Radha Chaddah

Opening Scene: Introduces the voice of the omniscient narrator, sets tone for novel, introduces protagonist and hints at the beginnings of her internal conflict. Chapter 1: Hooks It is a place of staggering beauty, this place tucked away in the middle of nowhere at the heart of the Middle Kingdom. The land is rich with the darkest of soil and, at the right time of year, the hills are thickly carpeted with greenery so bold that the land seems to cry with life. However, for the men and women who dot this landscape with their hard-fought lives, knowledge of the land’s capriciousness in delivering good fortune renders the image less vibrant. In between the fields, outlined by mud irrigation canals furrowed by hand, wooden shacks protrude from the land. They lean this way and that, lacking any sense of fortitude; not a single one stands straight. When the heavy rains flood the fields, the people of this land dare not complain that their leaky roofs leave them drenched to the bone. They humbly accept that these meekest of shelters, while not able to keep them dry, allow them to stay in one spot, sparing the mud beneath them from softening to silt that may carry them away. The walls still stand and bear hooks that serve to pin all that these families own- collections of pots and hoes, of plastic bags filled with roughly folded clothes and worn slippers, quilted coats and sacks of rice- to their spot on the land. Without these rains life would be lost. The tiny rice seedlings, each one transplanted by hand to its spot in a row on these carefully tilled fields, would be lost. The children of the land are not told stories of mythical monsters. Rather they are regaled with the horrors of a famine that once stripped this land bare. Their nightmares are filled with the howl of empty bellies and their daydreams are filled with abundant rains that fall as rice grains into an eternally filled bowl. Squinting to avoid the glare of a brilliant harvest sun, if one focused on the dark dots scattered on the fields, one would come upon Fang Lei, bent over at the waist and knee deep in water cold enough to leave her feet unfeeling. She is surrounded by others similarly disposed, human hooks stuck in the soft earth. “Hurry up! Cut faster!” Fang Bo, Lei’s husband, spat as he talked to his young wife. “Get your stems tied up quickly. I want to catch up with the others.” He stared after Pung and Shu as the brothers waddled their way through the field, their full bodies wading steadily through the muddied water. Pung, who had been called by this common word for fat since he was a young boy, was hampered neither by his own corpulence nor by the considerable weight of the bundled rice stalks that he carried on one shoulder. Shu, though smaller than Pung, was no less robust of a man and waded stride for stride with his brother. Bo’s stomach churned at the thought of food. He was hungry and dreaded the long walk from the field to the Farmer Master’s house. A thin strip of a man, Bo would only manage half the haul of either Pung or Shu. He would have to face the embarrassment of having his day’s work weighed on the farmer master’s scale, his hand stretched out to receive just half the wage collected by each of the brothers. But this was no fault of his own. As a boy he had not had a belly filled up on the ill-gotten rewards of a mother who curried favor with the party leader, whoring herself for extra rations of sugar and white pork fat. Bo had swallowed hard on the saliva that spilled into his mouth when, on his daily walk to school with the pudgy pair, he had noticed the glistening ring of animal oil smeared around their mouths. The smell of the pork fat on their breaths teasing at his stomach. The thought of it now still soured him. “You are so slow. You will do nothing but cost us our dinner. I don’t want to wait for you. I will not wait for you.” He kept his eyes on the brothers, on their backs stained with sweat, watching them move further and further from him. Bo didn’t look at Lei when he spoke. Lei, did not take her eyes off of Bo, though he would not have known that. She was careful to keep her head bowed to her work, stealing a look at his face from under the brim of her hat. His words did not turn her this way or that, neither did her heart jump nor strain at his harshness, simply for the fact that she did not yet know him. She searched his face for clues. Its smallness and tightness reminded her of a fist. His dark eyes were so black, almost absorbing all of the light even on this brightest of days. She hoped there was a softness hidden behind them that she merely could not see. She had looked for this same softness on the night of their marriage, but the moon was shuttered out of his hut so completely that not a single ray of light had fallen across his face. She had become a woman in complete darkness with a man who was invisible to her. Lei reached her left hand deep into the chilly water. She focused on clutching onto a handful of stems tightly and did not let her mind indulge thoughts of what may lie beneath the surface other than what was in her grasp. Her right hand wielded a small sickle with a short wooden handle and a blade dulled from a full day’s labor. She now worked the blade against the stems. Hacking repeatedly, she used the full weight of her body to compensate for its dullness. The tension of the grasped stems slackened as they were successfully hewed. Never loosening her grip, Lei deftly pulled the newly released bundle of stems out from beneath the water, while hooking the sickle by its blade through a leather loop that hung from the rope belt tied tightly around her waist. She had several pre-cut lengths of this same caliber of rope in her pocket, three of which she now used to tie up her bundle of stems, starting with the stiff, green root end and working her way up towards the golden crowns. Lei’s face was wet and her body moist with sweat and heat even as her hands remained stiffened from their time in the icy water. She ran her hands softly over the rice crowns, grateful for the weight of their studded golden tassels. She knew that each of these studs represented the plant’s seeds. Seeds that after many more days of tending to would release soft tender grains of rice. “What are you doing?” Bo barked. “I am finished now.” Lei answered softly. Bo started off across the field, carrying his load with some difficulty, not looking back at her even once. She supposed he didn’t need to as she was following right behind him, carrying a load equal in size to his own. She was close enough to hear his heavy breathing and the small grunts he let out every few steps as he readjusted his slipping load upwards and back onto the scrawny ridge of his shoulder. The knobs of his spine protruded through the woven cloth of his shirt and she wondered what they would feel like if she ran her fingers over them. She hadn’t touched them once in their time together and wondered might he like it if she did.

Working Title: Heartland, Literary Fiction, 108K words Part I: Seven Short Assignments 1. Story Statement When rural Da Long is devastated by an earthquake, Lei, a young field worker newly married into one of Da Long’s impoverished families, finds herself deeply indebted to the misanthropic, land-owning Farmer Master Wang. Lei, and her husband Bo, are forced to join the legions of rural migrants seeking work in China’s burgeoning coastal cities. Unsure if they will ever return home and reunite with the young children they’ve left behind, Lei and Bo become members of Shanghai’s most desperate migrant underclass. At 16, LuLu is already seasoned in survival strategies. Having arrived in Shanghai from a village not unlike Bo’s and Lei’s, Lulu resorts to prostitution after being denied a coveted factory job. Dutifully funneling her earnings home to keep her rural family fed, LuLu refuses to leave her fate to ancestor worship and prophecy or, worse, to the predatory plasma sellers whose needles are facilitating the spread of an unknown illness throughout China’s urban centers. When her wealthiest client, Farmer Master Wang, seeks to extend his legacy by securing a wife for his sick and socially isolated son, LuLu sees an opportunity to finally lift her family out of poverty. 2. The Antagonist In exchange for two cartons of cigarettes and a clutch of eggs, teenage Lei’s family marries her off to a peasant in distant Da Long village. Bo, her husband, is entirely indifferent to Lei, even as his mother belittles her and his sister ignores her. Marriage, for him, serves only to increase his household income and yield him children. Far from home and isolated within her new family, Lei toils in the fields alongside Bo on the land of the powerful and misanthropic Farmer Master Wang. Throughout Lei’s journey from the isolated fields of Da Long to the harsh urban center of Shanghai, she struggles to find her place both in her new family as the unwanted, outsider wife and in time in her role as a mother who is separated from her young children. Lei’s struggle is heightened by constant forces of loneliness, displacement, and crushing poverty that surround her. LuLu dreams of returning home from Shanghai one day and reuniting with her family, especially her beloved younger sister, LiLi. Knowing that her family’s survival depends on the money she earns as a prostitute, LuLu knows she must survive the physical abuse of her pimp, Lao Fu and avoid the perils of her profession. She is witness to the decaying health of her closest friend, Jade another of Lao Fu’s prostitutes, due to drugs and disease. In attempt to gain physical and financial security, LuLu agrees to marry Lao Fu, all the while deceiving her family by telling them that her new husband is a wealthy and respectable businessman. When her family finds out the truth of her shameful profession, LuLu fears that she will lose everyone she loves. More desperate than ever to secure the financial future of her family and prove herself worthy of their love, LuLu enters into an arrangement with Farmer Master Wang, one of her clients, to marry precious LiLi off to his son. LuLu is unaware that Wang’s son is mentally ill and does not realize the peril in which she has placed LiLi. 3. Title Suggestions Heartland The Seedlings Homeward 4. Genre and Comparables Genre: Literary Fiction, Upmarket Fiction, Women's Fiction, Book Club Fiction Pachinko by Min Jin Lee The Leavers by Lisa Ko Both of these novels explore similar themes of self-sacrifice, the tension between individual ambition and familial obligation, and the push-pull of home. Additionally, Pachinko is a multigenerational, family saga as is my novel. 5. Hook Line- I am still working on this. Version One: Lei and LuLu, two desperately naive, teenage girls from China’s rural heartland, migrate to Shanghai to work for the survival of their respective families. Lei’s husband is in love with someone else, and she is thousands of miles away from her children. Lulu, denied a coveted factory job, turns to prostitution. Both girls must become women seasoned in survival if they are to reunite their families and find the love they both desire. Version Two: Two naive, teenage girls, torn from China’s rural heartland, struggle in the unforgiving world of Shanghai’s urban migrant underclass, where they must overcome discrimination, betrayal, and violence to secure the survival of their families. 6. Inner and Secondary Conflicts Lei, inner conflict: Lei is looking for love. The problem is she doesn’t know exactly what it is and how to find it. She has been married off to the peasant farmer, Bo, who is at best indifferent and at worst cruel to her. Furthermore, Lei’s new family, comprised of Bo’s mother and his sister, seems to regard her merely as a workhorse good for bringing extra money into the household. In time, Lei goes on to have children, Yan (daughter) and Long (son), but is quickly geographically separated from them when she is forced to migrate to Shanghai for work. How and where will Lei find love in this set of circumstances? Will she find love with husband? Why does she have feelings for and desire one of her Da Long Village co-workers? Can maternal love for her children be enough to fulfil her? Lei, secondary conflict: Over the many years Lei is away working in Shanghai, her son, Long, unbeknownst to her develops schizophrenia. Shortly after Lei returns to Da Long Village, Long has a violent schizophrenic break and is incarcerated. Lei must now find a way to financially support her son and get him the medical help he needs. When Bo forbids Lei from working for Famer Master Wang and earning the money she needs, Lei must decide what loving her son means and what it will require of her. While Lei is the main protagonist through the novel (the story begins and end with her story line), there are several other supporting characters who go through their own core and secondary conflicts including LuLu, Lei’s daughter, Yan, and Farmer Master Wang. In the case of LuLu and Yan, their core conflicts revolve around the push-pull of home and the struggle between fulfilling individual ambition and meeting familial obligations. For Farmer Master Wang, his core conflict revolves around his unrelenting desire to be revered and to the building of his family’s name and legacy. These desires are in danger of being thwarted by the fact that Wang’s only son is considered “strange,” “odd”, and incapable of being married and bearing him the ever-important grandchildren. Wang is willing to use all manner of deceit to secure a bride and heirs for his son. 7. Setting This novel unfolds in two different settings: Da Long Village and Shanghai. Dalong: Da Long is a remote, rural village sitting at the center of China’s heartland. At certain times of the year, Da Long is filled with verdant life, abundant crops, and the hopes and dreams of its residents. At other times, depending on the capriciousness of the weather and its proclivity for devastating floods and bone-chilling winters, Da Long can be a place of famine and despair. Despite its remoteness, Da Long Village is not untouched by the changes that are afoot in post Cultural Revolution China. Over the course of the novel, just as the lives of the main characters evolve, so does the Da Long. Industrialization and economic rejuvenation grow Da Long Village into “New” Da Long and bring new opportunities to the area residents. Shanghai: Shanghai is a city undergoing rapid development and experiencing tremendous financial growth. Chaotic and vibrant with new buildings rising all around, the city appears to be a place of endless opportunity. But, beneath this shiny “new economy,” there is a socially disadvantaged migrant underclass. Living in cramped quarters, working jobs that Shanghai natives avoid, the migrant workers are often exposed to dangerous and demanding conditions.