China World, Chapter 2

"Oooh, you're so sweaty!" A young Chinese girl said to Penelope as she was performing a foot massage later that evening.
	"White girls sweat so much!"
	Penelope's cheeks went even redder; she was incredibly self-conscious about how much she was sweating and it didn't help to have this little brat call attention to it. It was hard labor, rubbing this girl's feet with so much enthusiasm! And the air conditioning seemed to be directed towards the client, not the nail lady. Although it was a great experience for the customer, it was arduous for the technician.
	Incidentally, the fact that white girls sweat more than Asian women was one of the arguments that white women were naturally less sophisticated and better suited to doing manual labor. This Chinese girl was drinking some kind of blended iced coffee drink with whipped cream on top; Penelope eyed the beverage with envy but knew that the girl would never deign to share it.
	"Good foot massage, though," the client said in a catty tone, talking about the only part of Penelope's life that was relevant to hers.
	"Can I have ten more minutes? And a little more pressure please."
	Penelope smiled and nodded with feigned enthusiasm, rubbing the girl's plump feet for even longer. The girl settled into her seat, and sipped her drink with a serene expression.
	Penelope wouldn't receive any extra money for doing this either, since all payments went to Miss Huang. The client ignored Penelope, which was the natural thing to do, and rested her moon-shaped face on her hand, closing her eyes to more fully enjoy this lovely foot massage. She didn't even bother to leave a review for Penelope, at the end of the service. And she only finished half of her iced coffee: organic shade-grown espresso gone to waste down the sink. A white girl might never have a single cup of coffee in her whole life, and certainly not one so nice as this.
	But it was probably a white girl who picked the beans.
	"Hi, Penny?"
	Penelope turned around to see a woman she had done earlier that day. She was holding a bottle of red nail polish in her hand.
	"I kind of like this color better. Could you re-do my toes please?" she asked, pointing down at her bare feet as though Penelope weren't smart enough to grasp her meaning.
	Penelope wanted to smack the girl! It wasn't so much her request, which was bad enough, but the arrogant way she asked for it. And this color of red was barely any different than the one she had on right now! Once again, the blonde girl had to suppress her feelings of indignation.
	"Yes, Miss. Please take a seat. I would love to polish your nails!"
	"Thanks! Let's add a fifteen minute massage too. I've been running around all day and I really need it."
	'Running around all day'? Penelope had been hunched over all day, slaving away at a repetitive task! But this wouldn't even enter the client's thoughts. She handed over the bottle of nail polish and walked over to one of the plush chairs to await her treatment. Her small feet had a reddish hue to them from the heat of the day, and Penelope wasn't allowed to wash them for a simple polish change. With nobody looking, she crushed the plastic coffee cup in her hand and stuffed it into the trash. It did very little to vent her fury at having to do more of this pampering labor.
	Sure enough, Sarah didn't show up to her shift that day, causing Miss Haung to make some nasty comment about how white girls are so flaky.
	"Maybe if they actually showed up on time, we could trust white women to do important things!"
	Some other clients laughed, and none of the manicurists dared to stand up for themselves. What would be the point? It was a cruel remark on many levels: a white employee could show perfect attendance, perfect performance, and a perfect attitude and she would still never be allowed to rise above the job of a servant. Chinese women would 'promote' them in other ways, such as by sending them to work on wealthier (and thus more demanding) clientele. The implication was that some of the wealthy women's status would rub off on her attendants, but nobody seemed to care if this did or didn't happen.
	Penelope wasn't allowed to leave Lotus Nails until after 8PM. Her thoughts were so dark that she was more angry at Sarah for not showing up than at the society that put her in such a position to begin with.
	At the end of the day, Miss Huang sat at the front desk with her feet up. She was just looking at her smartphone as all the technicians cleaned the salon from top to bottom.
	"Hurry up, girls! I have tickets to see Jin Soon."
	Penelope swept up as Rhonda polished each of the pedicure bowls, and all the other girls hurried through the considerable task of closing the salon. Everything had to be sparkling and appear brand new for Miss Huang's inspection. Although the woman didn't lift a finger to help, she was more than happy to cane her employees if they failed in any way. It was like she took pleasure in this arrangement, running her narrow eyes over every centimeter of the salon in search of some reason to get angry and lash out. Maybe she was angry that she was only a manager, not the owner?
	In any case, the girls did well enough, and Penelope the salon bone-tired after her 11 hour shift.
	It didn't cool down much at night; the heat and humidity was still there but at least there was no sunlight to contend with.
	"Come on, let's go to Rose's," Rhonda said, wiping some perspiration from her forehead.
	It was a bit of a walk to the bus stop. Penelope's lower back was aching from the stooped posture she had to take for so much of the day, and she could still smell the acetone on her breath. On their way to the bus stop, the two women encountered something that made Penelope quite uncomfortable.
	It was a waifish blonde girl wearing little more than a silvery cotton slip, kneeling on a rug on the sidewalk. Beside her was a large screen that displayed Chinese characters that Penelope couldn't read. The girl was stone-faced, but judging by her stooped shoulders and downward gaze, she was being punished for something and found this quite humiliating. It reminded Penelope of brutish societies that would make a thief hold a sign saying, "I stole" as part of their discipline. But the most striking thing was that the girl carried a riding crop in her mouth!
	Rhonda deliberately didn't look at the girl, and from this Penelope understood that she shouldn't pay too much attention to the scene either. It was too absurd for her to ignore however, and the next thing that happened was absolutely mad.
	An angry-looking Chinese woman was walking by at a brisk pace. She was dressed business casual: black trousers and a mauve shirt, and was well into her middle age. The waifish girl's eyes went even bigger at the woman's approach, and the woman gave her a dark smile in return.
	"Another stealing bitch!" the woman exclaimed.
	"We give you everything you need, and you still want to steal from us??"
	The woman seemed unhinged – her face was red with anger or perhaps she was drunk. She took the riding crop from between the blonde girl's teeth and slashed it through the air with frightening speed to test its weight.
	"Bend over. Put that nose on the cement, girl."
	The blonde girl nodded meekly, and hunched forward so that her butt was high up in the air and her nose was touching the dirty concrete. Penelope saw serious red welts on her exposed backside, all the way down her skinny thighs. She was wearing a pair of micro panties that gave her the least imaginable coverage, and they appeared to dig into her flesh on top of that like they were two sizes too small. The mature Chinese woman set her purse down and positioned herself behind the submissive white girl to strike, putting way more force into the blow than seemed reasonable.
	*CRACK!
	"MMMMMnn!" The white girl cried out as she felt the first blow land. She clenched her fists together but kept her nose exactly where it was.
	Penelope realized she had stopped walking to stare at this spectacle. She felt Rhonda push her along, but resisted it.
	*CRACK!
	"AAAhh!"
	The woman was clearly beyond reason; this was like some kind of road rage. She kept at it for five more strokes, until the white girl had lost her composure entirely. She was sobbing pathetically and begging for mercy and her face had become dirty from contact with the sidewalk.
	"Hm, how much is your contract?" the Chinese woman asked, touching the screen nearby with all the Mandarin characters on it.
	A number flashed up in the tens of thousands. The woman laughed at the number, massaging the muscles in her wrists as she calmed down.
	"You are terrible at cooking, apparently."
	She swiped left on the screen. More text came up; green bars that apparently represented each of the girl's attribute ratings.
	"Below average in cleaning... Oh, above average in bedroom arts! But a terrible rating for your attitude. I hate it when a girl has a bad attitude about servicing me. And a thief, as well? You're not good for anything, are you?"
	The girl had a pathetic expression on her lovely face; how dreadful to be beaten and then humiliated by all the poor ratings she had received from various women.
	The Chinese woman dropped the riding crop on the cement near the girl's face, picked up her purse and left. The miserable blonde girl picked up the riding crop using only her mouth and assumed the same kneeling position she had before, with her butt resting against her ankles. There were tears running down her face, which she didn't bother wiping away.
	"We need to go," Rhonda hissed, practically shoving Penelope away from the scene.
	This left quite an impact on Penelope; she couldn't believe that a person could sink so low as to be some public whipping girl – and that any Chinese woman could purchase her up to presumably do worse things in private! She wanted to reach out to comfort the girl, but wouldn't she just end up right beside her if she did such a thing? She couldn't even ask what the girl did wrong since everyone was kept isolated by the nature of constant surveillance.
	They continued walking to the bus stop in silence. Penelope didn't really feel like having a drink, but went along with the plan anyway.
	She kept telling herself that the abusive Chinese woman she had just seen was an exceptional case. Few women stayed in New Beijing past their mid 30s. Most would find husbands and start families in other cities that were slightly more 'normal.' If a woman stayed in the city for longer than that, it was safe to assume she was a little too invested in the lifestyle it afforded. That was when comfort gave way to debauchery – the dark side of New Beijing that people made jokes about but never addressed in any meaningful way. Literally any issue was more important than the welfare of white women; even the use plastic straws demanded more media coverage than the systemic exploitation of millions of people.
	"It bothers you, doesn't it?" Rhonda said as they were sitting together on the bus ride back to Yorktown.
	Penelope was unsure of how to handle this: what was she allowed to say and what would land her in front of the People's Council? She settled on nodding her head, aware that the cameras on the bus would record it and probably use the data to lower her rating on 'attitude.'
	"That girl needed the correction," Rhonda said. It sounded like she was just quoting party orthodoxy.
	Penelope badly wanted to make some comment about how this society would never put a Chinese woman in such a situation.
	"What will happen to her, ultimately?" she asked instead.
	"It's going to be hard because she has a criminal record now. She can't do a lot of the easier jobs anymore. She will probably end up on an assembly line somewhere, or pulling a rickshaw around the People's Park."
	That was sugarcoating it. There were plenty worse jobs than those: being reduced to a human footrest at some coffee shop, perhaps. Or being blindfolded and put to work in a brothel to perform oral sex and analingus on women who preferred to keep their anonymity.
	"It's not up to us to question the way of things," Rhonda said.
	"We shouldn't even think about it. Just do your best at your work. There are worse jobs than being a pedicurist."
	Penelope made no response. She was lucky to have a job picking the gunk out from beneath women's toes and polishing their nails to satisfaction?
	Rhonda gave a flash of anger when she saw that Penelope wasn't convinced.
	"We are lucky to be where we are. Believe me."
	The conversation petered off and Penelope looked out the window on the ride home. It was more of the same: Chinese women doing their evening workouts, or having dinner at fancy restaurants where white girls couldn't get a table but might work as waitresses and dishwashers. There were more beggars, too.
	Apparently, instead of an unemployment system, they were just made to kneel on the sidewalk and offer their services at bargain basement prices to whoever was interested. One benefit of this was devaluing the price of labor for white women across the city, since it created a visible pool of disposable workers. Another perk was that it made unemployment horrendously shameful – something to be avoided at all costs even if it meant tolerating mistreatment and all kinds of exploitation.
	**
	The People's Council subsidized alcohol for white women, creating serious discounts on wine and giving tax incentives to liquor stores that served white clientele. There weren't many places white women could socialize in New Beijing outside of bars, in fact. Penelope was reminded of those stories about coal miners where they couldn't get their paycheck unless they purchased a drink, and how this sort of arrangement lead to widespread alcoholism and other poor behavior. All of this became another criticism of white girls; a running joke or self-fulfilling prophecy that distanced them from any sort of respectable status.
	Rose's Bar had a permanent happy hour that reflected this principle: two-for-one glasses of fortified wine -- no sharing -- and it was considered very rude to leave an alcoholic beverage unfinished. When Penelope and Rhonda walked in, the place was rowdy. They walked down the steps into an overcrowded basement with low ceilings and no air conditioning. K-pop music was blaring over the speakers, and attractive Asian idols were doing were choreographed dances on the various screens throughout the place. Mostly they were showing off lavish lifestyles and bragging about their unlimited disposable incomes. The place was too loud to have much of a serious conversation, maybe that was deliberate.
	The two women sidled into a table with some women that Rhonda knew casually, and a pushy waitress came by and took their drink order. Or rather, she whisked by the table and yelled "Two for one?!" and the girls nodded in agreement. The din of music was already giving her a headache, but at least the service was quick.
	The drinks were swill, in Penelope's opinion – easily the worst wine she had ever drank. It was sour and tart, and the Korean waitress put the glasses on their table with a lack of grace that bordered on contempt. The drinks did the job, though. After the first over-filled glass Penelope was buzzing, and on the second she was drunk. The waitress came back and asked if they wanted another round – Penelope shook her head 'no' and this caused a stir at the table. Everyone looked uncomfortable all of a sudden, except the waitress who was completely appalled.
	"She's just kidding!" Rhonda chimed in.
	"Yeah, one more round. But first I want to dance!"
	Rhonda grabbed Penelope by the hand and dragged her to the dance floor. She pressed her entire body up against Penelope's – it was soft but with clear muscle definition, glistening with sweat. She wrapped her arms around Penelope's neck affectionately, and leaned in close.
	"When a woman offers you something, the answer is always 'yes," Rhonda shouted.
	She added something else, but the noise of it got lost against the music. They danced together for quite a while. Rhonda had some moves – and she strategically positioned them towards the center of the dance floor where the waitress didn't bother seeking them out. This was the nearest thing to a normal experience Penelope had in this world so far. She was slippery from the heat of the basement bar, rocking her hips back and forth on a dance floor filled with women like her.
	The only thing she took issue with was the way Rhonda stuck one leg between hers, setting herself up in such a way that Penelope was grinding on her thigh. She didn't have the boldness to pull away, or didn't want to, and accepted the girl's dominant hands on her hips keeping her locked in this exact position. Back and forth they danced, their breasts smushed together, youthful bodies moving to the rhythm of a culture that wasn't theirs, but that dominated every facet of their lives.
	**
	Penelope jolted awake the next morning with a serious hangover. Her mouth was dry and briny, prompting her to drink the questionable tap water before her pink sludge breakfast. Whether from nerves or from residual alcohol poisoning, her stomach flip-flopped on the entire ride to the Council Headquarters for her 8AM meeting. That alcohol must have had some serious impurities – no woman in her early 20s should ever experience a hangover so bad.
	The building was immaculately clean, perhaps due to the contrite women in skintight orange jumpsuits who were detailing the marble floor. Each woman was using a little toothbrush or a chamois rags no larger than their hand, in conjunction with slow meditative strokes. The Council employees took no small pleasure in supervising this task, pointing to spots the women had missed usually with the pointed toes of their high heels. The receptionist sent Penelope down a hallway, where she sat on a hard wooden bench to await her questioning.
	It was a miserable time. She had no smartphone to distract her, no drinking water nearby, and nothing to hold her attention but for well-dressed civil servants who strutted up and down the hallway, often in stockinged feet. Her hangover served one purpose though: it overshadowed the fear and dread she would have otherwise been feeling, to be interrogated by the secret police. The previous night was largely a blur – did she make out with Rhonda at some point?
	"Penelope, we are ready for you."
	It was the Japanese woman from the day before, now dressed in a pinstripe skirt and tailored jacket. Even standing up was a challenge for Penelope; the change in equilibrium made her want to vomit. She was certain the woman could smell the alcohol on her breath – off to a bad start already.
	"Take a seat," the Councilwoman said.
	They were in a small room with a desk, two chairs, and a one-way mirror. Penelope felt some saliva build up in her mouth and swallowed it. She did NOT want to throw up here.
	"I will get to the point: the details of your case are very concerning to me. You had no fingerprints on file, no log of your DNA, and you were talking about things you should have no way of knowing."
	Penelope felt the dread creep on. She was screwed.
	"And here's something I find really odd: I looked at the surveillance footage from outside that bootleg tanning facility. The place is abandoned! Nobody had been in and out of there in weeks. Look, see."
	The one-way mirror became a video monitor, showing the street where Penelope had emerged from on her first day here. The girl's eyes went wide: she could clearly make a street sign that showed her where it was! Only, the text was in Mandarin, and Penelope had no grasp of the language. How could she possibly memorize those characters she had never seen before, and that looked so much alike to her?
	She tried her best anyway, watching as the video feed fast-forwarded for several days, cutting between different angles and showing that the Councilwoman was correct. No one had been in and out of that place for as long as the video was running, and it went for weeks. Then it got the point where Penelope emerged from the basement in her white bikini, and the monitor became a mirror again. Although she couldn't memorize the street name, she got one important clue: there was an Italian restaurant nearby called Di Columbus.
	"Let's start with a simple question: how did you get to that basement without our cameras seeing you?"
	"I don't know," was Penelope's response.
	The Councilwoman glared at the girl.
	"Stop acting like a stupid gweilo!" she snapped.
	"That may fool everyone else, but I am not so stupid. I think you are a spy sent here to undermine the People's Council. I believe that you entered that place through one of those illegal tunnels that have been popping up around the city. And--"
	The door whipped open and a short, squat Chinese woman barged in. She looked furious. Penelope's interrogator sprang to her feet and bowed deeply to the woman.
	"Niko!" the fat woman shouted, following it up with an incomprehensible string of abusive remarks in Mandarin.
	Niko stared at the ground, looking totally cowed as the woman continued her verbal assault. One thing concerned Penelope more than this exchange: it was the unpleasant perfume that the high-ranking woman was wearing. Like a counterfeit Chanel, musty and acrid – Penelope could feel it in her throat and...
	Oh no.
	Just as Niko was offering an explanation for her actions (or this was Penelope's guess), Penelope lost control of herself and threw up everywhere. Niko and the Chinese official both looked at her with undisguised loathing, but the Chinese woman was the first to act.
	She slapped Niko full across the face, the sound reverberating all across that tiny interrogation cell. It was slightly absurd, considering the fact that Niko was at least a foot taller than her superior officer, and in much better physical shape. The effect was devastating.
	"You think anyone would send a stupid drunk white girl to spy on us?!" the woman shouted at Niko, who looked to be on the verge of tears.
	To be slapped by one's superior represented a total loss of face. Corporal discipline was handed out to white girls freely, but Asian women were supposed to be above it. By the Chinese woman slapping Niko, she was saying, 'you are obviously as foolish as a white woman, and I will treat you as such.' And once Niko had been slapped once, the loss of status was almost irreversible: anyone could subject her to such punishments from now on. The fact that this had happened in front of, and because of, a white woman -- that just made it worse.
	"You asked me about this and I said 'no'!" the Chinese woman continued shouting.
	The fact she was speaking in English was a double insult. First, it meant that Penelope could  share in Niko's humiliation. Secondly, Asian women generally didn't speak English to each other. For her to do so created a social distance between them, like Niko was a white servant.
	 "Do you think you know better than the People's Council?"
	Now Niko was terrified. This was the sort of question that ended careers. It ended them in labor camps and solitary confinement cells. The Japanese bowed deeply, again and again.
	"No, Commander. Never. I am deeply sorry."
	"Clean this mess up. By yourself," the Chinese commander said, pointing to Penelope's embarrassing outburst.
	"You, Katie," the woman said, turning to Penelope, "You damaged Council Property. You will work it off in a foot massage parlor, to start. A nail salon is too good a job for you."
	"Yes ma'am," Penelope responded.
	"You got too swept up in this," the Chinese woman said, addressing Niko now.
	"What, is this your cousin or something?"
	This caused Niko's face to go bright red. How hadn't Penelope seen it before?? Niko was taller than most Asian women by a head; her nose was larger than theirs and the roots of her black hair seemed closer to brown. Is it possible that, somewhere in Niko's family tree, there was a white woman?
	"You start your new job tomorrow. Today, you will attend a reformatory class."
	The high-ranking Councilwoman left. When Penelope saw the crushed expression on Niko's face, she felt a wave of sympathy. Was her entire career over now, because she was pursuing a justifiable lead in an odd case? A junior clerk walked into the room with a smirk on her face, handing Niko some nitrile gloves and a roll of paper towels.
	"Get to work, Niko. Commander says if you are not done in five minutes, I must discipline you. It should not be hard... Cleaning comes naturally to some women!"
	What she meant by 'some women' was unmistakable. A humbled Niko began cleaning up the mess like a lowly maid, as Penelope was ushered away to her reformatory class. On the way out, she noticed the clerk carried a leather tawse in one hand. The girl undoubtedly relished the opportunity to discipline this Japanese woman who was several years her senior and, until moments ago, had been her superior.