — zhang’s plan was simple: pay a high price to get two chef visas with fake materials, her husband go first, and when he established himself in Japan, she would follow. They worked together for a few years to pay off the famine and everything would be fine.
Not long after her husband arrived in Japan in 2012, her 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with kidney disease due to high urine protein due to frequent urination. “My father, who is in his 60s, cried and said to his son, ‘Your illness is worse than mine. It’s worth my time to die. If you are ill, your life will be over. ‘”
But zhang Ping, who always wanted to change her life against the odds, did not allow her daughter to be so “finished”. She took her child to the provincial capital and To Beijing, saying, “I can take any number that is difficult and spend as much money as I want.” Zhang ping, took her two daughters to Beijing children’s hospital attached to register many days go to line up in the middle of the night, a day after midnight, the phone suddenly received a text message, is to give the couple a visa from people, notice she said visa to Japan will soon expire, if don’t go to Japan, the visa is invalid, the money is spent.
Gritting her teeth, Zhang ping flew from Beijing to Japan in panic and fear, leaving her seriously ill daughter behind. The daughter’s cry blew Zhang Ping’s heart into pieces and never spelled the whole thing again — “Mom, don’t you want me?”
The first time to Japan, Zhang Ping’s heart always pulled, she missed her daughter, only to stay for five days, hurriedly flew back to Beijing, until the children’s hospital doctor announced that the child was all right, she was completely relieved to send the child back to the northeast home.
This time, Zhang Ping was determined to go, she sold the house in the countryside, for his father-in-law collapsed in bed to cook a few good meals, and then packed a suitcase of clothes, stuffed with a few Changbai Mountains (cigarettes), eyes a black, and set foot on the Land of the East.
This time she left for six years, with little chance of return.
2
To work for people to see the face of people, even if the boss is a real relative, it is hard to avoid experience human warmth.
Ms. Zhang’s husband spent the first few months on Hokkaido helping out in the kitchen of her sister’s Chinese restaurant. Zhang Ping’s “sudden” arrival, to the store to add a lot of burden. Although zhang ping see メ ニ ュ ー order (menu), the “skills” are follow XiaoGuZi, but the hotel is not school, eat and live is boring. After a few days, can not stand the face of sister-in-law, Zhang Ping couple choose to leave together, the hotel to help brother-in-law friend.
Different from her powerful brother-in-law, Zhang Ping’s husband is shy and inarticulate. Working for strangers away from his relatives, the nagging boss and his status as a “fake cook” made him restless and stressed for the first time. Within a month, the stress erupted like a volcano, and after a run-in with the boss, he was fired that night.
At 5 am, it was raining in Hokkaido, and Zhang Ping and her husband were standing in the street, dragging a trolley box. Neither of them knew a word of Japanese other than the words to order.
After being swept out, brother-in-law and introduced to them a restaurant in Yamagata County can go to “help”, but no one to pick up and no one sent, the pressing matter of the moment is to find the station. Zhang Ping, holding a map in her hand, led her husband round. A Japanese elder sister who had just bought breakfast in a convenience store listened patiently to Zhang Ping’s description. “I just figured it out when a car that long was wheeled and the kind that sounds through a hole,” she said.
The elder sister not only sent them to the station, on the road also a strength of the umbrella to Zhang Ping’s side tilt, “I said no need no, she covered her forehead and gesture said, now it’s raining, it’s so cold, how do you if caught in the rain sick? I had tears around my eyes, but there are many good people.”
At that time, Zhang Ping did not know that less than two years later, “never get sick, never fall down, never go to the hospital unless absolutely necessary” would become one of the rules for her to live alone in Japan.
The road from Hokkaido to Yamagata was just the beginning of the couple’s journey through Japan.
He didn’t know Japanese, but he didn’t have to see anyone in the kitchen, so his salary was stable. By contrast, Zhang Ping is like the “buy one get one free” gift, their monthly salary can only be calculated as one person: more than 200,000 yen, equivalent to more than 10,000 yuan, but in this way, it is also 100 times stronger than in his hometown in northeast China.
Hotel business generally starting at noon, zhang ping at 11 to work every day, relief work until 12 o ‘clock at night, after work with six or seven people crowded before the boss to arrange the “Lao (dormitory)”, “‘ Lao ‘is a house played for partition, toilet is public bathing, who put a fart all hear” you go to sleep at night. She goes to bed at 6 or 7 am every day, and when she is not sleeping, she turns the pages of Everyone’s Japanese and marks them with the phonetic symbols of Chinese characters.
As “outsiders”, Zhang and her husband have always been on the periphery of the employment system of small restaurants, becoming the soft spot for employers to lay off employees. When they are fired, the most common reason they hear is that “the boss’s relatives have come to make room for them”. Zhang Ping, who is tough and straight, still stubbornly believes that “as long as I do my job well, I will be worthy of my salary. There is no need to be humble” after countless dumb losses.
Since “people poor ambition can’t short”, under the eaves of others refused to bow, to work and the result is that they almost every little noisy all hotel bosses: “once inside the store play セ ー ル (discount), hasn’t been popularity, wife of shop-owner mood is very poor, is looking for his anger on my quarrel, I also didn’t spoil her, as she did, she let me off at the time. My husband, this time from the kitchen. Said again what somebody else dozen セ ー ル, manpower shortage, we can’t then go – finished the day received wages, to packing.
After surviving yamagata for half a year, the Couple moved to a barbecue shop in Fukushima at the end of 2013. By this time, Zhang Ping was able to answer reservations by herself and order food in fluent Japanese, and her salary alone had risen to 250,000 yen.
Every month, she would transfer the money to her sister-in-law in China at a lower rate through the black market. “When the money comes to my account in China, I will make another remittance, and it will be safe,” zhang said. Looking at the hunger in her hometown in the northeast, Zhang Ping’s strong heart began to stir and wanted to buy a house in the city: “Since I was a child, I feel that I shouldn’t (owe) who, many who, more than less than the next, I can not lead than others.”
For many years after that, when she was in Japan contemplating quitting, she would ask herself: “Zhang Ping, did you save enough money to buy a house?” However, in her definition, “money to buy a house” first meant “full payment”, then “down payment” — making money that never kept pace with the rise in domestic housing prices, something Zhang did not expect and had no choice.
3
Zhang Ping’s chef visa materials are fake, but the visa itself is real and has to be renewed every year. But at the beginning of 2015, the third time when the transfer, fold.
It was all in the bag — the couple, like everyone else in the village, had at the beginning been looking for an intermediary to send a document to the provincial capital, not spending a few dollars or a thousand. But then my brother-in-law tapped his chest and said that his “president in Japan” would be able to get a visa (an investment manager visa) and asked him to help, with double insurance. The couple spent nine months scraping together rmb140,000 in an attempt to cross the bridge. Because of factual discrepancies in the documents submitted by the two agents, the couple’s visa application was rejected by the Japan Entry Administration on the grounds of fraud.
For people working in Japan, “identity” means everything, without a visa, a visa, temporary and permanent residency, different identity in Chinese society has its own hierarchy, despise the chain also corresponding mixed with many can’t on the ‘unwritten rules, the bitterness in broad daylight, zhang ping, after completely lost identity, experience deeper than others.
While waiting for their visas, the Couple had just been laid off by the fukushima barbecue joint, citing “poor management”. Not long before that, the couple had just lent a sum of money to their nephew, who had just come to Tokyo to study and work, 50,000 renminbi.
“At that time there was no rich money, but we were able to slow down a little bit, so we poured out some money with our right hand and left hand, just to help him”. Helping each other was originally the way of survival for the Chinese in Japan, but those who helped became those who helped immediately, which let the 50 thousand dollar “aid” nature become some ambiguous. Without a job, there was no place to live, so zhang ping and his wife had to go to Tokyo to find their nephew. They secretly squeezed themselves into the dormitory rented by their nephew’s club — a small, hot room on the light rail in the west Sunset.
Life was not easy, but what was even more difficult was the husband’s sudden change of attitude: once he arrived in Tokyo, he would rather go to a construction site in the middle of the night to demolish houses and work as a temporary worker than set foot in a restaurant again. The high requirements for waiters in Tokyo also made Zhang shrink back, which was too different from the “more opportunities in big cities” she originally planned.
For three months, Zhang ping spent her days at free Chinese newspapers such as Zhonghua Product Store, looking for a place to live and a job to do. But The Chinese people in Tokyo are too many, the house can not be found, the job is not to land, seeing the wallet is going down day by day, will soon be unable to open the pot, Zhang Ping anxious full mouth bubble.
One day, her husband came back suddenly smelling of alcohol and told her, “The boss of the construction site has run away and he won’t get a cent of his wages back.” At that moment, Zhang Ping felt that the day was coming to an end, looking at this depressed man in front of her, she suddenly remembered the ridiculous wedding many years ago: the bride price was borrowed, drank the wedding wine and then returned back. The rings, necklaces and earrings that had cost thousands of yuan to buy also disappeared shortly after the wedding. “My sister once wondered if she had let my husband sell it. I said no way. I believed him very much. But many years later, when I came to Japan and asked him about it, he said he didn’t sell it and he was pawned. I just said, “You can buy it for me later.”
But inside, Zhang Ping felt that some things had died.
Life is still passing, Zhang Ping finally found a job in a restaurant.
Zhang Ping remembers that she got a call from her husband in the restaurant that morning. He said, “I’ve found an apartment!” His voice was full of joy.
“He asked me if I wanted to check it out, but I said no, anywhere.” The contract was signed in the morning, and that evening they moved from their nephew’s dormitory to their own small home.
Two years, finally have their own “home”. But Zhang ping still wants to build a truly safe home in China, so they have to stay in Japan.
Zhang ping is not willing to give up, she found a law firm, to do a serious investment visas, “do logistics trade” – because it is a don’t need technology, only need is that financial visa categories, inside and outside in need 5 million yen (RMB more than 30), light handling fee will be more than 20 yen, rent storefront also needs 800000, time limit for 2 months.
Where can we raise so much money? Zhang Ping shamelessly borrows money from colleagues she has only just met in Tokyo. My colleagues all come from all over the world to work in Japan, earn more and earn less, most choose to remit to their families, leaving little money on hand. But to Zhang ping’s surprise, an unassuming Cantonese chef suddenly stepped out of the kitchen.
With the teacher’s help and persuasion, Zhang quickly raised 5 million yen — a fifth of her own money. When he handed over the money to Zhang Ping, the Cantonese chef said earnestly, “If [the investment visa] is completed, I will do you a favor. If it is not completed, the money will not be blind. You can give it back to me at that time.” Zhang Ping only remembered that his heart was moved at that time.
With 5 million yuan in cash and a monthly rent of 40,000 yuan, Zhang Ping’s mind is a little more relaxed. However, her husband did not get up from beginning to end, in order to let her husband decompress, Zhang Ping agreed to let him follow his brother-in-law’s friend who had just come to Japan to “go back to Hokkaido to relax”, he is focused on working in a restaurant to make money, somehow a monthly salary of 220,000, barely enough to eat and drink.
Hope is as short as it was back home in Tohoku in the spring, when my husband was struck by a motorbike while crossing the road in Hokkaido and broke his calf. Although the responsibility is not the other side, but the motorcycle owner took the initiative to pay all the medical expenses, but also to compensate them 1 million yen. For half a month, Ms. Zhang traveled more than two hours every other day by tram from Tokyo to the hospital in Hokkaido to visit her husband.
At this moment, the newly submitted materials did not pass the visa application again. She was so heavy that she did not know what to do next. She had no time to pay attention to her husband’s pain.
The husband’s leg injury was not serious, but he needed a long period of rest. After he was discharged from the hospital, he rested for another two months. Their visas were extended by three months when the national Entry Administration learned of the delay. Every day during this period of time, seeing her husband getting more and more decadent and living expenses gradually falling beyond her means, Zhang Ping hatched a bolder idea in her mind:
“Better to persuade my husband to go back to China alone and stay here myself!”
4
Life is a great muffler, from which all the cries of agony and struggle are reduced to exaggerated lips.
Months of struggle, bickering and cold war disheartened her husband. The day he left was October 15, 2015, the last days of their visas, and Zhang Ping remembers it well. She couldn’t figure out why she finally burst into tears at Haneda Airport, crying: “Or you don’t go, stay!”
Without a word, the husband sat alone in a wheelchair rented from the airport and disappeared to the gate without once looking back. They both knew in their hearts that the parting would probably be forever. “So many people from the village came out and left. When I said I was going back, even his father didn’t believe me.” “But the whole family is looking forward to my return,” Ms. Zhang said.
Her husband took all their savings in Japan and the one million yen in compensation, leaving zhang with only one month’s rent. After bidding farewell to her husband in a wheelchair and familiar freedom, Zhang Ping, who had lost her “identity” in Japan, moved out of the temporary “home” and went back to live in the “liao” with seven or eight young Chinese who had just come to Japan. She had a showdown with the landlady, told her situation, and out of sympathy, the landlady, instead of firing her, raised her salary by 10,000 yuan.
I abandoned my husband and daughter, alone in Japan
Life surface placid, but already under the turbulent undercurrent.
Without a visa to work in Japan, known as “black”, “once was reported or discovered by China administration, have permanent promptly sent home and be dangerous, but also accompanied by a huge amount of fine, fine is often the most unacceptable, because most of the” black “people in Japan, has only one simple purpose – to earn more money.
Identity anxiety makes Zhang Ping unable to eat and sleep well. She does not know when she will be investigated and then sent back to China. Fearing that going to the hospital will expose her illegal detention identity, she always carries a variety of anti-inflammatory drugs, gunpowder and stomach medicine in her pocket. Her colleagues quipped that no matter who was ill, just tell Zhang that she had medicine in her pocket. But Zhang Ping himself felt that it was necessary: “I can’t fall down. It’s over.”
Zhang Ping thoroughly evasive life from a telephone began. That day, while she was resting in liao, a colleague called and said, “Someone is looking for you in the shop.” Zhang Ping still does not know who that person is, why seek her, “I have never made any person in Tokyo, I am afraid the identity is not good, if someone find the shop will bring trouble to the owner, the owner owes me, I can not harm her”.
That afternoon, Zhang Ping has never been to the store, she said goodbye to the landlady on the phone, began to stray.
Only a handful of people know her whereabouts, including the Cantonese chef who once lent her $1 million. Chinese in Japan have their own small groups, but they are not very close. “The worst are our countrymen.” — This is the experience that Sister Wang, who has been struggling in Japan for more than 20 years, summarizes with Zhang Ping. Sister Wang is Zhang Ping’s benefactor when he first arrived in Yokohama. Their acquaintance and Zhang Ping’s migration from Tokyo to Yokohama have inseparable reasons from the Cantonese chef.
Before coming to Yokohama, Zhang Ping had to rush around like any “black hukou” with its head cut off. When the visa was still valid, zhang ping once bought an apple iPhone and got a real-name phone card, with which she registered for WeChat and joined several “work groups” of 500 people. On average, there are nearly 100 people in each group with a “black hukou”, like Zhang Ping. “If you are not looking for a job, you don’t talk to anyone. You don’t know who is good or bad. There is friendship, which is quite dangerous.
The real jobs that black hukou holders can do pay little, often less than half the normal industry wage, and come with a lot of “uncertainty”. Zhang Ping once heard from her friends working in Yamagata County, a little girl “black” in a shop, one night, her boss did not wear anything to drill into her bed, “can she call the police? Can’t. Does she dare to resign? Dare not. She had to endure it, like a slave.”
At the time, Ms. Zhang was considering taking a job at a restaurant in Kumagaya that paid 100,000 yuan a month, similar to that of the girl. She consulted with her Cantonese chef, who discouraged her. “I was so scared afterwards, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I went,” she said.
While being threatened by various hidden rules, the temptation of the custom shop (brothel) to Zhang Ping never stops. Although she grew up farming, Zhang Ping was not bad. Years of indoor work made her thin and pale. Although she could not afford good skin care products, she also reduced the damage to her skin because she did not make up.
“Reserved” women are the most popular in the custom shop, and if she accepts the job, she can earn between 500,000 yen and 1 million yen a month. But Zhang Ping could not let go of her dignity. Many times, her old father would beat her with words, saying, “You can’t do a bad job.” Then she would say, “Don’t worry, your girl is so ambitious that she won’t do anything harmful to morals.
However, life does not give black hukou much choice. After eliminating so many options, Zhang ping found she had no choice. The Cantonese chef offered an olive branch. “Why don’t we go to Yokohama?” he said. “Together” means to live together, to live together. Zhang Ping could read the meaning from his eyes.
“I won’t lose anything to you and your family. We’ll depend on each other for everything.” That is a twisted promise. My son was 14 years old at that time, but for some unknown reason, he never let his wife come to visit him, and he seldom went back to China. He than Zhang Ping a few years older, ugly, permanent identity, will soon be dispatched with the company from Tokyo to Yokohama.
Zhang Ping once asked him why he had to be with herself, and he said, “It’s hard to see you are simple.”
But in fact, Zhang Ping’s heart was as clear as a mirror: “If I can’t support myself, will he support me? Impossible.”
5
It was then that her husband became “useless”. This situation is beyond Zhang Ping’s expectation.
After her husband came back to China, he stayed at Zhang Ping’s mother’s house in the name of taking care of the children. “A uncle was living in his mother-in-law’s house. I was afraid he was uncomfortable, so I always sent money to him to make him feel stronger.” But before long, Zhang Ping found that her husband had become a bottomless pit.
After coming back to China, her husband basically restored the ability to work, but Zhang Ping decided to black in Japan’s choice, let him completely lost the confidence to rebuild the life. He drank every day to paralyze himself. Every month, Zhang Ping sent him 10,000 yuan of living expenses. He could drink more than 9,000 yuan, and he drank the money for his daughter’s cram school. He was not a good drinker. When he drank too much, his drinking friends made fun of him, saying that he was an eighth son of a bitch. His brother and sister-in-law’s family often scolded him for his incompetence.
“They told him, ‘Why do you come back here and leave your wife alone’. Sometimes I feel like I owe him something.” Zhang Ping knows all about her husband.
One day at 2 o ‘clock in the morning, Zhang Ping just came home from work in a restaurant. Her daughter’s video call and a short message rang on her mobile phone: “Mom, you pick up the video, you pick up the video, you don’t pick up the video, my father is going to kill me.”
She shuddered as she opened the video call and was surprised to see her once honest husband, his face red and ferocious with his fist hitting the child on the head and back. The child ran all over the room, crying. Zhang Ping wanted to ask for help, but she didn’t know whom to turn to — even though it was her mother’s house, she had moved to a small shop for convenience.
This is not the first time the husband has spanked the child. On one occasion, the daughter stopped him to say to others that Zhang Ping “there is someone outside” such words, was beaten violently by her husband. “If he hit my girl, I hate him, and if it weren’t for hating him, I might never get along with this man.” Zhang Ping couldn’t tell who was at fault first.
She still does not understand how her husband became so. Since her marriage to Japan, Zhang Ping and her husband have never been apart. Her husband’s mother died early, and her father suddenly became paralyzed before marriage. All the relatives on the other side of her husband’s family thought that Zhang Ping would not marry him, but she still chose to marry him. Perhaps it was her husband who felt zhang Ping was indebted to their family. After marriage, their life was always zhang Ping’s decision, and her husband did as he was told. He never complained about every decision, no matter it was right or wrong.
Debt and hate intertwined, in The heart of Zhang Ping twisted into a twisted love. Inside, she thinks it’s all because of her decision to stay in Japan. But “Since I choose to stay here, I must stick to it. Sometimes I regret it. When I see my child being beaten, I regret it, but only for a moment.”
In the twist, Ms. Zhang, her husband and the Cantonese chef find themselves in a delicate position. “I don’t like to have a home at home [in my hometown] and a home outside. I hated it at first, but gradually I got used to it – for survival, I don’t know if you can understand. ‘ Zhang ping said.
This secret became the biggest secret pain in Zhang Ping heart, even bigger than “black” fear in Japan. She never allowed her husband to detect the slightest suspicion, but she was often unable to conceal her discontent.
Once, in order to obtain a “good identity”, Zhang Ping even planned to ask someone to find a Japanese old man to do a fake marriage, “would rather spend more money to fake marriage with a Japanese, but not with a Chinese permanent identity of fake marriage, do not do the husband and wife thing, they will not let you easily. I don’t want that.”
For this reason, Zhang ping filed for divorce from her husband in late 2017, “secretly”. She told her husband to keep quiet as if nothing had happened — after all, he had to look good while he was still living at his mother-in-law’s house. Ungrateful, the husband expressed his resistance by drinking too much, beating the children and making a lot of nonsense. “At that time, when we sent a message, my heart was shaking. He said I must have someone out there, and I wouldn’t give him any more money,” he said. “I really won’t give him any more money,” Ms. Zhang said. “I want to save money to buy a house — but to say I’m taken, I won’t admit it.”
The whole winter, the couple separated by more than 2,000 kilometers, while each other’s patience. In early 2018, the husband finally compromised. Legal proceedings for divorce, no property can be divided, and no one knows about it.
“My divorce is not because the relationship has broken down to the point where I can’t get over it. I may go home and test him for a while and then remarry. I knew that it was a pit of fire, that I had jumped out of it, that I could not jump back in, that he was the pit of fire, but I still had a duty towards him. Besides, he’s such a drinker, he wouldn’t have done anything if he’d known I was here.” Zhang Ping’s words are still tangled and uncertain.
However, a real divorce is settled, but a fake marriage is not carried out because of the high risk.
Now, Zhang Ping wears a diamond ring bought by a Cantonese chef at Takashimaya (shopping mall) on her ring finger, worth more than 10,000 yuan. On her wrist, she wears the jade bracelet bought by a Cantonese chef on her way to learn driving. Her eyes are blank and happy.
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t tell him (her husband), but I’ll keep the ring for a while.” She said.
6
First to Yokohama, Zhang Ping in sister Wang’s shop as a massage apprentice. Sister Wang’s son was an apprentice to a Cantonese chef, so they knew each other, and their identities were clear.
But the shop is full of people, someone always ask zhang Ping about the identity of the thing, “what people have, what purpose have. You don’t know what their heart is in. At that time, Zhang Ping every day fear, can only “net printing children (deliberately) do not talk to them”, the whole other shop assistants think she is a “color.”
In addition to following Sister Wang, Zhang herself carefully divided a number of “black jobs,” including a job found in a newspaper, in a laundry factory run by fujian people, pay 10,000 yen a day, regardless of food, accommodation, accommodation fee of 25,000 yen a month.
The laundry provides disposable towels to the hot springs and hotels, and Ms. Zhang’s job is to fill the machines with towels. “When you put them in here, what comes out there is the finished product of the board,” she said. When I’m busy, I work 24 hours a day, no shifts, and stay up all night. “The machine turns fast, you must also work fast, for his machine, there is a manager to scold you, first with Fujian dialect scold, then with Japanese scold, dig down from the ancestor”.
Every once in a while, the machine would stop for 10 minutes and the staff would all go to the toilet. If the staff did not go at that time and wanted to go again later, the administrator would continue to scold: “What did you do there?” Zhang Ping felt that here, she is not a person at all, “no one take you as a person.” But even with this kind of work, Zhang Ping had to bite the tongue and go on working. “The blister under her foot is all her own, so who is to blame?”
Later, Zhang ping found that her ability to adapt to fear was beyond her imagination.
Because cantonese cuisine teacher’s Japanese is not good, once, let her accompany to the district service office to do the material. He was taking Zhang Ping near a market on his bicycle when two policemen motioned them out of the car.
From the moment the police waved, Zhang Ping pretended to be calm on the surface, but in the heart, “the police asked, are you a couple? I said no, I’ve come to Japan to play “, then two people have their papers – until then, zhang ping to hide identity, pay a premium client to do a fake “settle card”, is probably belong to the short-term residential certificate of Japanese relatives, what also don’t know her, only know that if connected to the Internet to check, nine times out of ten is goof.
Fortunately, the two policemen did not take the matter seriously, telling them that “no one should ride a bicycle”. Zhang Ping apologizes and watches the police walk away. As soon as the police figure leaves her sight, Zhang Ping winds up like a clockwork. She rushes into the crowd and runs all the way, saying to the Cantonese chef, “Please go away from me.
Also don’t know how long ran, in a corner, zhang ping suddenly settle – wonderfully, just the two police appeared in front of her, “I stood there didn’t dare to move, I dare not to run again, and then walk, they also saw me and walked from their, I clearly heard them talking about my identity, but somehow can’t find”.
When she first walked to the market, Zhang Ping saw that everyone looked like a policeman. She was like a mouse, stooping low and afraid to make eye contact with anyone. She called her friend in Tokyo, who told her to “come back,” but the minimum one-way fare from Yokohama to Tokyo was 12,500 yen, and she didn’t have enough of the 2,000 yen she had.
Zhang Ping walked all the way to the dark and sat down on an unknown park bench, tears streaming down her face.
Also do not know how long to cry, cantonese food master’s phone call came over, said you want to find a cafe to stay. But Zhang Ping dare not, “In the park, all directions are empty, I can run at any time, to the cafe, where do you run?”
Midnight, more coming in the distance a tramp, smile to with zhang ping to find some fun, zhang ping doesn’t react, trance thought he was a policeman, butt, like a spring, ceng once played to get up from the bench, ran to hide in the bushes near the eyes of fear like the deer saw the hunter. The tramp, however, was frightened by her, and waved his hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right.
After the tramp left, Zhang Ping went back to the bench and sat there until dawn. She came home in the early morning light, wrapped in her flimsy clothes. At the door, she watched from a distance to see if there were any suspicious people, then she stamped upstairs, locked the door, turned on the air conditioner to its maximum, and huddled in bed for a whole day.
Thinking about it later, she felt both scared and amused — the worst thing she could do when caught was to be sent back to China — but she had not earned enough money, and she could not just walk away. Even on the park bench, she kept saying to herself: “Zhang Ping, you can’t break down, you haven’t saved enough money to buy a house!”
That year, Zhang Ping did not save any money.
Due to years of irregular diet and medicine, she “took” her stomach bad. When it was serious, her face was sallow and she vomited all day long, so painful that she could not even straighten her waist. She still insisted on working, and the owner of the shop at that time, fearing that she would die in the shop, forced her to go to see a doctor.
Zhang ping went to a nearby hospital with the feeling of dying. “At that time, I thought, if I can see it, If I can’t report it to me, I will go back to China,” she said. Did not think, to the hospital, the family as long as the home address, do not verify. Doctors said her gastric mucosa had fallen off so badly that it would have turned into stomach cancer if it had been prolonged.
Hearing the doctor’s words, Zhang Ping felt sad. She did not feel bad about herself. She felt bad about money: “I have made some money and now I can see the doctor.”
Just like in 2015, she said goodbye to her then-boss by phone. This time, she quit her job in order to see a doctor. “The doctor said you had to come to the hospital to see a doctor, and I think I can’t delay the boss’s business if I see a doctor.”
7
The most dangerous places are the safest. This “black under the lights” conclusion was reached by Zhang Ping after two years of “living” in Yokohama.
Later, when Sister Wang’s store went to Kobe, she went to Kobe, and then sister Wang’s store couldn’t operate any more, so she went to Kyoto. “Wandering around,” Zhang ping said.
Over the years, Zhang Ping’s luggage left a quilt, a few clothes, a trolley box took away. Besides the electric rice cooker, she always keeps the cooking tools with her. Every time she moves, the POTS and pans will be cleaned up and left to the next tenant. “It is a pity that all the good things are thrown away.
Today, Zhang Ping hides in the most prosperous area of Yokohama. In order to make as much money as possible and to reduce unnecessary communication with others, she chooses a job that she can undertake all the time.
At first, she worked 10 hours a day in shifts with an international student. After the student left, Zhang held up a full day’s work by herself. I am busy from 11:00 noon to 11:00 PM every day, with only half an hour break, 1000 yen an hour, when I have no money to rest.
For months, she would leave early at 5 p.m. on a given day unless she had to, asking her boss to help her out — a “full day’s work” for others, but a half-day for Zhang.
Paying by the hour, Zhang ping had “the happiest period of life”. Barring accidents, she earns 300, 000 yen a month. Under her efforts, the water in the shop can achieve more than 400 thousand a day, the boss is very satisfied with Zhang Ping, but do not know the eyes of this silent female desperate three lang, in fact, is a black time bomb in Japan.
“I will never tell anyone who I really am again. It’s not good for you or anybody else.” Over the years, Zhang Ping has been solid, slowly adapted to the “invisible” life. Here, no phone card or bank card belongs to her. Every month, she will spend 3,000 yuan to buy a Wi-Fi network, so that she can contact with her family. Saving money, she never sent to her husband, in addition to the monthly fixed to his daughter she can remit the money outside the sister-in-law, the rest of the money she is in to the bank card of the cantonese cuisine chef, “one thousand strike at unexpected moment (suddenly) was caught, I don’t have a fine, I fold, he can also give me the money back home – this trust me there is some” to him.
The only regret is that zhang Ping still failed to reach her expected goal after several years of hard work: “The more money she saved for the house, the less money she needed. Now she hasn’t even saved one corner of the house, not to mention the down payment.”
If looking back, Zhang ping would reply, “I can’t say whether it was worth it. He went back, but I didn’t go.”
Last year, Zhang Ping’s brother’s children also want to go to Japan, she advised not to come, brother asked her why, she said the psychological pressure is too much, “if not, can die here.” People who come to Japan lose their hair, a lot of it when they take a shower. For a while, I couldn’t lie awake with pain and needle-like pain in the front and back, and I need him to lift me up (lift, push) for survival.
Alcohol relieves pain, which used to go away with a can of beer, but now doesn’t work. But Zhang Ping did not dare to drink more, she was afraid that her capacity for alcohol is not good, drunk words loquacious. Because of the pain, she went to the hospital to have a chest X-ray and a CT scan. She did not find anything wrong and spent a lot of money.
Over the years, Zhang Ping felt that she had suffered as much as she deserved.
Late last year, she was having a video with her husband when a group of drinking friends behind him mocked her, asking, “When are you coming back, sister-in-law?”
Zhang Ping said earnestly: “Next year.”
“Really?” they asked in disbelief.
‘Indeed!
Zhang Ping wanted to go home and watch over her children and parents. “Once, I made a video with my girl. Her old aunt cooked pickled cabbage for her. ‘” She said, staring uncomfortably at the other end of the video.
Since last year, Zhang Ping has given up on herself and stopped studying The book. The famine was nearly over, and she had saved up some money for a down payment. Next, she wants to be able to return to China when she wants to, rather than be taken away, and if it is the latter, she accepts.
She plans to return to the northeast to “buy a house, then do something, do some business, if it doesn’t work out, then think about it,” and this time she’s aiming farther afield, to Australia.
“I want to spend some time with my parents, at least in their old age, so I’m not so sorry if something happens. After that, I will go to Australia. There are many Chinese classmates in my primary school there, and the couple can earn 500,000 yuan a year. Of course, they have to rely on the intermediary agent to apply for a fake visa.
Zhang Ping has made her life back home very clear, but before it all starts, she has to stay in bed for two days and two nights.
“There’s nothing to panic about,” she said to herself. “It’s just beginning.”
(The characters are not real names.)
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