That was when Mei turned nineteen, and late that summer was when Mei fi rst returned home after six years of working as a massage girl. She was then no longer a little bumpkin, but rather a curiosity. She became a physically sophisticated woman, who had experienced something in a city that nobody knew about. Everything she brought back from the city was new and refreshing, a constant source of surprise and delight.
During the fi rst days after her arrival, a great striped bag that held many smaller bags containing many kinds of cosmetics, was a magic box. Her eye shadows were falsely used as paints on boards and her eyeliners as pencils for doodles. Her brushes were misused as tiny brooms to clean the waste of an eraser. Her lipsticks were mistakenly used as crayons on paper. Her perfume was naively regarded as having magic power on her body. Her girly things were taken as funny toys. Her room was lightened with new decorations sparkling all about her. And she herself, with or without makeup, seemed quite a curious product of modernity.