After Dying of Embarrassment N Times, I Went Home to Sell Cakes

Episode One: The Blacklisted Princess’s Adventures in the Rice Bin The first time I faced a “survival crisis” was in the rice bin, when I was three. The family-planning officers’ knock sounded like invaders at the door: thump, thump, thump, hard enough to smash through the wooden door. My mom, Zhou Huifang, snatched me up as I sat there chewing on my toes. She moved faster than flipping a pancake, yanked open the rice-bin lid, and stuffed me inside. The coarse rice dug painfully into my bottom. I was just about to wail when she plonked a chilly enamel bowl over my head. “Lie still and be good. We’re catching mice!” My sister, Lin Chen, crouched beside the bin, clutching half a packet of spicy strips and waggling her eyebrows at me. She was four years older than I was and already understood what it meant to be “unregistered.” It meant I couldn’t stroll around the alley with a candied hawthorn skewer like other kids. Instead, I could only sneak out with her into the courtyard under cover of darkness, like two people stealing land mines. “Little sis,” she said, slipping me half a spicy strip and poking my cheek with her greasy finger. “If they search the rice bin later, play dead.” With the spicy strip in my mouth, I looked at her carefully composed little face and suddenly felt like a princess banished to the cold palace. The rice bin was my crystal coffin, the coarse rice my pearls, and the enamel bowl my crown. Though the crown was a little drafty and smelled of soy sauce. “Bang, bang, bang!” The knocking grew more forceful, mingled with a man’s gruff shout. “Zhou Huifang! Open up! Household registration check!” My dad, Lin Guodong, called from the main room, his voice shaking like a sieve. “C-coming! Please wait, sir!” Then came a clatter and a crash. He was probably hiding the incriminating “evidence of my birth,” like the little footprints my mom had secretly stamped for me at the clinic...