The girl is waiting. She waits for a bigger role. For that she works hard, does everything she is told, endures an occasional beating. She tells herself to be patient, to perfect her skills. She is aware of the changes in her body. Aware that it is blooming. In the mirror she sees her eyes become brighter, her features ripening. Her waist grows smaller while her chest blossoms. She believes that her chance is coming her way. At night she dreams of the spotlight tracing her, only her.

I follow my grandfather and we head home. I am not giving up acting. I was not given the role I wanted to play. I was bored.

The wait was too long. I became sick of cleaning backstage. Sick of my rubber-faced mistress, her complaining, long and smelly words, like foot-binding cloths. My grandfather has paid a large sum to get me out of the troupe.

But when the moon buries itself in the deep drifts of cloud, my thoughts get busy again. I thought I had caught a glance, heard a tone, seized my dream, but… I stay wide awake in my old bed trying to figure out where to go and what to do next.

The sticky-rice-pasted wrapping cloths. The swelling toes. The inflammation. The prickling pain at the ankles. The girl remembers how she saved herself.

My grandparents are busy traveling from town to town and from matchmaker to matchmaker. They are trying get rid of me. I am sixteen years old, already beyond ruling. Because of my size, I am often mistaken as eighteen. They should have my feet bound. Now I can walk and run on this pair of-what my grandmother calls-liberation feet. My feet feel strong, as if they are on wings.

I run to free myself. I find another opera troupe. It is called the Experimental Theater Troupe of Shan-dong Province. It's bigger and better known, headed by a Confucius-looking man named Mr. Zhao Taimo.