Every night after work, she would sit by the door tapping out the monotonous melody – tap-tap-crack.

Tap-tap-crack – one seed. Tap-tap-crack – two seeds. For want of anything better to do, she would count silently to herself. 6848 was equal to exactly half a kilogram; half a kilogram of melon seeds was 6848 tap-tap­cracks and two dollars extra income. In one night, she could do 6848 or more. It was definitely a case of ‘the more you worked, the more you earned’. If you worked faster, and for longer hours, you could make a bit more. However, even if you did your utmost, even if you tapped away for 24 hours without a break, you would never become a millionaire. Although she understood the logic of this perfectly, she kept increasing both the speed at which she worked and the time she spent tapping.

This was agony for her forefinger and thumb. Es­pecially late at night, when they were both often hit with the small hammer. Once struck, they would ache. She would suck them for a moment, and then get back to work. Sometimes, the struck fingers wouldn’t even get so much as a suck.

She took pleasure in performing this 6848. At seed 68, she knew that she had earned 2 cents; at seed 680, 20 cents. When she started hammering out this tap-tap-crack, all her worries vanished.

She had a lot of worries.

There was nothing at all the matter with her, except that her face was dark. So much so, in fact, that her husband had taken to abusing her as ‘an African’. This didn’t offend her because she couldn’t help the colour of her skin, but she was annoyed by the fact that her husband seemed to show less interest in her because of it.

It should be pointed out that she wasn’t born with a dark face. It was only by marrying him that she got this way. As a girl, she wasn’t exactly pale-skinned – she was endowed with a standard Chinese complexion. It was only after the conception, the birth, and the death of her child, followed by a period of serious illness during which she had been injected more than 60 times with 400,000 units of penicillin, that she found herself with a dark face.

Unreasonable bastard, giving me the cold shoulder. She always thought of her husband in this way. However, all men were like that, so what could be done about it? All she could do then was worry.

To fix the darkness in her life, she had tried many things: abrasive the paste, rubbing her face with sandpaper until it hurt, apricot kernels, lemons, and even washing in cow’s milk. She had tried pearl face masque, and she had applied ginseng nourishing lotion, all without the slightest result.

Even worse was her husband’s callousness. Of late, he had often gone away on official business trips for up to two weeks at a time without writing her a single word or phoning her. Even when he returned, he did his best to ignore her. As they lived in the same house, she found his coldness intolerable.

She decided to recapture her husband’s heart, and she knew exactly how to go about it.

Recently, someone had told her about a rejuvenation clinic run by a returned overseas Chinese where they had miraculous techniques for restoring youthful beauty. She hadn’t tried it herself but all her girlfriends had been, and one by one they came back to tell her of the superb results, especially in the removal of blemishes and in whitening skin colour. They all urged her to go there for treatment.

Seeing all her friends achieve whiter skin, her hope was rekindled. At ten dollars a session, ten sessions cost only 100 dollars. If she could buy a fairer face, and with it some of her husband’s affection, she wouldn’t have minded spending ten times a 100 dollars. Of all things, white alone was best.

Unfortunately, her purse wasn’t exactly bulging with money.

Fortunately, a confectionary factory had been advertising about moon cakes for the Mid-autumn Festival, and this gave her an opportunity to make extra money. Fortunately, there were melon seeds to tap! Once she started making this tap-tap-crack, she was quite happy to keep doing it.

Take pity on the hearts of the women of this world, Mid-autumn! Couldn’t you come a bit later this year?