Sounds like a sweatshop to me.
“I think Daisy works till six,” Alice had told me. And she swore Daisy was still working there, “in the office. I talk to her a few days ago.”
Okay, so I’ll just go there, station myself near the entrance, and wait for her.
Alice showed me a photo of Daisy, of the two of them grinning behind the reception desk. Daisy is taller than Alice, has longer hair, a knowing smile.
Alice is cute. Daisy is beautiful. At least that’s how it looks in the photo.
THE FACTORY IS SURROUNDED by a concrete wall with an entrance gate of green-speckled tile pillars, shiny gold characters spelling out the factory name fixed on a green-speckled tile arch spanning the pillars. Racks of bicycles and mopeds flank it on either side.
I position myself across the street where there’s a little market and a tiny restaurant serving “dry noodles” and tea. They have several outdoor tables, with red-and-white umbrellas possibly swiped from a McDonald’s that say I’M LOVIN’ IT! I sit at one of those. Order some noodles and tea. And wait.
I’m not there too long before a shift lets out. A steady stream of workers, wearing some kind of factory uniform, red-and-yellow polo shirts that remind me of what the Chinese team for the Beijing Olympics wore. They are almost all young women. Shit, they look like fucking teenagers, most of them.
They come across the street, exhausted and giggling. Mob the market, chatting in dialects I don’t understand, buying snacks. Water. Phone cards. A few come to the restaurant and order tea. Linger under the shade trees that break up the concrete monotony. Others go up the block, to the beauty salon, to the little storefronts selling spangled Tshirts, hacked DVDs, maybe even to a suspect karaoke dive—whatever they do to pass the time for not a lot of money.
I sit. Sip my tea. Wait.
Before too long a number of the girls in their red-and-yellow polos go back into the factory grounds. To their dormitories, I’m guessing. Or to the dining hall, where they get to eat their rice and boiled chicken feet that come with the job. Or, who knows, maybe to work a second shift.
I really want a beer.
Later, I tell myself. Later. I’ll wait a little while longer, and if Daisy doesn’t show up, I’ll go back to the hotel, drink a couple beers, get some sleep, and check out in the morning. Head back to Beijing.
Or maybe just go someplace else. Like Tibet. Or Inner Mongolia. See some monks. Ride a fucking pony.
I lift my hand to call the waitress. “Fuwuyuan. Zai lai yihu cha.” Bring me some more tea.
And I don’t even like tea.
Seven o’clock. It’s dark. Starting to get, if not exactly chilly, cold enough for me to zip up my hoodie. I’m thinking it’s about time to call this. Tell Dog … well, you know, I tried.
That’s when Daisy exits the factory grounds.
It has to be Daisy. Even in the dim fluorescents marking the gate, she stands out. Taller than average for a southern girl. Long, thick hair. Dressed in inexpensive office clothes—a blouse, skirt, and little sweater—that she wears like a designer outfit.
She stands there for a moment, checking something in her purse—her cell phone maybe—then glances at the street. Is she waiting for someone?
I get up. I’ve already paid. Pull the hood over my head, my hand shading one eye, fingers spread so I can see between them, and limp across the street, dodging a few cars and electric scooters.
She doesn’t notice me. As I get closer, I see that she’s texting, the screen casting a blue-white glow on her face. If anything, the photo doesn’t do her justice. This girl is gorgeous. No wonder Kobe’s obsessed. Poor Alice doesn’t stand a chance.
“Daisy?”
She starts. Looks up.
“Alice gave me your number,” I say in Mandarin. “I’m—”
“I don’t have time to talk to you.”
“I don’t need much time. Just a few minutes.”
I can see the struggle on her face. Talk to me or not? She looks more irritated than anything else.
“Okay,” she says, tossing her head. “I can talk for a few minutes.”
WE GO UP THE block and turn onto a street that’s almost pleasant, tree-lined, narrow, one-to two-story storefronts that are kind of cute in spite of the white tile facings on some and the bland concrete of others. Couples stroll, vendors sell snacks, old women sit on a stoop playing mah-jongg.
There’s a little place Daisy likes, one of those Taiwanese style boba houses, all bright plastic and cheerful green-and-yellow graphics, weird manga sprites on skateboards trailed by icy lightning bolts, holding up cups of product, which are iced teas and shakes served with giant straws so you can suck up the tapioca balls that float in them like chewy shotgun pellets. I really don’t like boba, but whatever. They have the local beer, Zhujiang. Works for me.
“David and I aren’t together anymore,” she informs me in English, leaning over her boba. She sips. I watch the tapioca balls shoot up the straw, like red blood cells pumped through an artery in one of those biology videos we had to watch in school.
“Right,” I say. “Well, I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter to me. He is not a serious person.”
“I don’t really know David,” I say. “I’m friends with his brother. They haven’t heard from him in a while, and they’re worried about him.”
“Humph,” she says, sounding like every young heroine in every bad Chinese comedy I’ve ever seen. “They should not worry. I think he is fine.”
“Do you know where he is?”
She shrugs again.
The thing I’m starting to figure out is that sometimes people will just answer your questions, tell you what you need to know. Other times they want to tell you their story first.
So ask for the story.
“Why do you say David isn’t serious?”
She sucks up a noisy strawful of boba balls, then stares at me over the plastic cup, chewing on the last few pellets.
“We come here because he say he has business,” she finally tells me. “He say we do the business and leave. We stay in this … in this cheap guesthouse. Noisy. Dirty. Okay, I can put up with this. I know worse places. Then he say he has to go to Guiyu. He don’t know when he comes back. He don’t know where he wants to go after. I don’t want to go to Guiyu.”
“Guiyu?”
“Bad place. Dirty place. Nobody wants to go there.” She abruptly shoves her empty drink aside. “Okay, I tell him, I wait for you here. I get some work. When you finish, you tell me.”
She tucks a lock of her glossy hair behind her ear, like none of this matters.
“He doesn’t come back. He doesn’t have real business. He just has stupid dreams.”
“Sorry,” I say, and I’m not sure what to say after that. I want to know what happened to Jason, but that’s not the rest of her story.
“So you’re working at the factory,” I say.
She smiles at me. “Yes. They are always looking for girls.”
Now she takes a package of cigarettes out of her purse. Marlboros. Offers me one. I haven’t smoked in years, but I’m tempted.
“No, thank you.” I have to hold the line somewhere. She taps one out, lights it, inhales.
“It is a silly job,” she says. “I sit on a stool all day, painting toys. Silly. Every day, ten hours, on a stool. Sometimes more. It smells bad, from paint and things. My back hurts. My hands. My head. I hate it.”
“But you’re not doing that now.”
She laughs. “No. One of the bosses from the factory, he watches me. Says he can give me a better job. In the office. So I do that now.” She takes a long drag on the cigarette. “He gets me an apartment, too. Not so nice. But better than, than …” She frowns. “Better than sushe, how do you say that?”
“Dormitory.”
“Yes. Better than dormitory.”
Not quite two months and she’s gone from the factory floor to the office.
“Sounds like you’re doing okay,” I say.
She gives me a look. Draws on her cigarette, holds it between her fingers, palm up, the smoke curling around her face. She looks like a movie star.
“I can do better,” she says. “And I will.”
I ASK HER IF she has “David’s” cell-phone number, and she shakes her head. “Old one won’t work. He must have new one.”
“Do you know if he’s still in Guiyu?”
She looks at me like I’m pretty stupid. “How can I know?”
Fair enough.
“When was the last time you heard from him?”
“Maybe … a month ago.”
I try to think of a nice way to ask, So did he dump you or what?
“Did he say … anything about his plans or …?”
“He say a lot of stupid things,” she snaps. “He say what he does is important. He say he can’t come back right now. It’s not safe. He say he loves me but he is no good for me.” She laughs again. “Maybe that second thing is true.”
Not safe. Great.
“Why isn’t it safe?”
“I don’t know,” she says, playing with her straw, sounding like a sullen kid.
“Look, I just want to help his family. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything at all? Just so I can let them know something?”
She sticks her finger on the top of the straw, then lifts it up, watches the liquid drain out. I want to reach across the table and smack her.
Instead I take a deep breath. There’s no point in me getting all worked up over Daisy and her bullshit, over Jason/David and whatever he’s been up to. I don’t have to be doing this. Nobody’s forcing me. I’m trying to do a favor for a buddy, and if this is as far as I get, no one’s going to accuse me of being a Fobbit slacker.
While I’m thinking all this, Daisy’s apparently doing some thinking of her own.
“Okay.” She reaches into her purse—a fake Gucci. Gets out a wallet. Opens that and from an interior pocket pulls out a piece of folded paper.
“This,” she says. “This is what he give me.” She holds on to it for a moment, smoothing the creases, keeping it neat. Then she puts it on the table in front of me, careful to avoid the ring of water left by my beer.
I pick it up. Unfold it.
There are three names, written in pen, in messy, back-slanted print—
“Modern Scientific Seed Company, Dali
Bright Future Seed Company, Guiyang
New Century Seed Company, Guiyu”
—and what I think are the Chinese translations next to them.
“So what is this?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes. “Names of seed companies.”
I am so wanting to smack this girl. “Yeah, I see that, but why did David give it to you?”
“Don’t know,” she says, doing her best to sound indifferent. “Just something he is interested in. You know, he’s always talking about these … these bad seeds.”
Bad seeds?
“He ask me to keep this paper,” she continues. “And if the right person comes, to give it to him.” She shrugs. “I guess that person is you.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GUIYU IS ABOUT AN hour and a half’s drive from where I’m staying. After I have a late breakfast, I decide to hire a taxi to take me there. There are buses, but I don’t know the territory, and from what I can find out on the Web, it looks confusing and complicated. Guiyu is a collection of villages that just sort of grew together, and though I have an address for New Century Seed Company, it doesn’t say which village.
“I need to go to this place,” I tell the first taxi driver who stops for me, showing him the paper.
He looks at the paper and shakes his head, waves his hand. “Don’t know it,” he tells me.
I recognize these gestures. He knows, but he doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.
“Do you know where this is?” I ask the next taxi driver.
He looks at my paper. “Sure,” he finally says, in heavily accented Mandarin. He looks at the paper another moment, and then he looks at me. “Why you want to go there?”
I get why he asks. I did a little research on Guiyu last night, after I met with Daisy.
“Business,” I say.
My answer must be good enough. He nods, and we negotiate a price.
Guiyu is pretty notorious. It’s the largest e-waste site in the world, apparently—where old computers go to die and get recycled, scavenged for their valuable components. Copper. Microchips and RAM. Workers, mostly poor migrants, dismantle the units by hand, sort the parts into huge plastic bags of the same rough weave you see in flour sacks and peasants’ tote bags, burn the circuit boards to extract metal. There’s a 60 Minutes segment on Guiyu, but I couldn’t access it, even with my proxy. Just a few articles here and there, from Greenpeace mostly.
So what’s a seed company doing in Guiyu?
And why does Jason care about it?
I searched all three of the names, first using the pinyin. I only got one hit, on Modern Scientific Seed Company. They specialize in “maize seed, rice seed, wheat seed, and cotton seed,” along with “spraying tomato powder.” According to Modern Scientific’s Web site, the company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange; was named “one of the top fifty in Chinese seed industry;” and “it was awarded as High-tech Enterprise and it is the enterprise which abide contract and has high credit level awarded by the State Administration for Industry & Commerce.”
“We have established and maintained stable and long-term business relationship with many customers at home and abroad on the basis of mutual benefit,” the About Us page concludes. “We warmly welcome friends of the same trade from abroad and home to collaborate with us. Let’s sow the seed of good wish and harvest the bright future!”
Right.
The other two companies, I could only find hits in Chinese. I don’t read Chinese well enough to make much sense of it, but Google Translate helps me figure out they sell seeds. In the case of Bright Future Seed Company, rice wheat, corn, millet. The one I’m going to, New Century Seeds, has the least information of all. Just the same address I already had and a phone number, which I wrote down. When I called it, I got voice mail. I didn’t leave a message.
“YOU A REPORTER?” THE taxi driver asks me. Like a lot of the people here in Shantou, he speaks Mandarin with an accent—it’s not his first language. As much as the government’s tried to make Mandarin the “national language,” you still find plenty of Chinese who don’t speak it well. But in cities like this, where there are lots of people from other parts of China, businessmen and migrants and factory workers, most people get by.
He’s a young guy, short and slight, the most prominent things about him his teeth and his hair, cut in that shaved-sides, long-top style that resembles a mushroom.
“No.”
He nods. “I didn’t think so. You don’t look like reporter.”
We drive awhile in silence. He fiddles with his radio, finding a station playing Cantonese pop. I stare out the window. It’s pretty at first. We head out on a busy road that runs beside a broad river. A delta, I guess you’d call it. Onto a long bridge over the water, to a highway on the other side. Across a smaller river. Through farmland and trees.
“So … an environmentalist?” he asks.
It takes me a minute to figure that one out—the term he uses translates to “environment protector.”
“No.”
“Really? Almost all Westerners who go to Guiyu are reporters or environmentalists. You just missed film crew from a foreign news show. The bosses threw them out after a few days.”
By now we’ve been on the road over an hour. The air is getting really bad, a yellow-grey haze, and I can smell it: Burning wire. Melting plastic.
“A lot of pollution,” I say.
“Guiyu is famous for its pollution.” He grins. “The world’s second-most
-polluted place.”
“Second-most?”
“First is somewhere in Russia.” He shrugs. “I don’t remember the name.”
We’ve reached Guiyu proper, I guess. Another anonymous Chinese city with chunky buildings, most of them under six stories, made of cinder block, concrete, and white tile. There are tall plastic signs advertising something about electronics, but I can’t read the rest of the characters fast enough to get what.
We continue driving, out of the main commercial district. There are bicycle and donkey carts piled high with woven plastic bags, filled with things I can’t see.
I unroll the window so I can see better.
This cart has computer casings. Just empty computer casings. Stacks of cracked beige plastic. The next one, the one hauled by a donkey, has monitors piled five high, barely held in place by black plastic ropes.
Along the street are little workshops. I can’t really see what goes on in them. But out in front more piles of electronic junk. Here’s a random mound of tangled, twisted wire. Farther along, a hill of telephone handsets. Next, a mountain of keyboards.
I can’t take it all in.
People cluster on the sidewalks, like in any other Chinese town. Buy their snacks, walk arm in arm, scold their kids, do their business.
“The place you want to go, what’s the address again?”
I tell him.
“Ah, okay.”
We drive out of this center—whatever it is—down a road lined with fringes: dilapidated storefronts, more piles of junk. Now we’ve reached a canal, or a stream. The water is black. There’s trash floating on the oily sludge. A couple of teenagers hang out on a little arched bridge over it, leaning against the faux-marble rail. We pass weed-choked fields, remains of rice paddies. Smoke from random fires forms low-hanging clouds. The air is so thick with chemicals that my nose and throat feel like I’ve been snorting chili powder.
Hour of the Rat Page 10
