The Net Cure

Adong is fifteen, a quiet boy in his second year at the county middle school. His mother, Wang Xiulan, works a sewing machine in a garment factory on the east side of town, ten hours a day, for nineteen hundred yuan a month. His father ran off south when Adong was seven and never sent a cent.

Xiulan raised the boy alone. She had made peace with poverty; one thing alone undid her — Adong had taken to the internet cafes.

At first he only came home late. Then he stopped coming home at all. Over the roar of her machine, Xiulan thought of how she broke her back to keep him in school, while he hid in those blue-lit rooms, laughing at a screen, too annoyed even to answer her. A coworker told her of a sickness called internet addiction: ruin your studies, the woman said, or steal, or run away, or throw yourself from a building. She described it as if she had seen it herself.

Xiulan panicked. She could not read, knew nothing of addiction, knew only that her son was lost.

In March she found a red poster on a utility pole at the market:

"Sunshine Youth Training Camp. Cure internet addiction in twenty-one days. Military discipline. Expert psychological care. Licensed. Money back if it fails. Location: the old farm-machinery works on the city's edge."

Below, in smaller type: authorized by a certain Youth Mental Health Research Center. Xiulan had never heard of it, but she knew the words licensed and expert. She saved half a year's wages, borrowed eight thousand from a cousin, and on a cold rainy morning delivered Adong through the iron gate, twenty-eight thousand yuan in hand.

Behind the gate stood an abandoned works, red brick walls high, barbed wire along the top. A man in camouflage took the money and handed her a schedule: up at five, run the yard, recite the classics, write a confession; class by day, reflection by night. Through the bars Xiulan saw a row of boys like her own, heads bowed, like a furrow of cabbage struck by frost.

Director Yan was a round-faced man in a neat suit who spoke slowly and gently. He took her hand. "Don't worry, sister. This is not beatings. It is behavior correction. Give us twenty-one days and we return you a son who obeys." The wall behind him blazed with silk banners: The Prodigal Returns, A Second Birth, A Grace Like Parents'. Xiulan's eyes stung; the money, she felt, was well spent.

She did not know that correction meant a black strap wired to a machine, clamped to the temples, and switched on.

Adong received his first shock for refusing to recite the classics. The instructor said those who would not cooperate must be treated. At the machine's cry Adong jerked upward, teeth chattering, urine running down his leg. The other boys kept their heads down — none dared look, none dared weep. After that he learned. He recited without error, never fell behind on the run; the instructor praised his transformation.

But at night he began to talk in his sleep, calling mother, then biting the quilt corner to keep silent.

There was a boy called Xiaojun, a year older, sent by his father who ran a restaurant in town. Xiaojun was fierce. After three shocks he climbed the wall one night and ran barefoot back to the restaurant. His father raised a rolling pin to beat him — you shame us enough — and his mother reached for the phone, but the father cursed her: you'll ruin the camp's name, then who sends their children? Xiaojun never made the call. His father pushed him back through the iron gate. When he came out again, his left ear was deaf.

Word passed quietly through the county. Aunt Li at the market said she heard of the electricity. Old Zhou the cabdriver said his relative's boy came home and hid from everyone, unable to speak. Yet no one made trouble. The children sent in were mostly from single-parent homes, left-behind villages, or families with unmanageable "problem youths." Who would admit their child was the problem? Who would cross a camp that held a license, had connections, and whose opening the police chief himself had cut the ribbon for?

Xiulan visited once. Adong was thinner, his eyes hollow; at the sight of her he smiled and said, Mother, I was wrong, I will never touch a computer again. Director Yan nodded beside them: a critical period, he said, the parent must be patient. Xiulan held her son's hand — cold as ice — and felt, at last, that the boy had grown up.

When the twenty-one days ended, Adong came home. He truly never touched a computer, never spoke the word cafe. He ate on time, slept on time, did whatever he was told, and never talked back. Xiulan wept before her coworkers: the money was not wasted; her son was a different person.

Only at night, asleep, Adong would curl into a ball, hands guarding his temples, shaking through. Xiulan thought it a bad dream and patted him twice.

The next spring, a new red poster appeared at the old works: Summer Term, Limited Places, First Come First Served. At the gate stood Director Yan's new black car. A few more banners had been added, swaying gently in the wind.

Passing that iron gate, I heard the boys reciting in unison — clear, precise, not a trace of grievance.

It sounded exactly like a chorus of the mute.