Fa Xuelan

## Biography

In China, a new baby girl is born. A beautiful young woman and her husband share smiles and good times as they welcome their daughter into the world. Their first girl. They name her Xuelan, meaning snow-white elegance. Their son is seven now and he's excited about having a little sister. He vows to protect her from boys and to thoroughly inspect all her suitors before she's allowed to date or marry. Her parents chuckle and agree as her mother coddles her against her breast.

An eleven year old Xuelan waves tears eyed at the door as her brother leaves down the road with his things. A dark green bus waits for him at the end of the road where a line of other boys his age congregate with bags slung over their shoulders. It's may and they've all been conscripted for military service. It's natural, it's routine, but it's the first time it's ever affected Xuelan's family. Her father was injured shortly before her parents were married and he was discharged from fighting, serving as a guard in town instead. He was allowed to come home at night and share dinners with the family, but her brother would be away for some time. Her father tells her he'll be back when he's big and strong, but Xuelan doesn't understand. Her brother is taller, bigger, tougher than all the other boys in town. She knows, she's seen him beat them up for oogling her. She's watched him break bones when unqualified boys telll him they'll be her husband one day. It always made her smile, but now it doesn't.

A twelve year old Xuelan sits at the foot of her mother's bed as she listens to the muffled sobs of the woman who she deemed the strongest. Her mother was supposed to be invincible, but this was a broken shell of her mother. For the sixth time, Xuelan reaches forward and tries to take the small corpse out of her mother's hand, but she is instead returned with a slap and an onset of fresh sobs. She'd never seen her mother like this before. She thinks about the stories the girls in her class told about body snatching ghouls and wonders if they somehow took her mother. She doesn't really understand why a still cold baby is worth so much fuss. She doesn't understand that it's supposed to be screaming and glowing.

A thirteen year old Xuelan remains silent and stoic as her mother locks herself away in her parents bedroom with four bottles of alcohol. Nothing but the smell of smoke and the sounds of perversion come from the room, but Xue ignores it and eats her rice before school. She pretends to be happy when her mother announces another pregnancy, but there is a darkness lingering within all of their eyes. No one knows how this one will turn out.

A fourteen year old Xue lays in her bed blurry eyed and hazed as her father exits the room in a hurry. Her mother calls for her husband in a groggy voice, curious as to where he ran off to. He tells her he went for a walk. The soft commotion causes the baby to stir and he hushes and cooes his wife and her swollen belly back to sleep. In the next room, the teenager remains still, bruised and sore from another night spent tormented by her father's lust. She wraps her arms around her abdomen and buries her head beneath the blanket as tears soak through her pillow.

In the morning, she awakens before sunrise and sneaks out of the house, running to the stream down the road where she empties her stomach. She knows all too well what this means for her and it is why she tries so hard to keep her parents ignorant. She knows what her father will do if he finds out. She knows what her mother will think if she finds out. She knows this can't happen. But she's not thinking logically. Xuelan is desperate and in pain. She wants someone else to suffer for once. She sneaks into her parents bedroom and slits her father's throat before suffocating her mother to death with a pillow. She then runs away with a boy from town, one she convinced to take her to the city and that's where they go.

A sixteen year old Xuelan responds to the name Thirty-Five. It's her lot number and therefore her identity. She is no longer a person. She is an object, a body for rent. She is sold and used every day for any man who is willing to pay. There are other girls just like her there, from all over, just as beautiful as she. They are taught skills that only the wealthy know. How to play instruments, how to dance, how to paint, how to please. After two years they are transported to another city where they are sold for their talents.

A twenty-seven year old Xuelan resides in the Taiji Hotel in Busan, South Korea, miles and miles away from home. She wonders if she can really consider any place home anymore. She has always been a caged bird and she has always sang quietly so that no one else can hear. With an ethereal beauty, Xuelan is a goddess among men. Or at least that's what the horny customers say about her. Located in one of the highest levels of the hotel, Xuelan resides and works within the most luxurious rooms of the Taiji Hotel. She's a gem, perceived as practical royalty for her beauty and charm. She is one of the most expensive girls in the city, and there are always men willing to pay the price for a night with her. But sometimes they get more than they bargained for.