IN THE COURTYARD house beside the factory, the women of Minghua 123 were also busy with laundry and baths. The weather had turned sunny. Lian, Meirong, and a dozen others leaned against the smooth wooden railings of the veranda, towels wrapped around newly washed hair, the sun warning their shoulders. Some girls had rinsed their hair with an infusion of simmered bai bu roots, easily available from herbalists. Others had been lucky enough to get hold of rubbing alcohol, which they had massaged into their scalps.

Even though Minghua 123 traveled with their own sheets and blankets, it had been impossible to stay free of pests. No matter how much they swept and mopped the floors of the inns and halls where they stayed, they couldn’t get rid of fleas and bedbugs. There were times when Lian thought bare floors were cleaner than the beds, mattresses stuffed with straw or kapok cotton that bred new generations of pests, all of which migrated to blankets and clothing.

“And now lice. How mortifying,” Meirong said. “I wish we could wear crew cuts or shave our heads as the men do.” Most of the girls, Lian and Meirong included, had already cut their hair to blunt, chin-length bobs.

“Has it been an hour yet?” one girl asked. “Should we keep the towels on for another ten minutes to be sure?”

In reply, Meirong pulled off her towel. She hung her head upside down and began combing out damp hair. Specks like black sesame seeds fell to the ground.

“Who’s next for the steamers?” one of the servants shouted from the courtyard kitchen.

Lian and Meirong folded their sheets and blankets into neat squares then joined the line by the kitchen door. They placed the bedding in deep bamboo baskets that the servants would stack over large tubs of boiling water. An hour of steaming was the only way to be certain of killing bedbugs and their eggs.

“After this, a few nights of peaceful sleep,” Meirong said, “and then those little demons will jump back on and we’ll be scratching again.”

“Clean hair, clean sheets,” Lian said. “What a luxury. Almost makes me want to stay here in this ugly campus.”

“A few weeks here means we might get one more steaming session before moving on,” Meirong said. “Lian, come with me to the library for a minute, before we go work on the newspaper. I need to find Ying-Ying. She borrowed one of my textbooks again. Took it right out of my rucksack and then asked permission.”