The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee

Author:Hyeonseo Lee [Lee, Hyeonseo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-07-01T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

The biggest, brashest city in Asia

I took the train with a Korean-Chinese acquaintance of mine named Yee-un, who was also moving to Shanghai. She was a waitress I’d met once or twice. I noticed that she avoided the subject of her past, which was fine by me. I told her nothing of mine. I guessed we were both running away from something. She was good-natured, with a blunt manner and a foghorn voice. I liked her. When we talked of how we would get by in Shanghai we both had the same thought at once: we could share an apartment. The moment we agreed on it I felt the tension and anxiety that had been in me for weeks begin to dissolve. Sharing with Yee-un meant I would not have to cope with everything alone all over again. We were both almost penniless, but now starting anew didn’t seem so daunting.

We were laughing over the fact that we’d be eating nothing but instant noodles until we found work when I saw a forest-green police uniform and cap enter the far end of the long carriage, and people reaching for jackets and wallets.

They were holding up their IDs. Beads of cold sweat broke out on my brow.

I knew that these checks sometimes happened on buses and trains, but until now I’d been lucky.

The policeman was examining each one with a nod, moving along the rows, coming closer.

He was fifteen yards away. What to do? My chest felt as if it were stuffed with hot wool. Panic was rising in me. Yee-un’s mouth was moving. I heard her voice as if it were underwater.

‘Soon-hyang, I said are you all right?’

‘Bit travel-sick,’ I said, and shot out of my seat.

I locked the door of the toilet and waited, listening to a rushing, keening noise as the train entered a long tunnel and picked up speed. When I emerged after almost an hour, I peeped into the carriages to the left and the right. The policeman had gone.

I found Yee-un asleep in her seat. For the rest of the journey I sat upright and alert, my stomach clenching with nerves.

The train approached Shanghai Station at dawn. Against a feathered peach sky I glimpsed the faint outlines of towers half a kilometre high, the skyline of Pudong. Maybe it was because I was hearing snatches of Shanghainese and other dialects around me in the carriage, but it didn’t feel like I was even in China any more.

Many of the passengers disembarking with huge holdalls and rucksacks were people like Yee-un and me. Young migrants, some of the thousands arriving every week in the biggest, brashest city in Asia to start new lives, to be someone, make fortunes, create new identities, or to hide. Back in Shenyang I’d sometimes felt like a special, secret visitor. Here I was utterly insignificant. This realization was alienating and exciting at the same time. Here, perhaps I could be anyone I wanted to be.

The year I arrived, about 17

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