Bottles

Bottles

The Chinese are not great beer drinkers, preferring the pungent local
rice wine. As a result, anyone who drinks more than two bottles at a
time is seen as a person to be revered - verging on the alcoholic. My
beer drinking was a private vice shared with a few friends until the
advent of Li Ming, but with her arrival I became a local legend.

Her most outstanding characteristic was her voice. Hard and raucous,
often edged by laughter, she could be heard for miles calling 'Bottles,
bottles.' She spent her days collecting other people's empties to
supplement the sparse income she made from her small farm. She was a
small woman, but strong and wiry, with a weathered brown face, cracked
teeth and long grey hair pulled back into a ponytail.

To her I was a welcome diversion from everyday life. I had too many
strange quirks for her to be bothered with - foreign, single and well
past my marrying age. She liked to prowl my flat and comment on what
she found, never once lowering her voice, so that the whole campus knew
her findings. Li Ming never stopped to consider if I could understand
her chatter, which was heavily spiced with dialect - I was a friend,
and as long as I made the right noises, we were both content.

"53 bottles this month," she would broadcast to a fascinated
neighbourhood.

Just before I left town, I went to find her. She came with me back to
the college, telling my enraptured students how much we'd shared, and
how well we understood one another. They were amazed that I would even
speak to this little woman with no education and dirt under her
fingernails. I realised that I would miss her.

I picture her as I saw her for the last time, heavy hessian bags slung
over her shoulders, shouting triumphantly: "83 bottles today."