Oracle Bones

by Peter Hessler

  WE SHOULD DO MORE TO CREATE IMAGES OF

  MODERNITY FOR THE PEOPLE

  CHINA TO HOLD THE 1983 NATIONAL MEETING

  FOR MACHINE TOOL PRODUCTS

  April 14, 1983

  EIGHT GRAIN-BASED PRODUCTS EXCEED

  ONE BILLION POUNDS

  Idly, I re-created the former hamlet in my mind: in 1976, the Party secretary refinishes his home. He covers the walls with the subscription-only newspaper—a subtle sign of the man’s privilege. That same year, after the house is completed, Chairman Mao dies. The reforms begin. Seven years later, the other residents are improving their homes, papering them with the headlines of the changing economy. Some peasants go to the city in the off-season, earning extra money through construction; farming becomes less appealing. By the 1990s, they are leaving for good. First the young, then the middle-aged. The last ones are the elderly, who still remember the color of local life: which officials had authority, which people had more land, which families had lived there the longest. All of those details steadily slip down the hillside, swallowed by the bigger village, the township, the county seat, the city, the nation. Finally, the elderly pass on, and then the tiny hamlet settles into silence.

  That was modern China—in ten years a place was ripe for archaeology. I picked up my pack and headed back down toward the living village.

  A CROWD MILLED noisily around the courtyard of the government compound in Xituogu. At first sight, it looked like a festival, but then I saw the two officials. Dressed in neat blue blazers, they sat behind a wooden desk in the center of the courtyard. The desk supported a metal box. Periodically, a villager came forward, signed a book, and dropped a piece of paper into the box.

  Chinese elections weren’t infrequent. In the cities, voters selected representatives to their local people’s congress, which was the lowest of three levels of representative government. The upper two levels weren’t elected directly by the people, and none of the legal political parties could oppose the Communists. During the inspection for the Olympic bid, the Beijing committee had provided the I.O.C. with a brief introduction to Chinese politics:

  China is also a multi-party country. There are currently nine political parties in China. Before the state adopts important measures or makes major decisions, which affect national economy and the people’s livelihood, the Communist Party of China, as the party in power, consults with other parties in order to reach the best solution.

  That was the “people’s democratic dictatorship”: multiple parties and candidates were welcome, as long as they were approved by the Communist Party.

  In the countryside, though, some regions were experimenting with freer elections. Instead of strictly controlling candidate lists, officials sometimes allowed villagers to choose their own leaders. The Party recognized the efficiency of this strategy: locals knew who was corrupt, and they tended to choose capable people. In the foreign press, this development was known as “village democracy,” and it was sometimes hailed as a sign of future political reform. But nobody had any idea how many villages held truly free elections, and the Party hadn’t yet adopted this strategy in urban areas. The topic was still sensitive; foreign reporters virtually never had free access to an election.

  In Xituogu, a crowd of villagers quickly gathered around me. When I explained that I had camped last night, they laughed: “The sandstorm!” An excited middle-aged man showed me the wood-backed election roll. It listed five candidates: two had the family name of Peng, and two were Zhous. The fifth candidate was a Tang.

  “Almost everybody here is named Zhou or Peng,” the man explained. His name was Zhou Fengmin and his teeth were heavy with gold. When I asked whom he had voted for, the man became solemn.

  “It’s a secret,” he said.

  “Did you vote for somebody who is also named Zhou?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said sternly. “It just depends on who’s better.”

  I studied the election board. Three positions were listed: two “committee members,” and the village director. Each candidate’s name was accompanied by his or her political party and education level. The candidate list included two middle-school graduates and three high-school grads. Only two were Communist Party members. The other three were listed as simply belonging to Qunzhong, “The Masses.” I liked the sound of that—it opened up the possibility of a whole new range of political parties: the Crowd, the Horde, the Mob.

  While I was reading the board, one of the officials came over. He didn’t look nearly as excited to see me as the villagers had. The official said, “Why are you here?”

  I told the story about camping in the sandstorm.

  The man said, “What do you do in Beijing?”

  That was when I made the third major mistake of the trip. They could be ranked: First, camping in March; second, forgetting my passport; third, honestly answering an official’s questions. I should have said that I was a student or a teacher, but perhaps the sand had slowed my mind.

  “I’m a journalist in Beijing,” I said. “I’m on vacation. I’m about to continue to the next village and then go home.”

  “Why don’t you come inside the office and have some tea.” The man smiled and spoke politely, but it wasn’t a suggestion.

  A SIGN ABOVE the office said, CONSUMERS’ CENTER. The two officials escorted me inside and seated me on a worn sofa. Somebody poured tea into a plastic cup. Upon the wall hung two commemorative posters: CONSUMER DAY and MACAU RETURNS TO THE MOTHERLAND. A dusty calendar was marked with the slogan TOMORROW WILL BE EVEN BETTER. It seemed ominous that the calendar was three years old.

  One official unlocked a desk drawer, which contained a telephone. He removed the object carefully, like a priest in the sacristy, and then he dialed. The other official spoke:

  “Where is your identification?”

  That was when I realized my passport was at home. Helplessly, I gave the man a name card.

  “Do you have a car here?”

  “No.”

  “How do you intend to leave?”

  “I’ll hike along the road and then catch a public bus.”

  “Have you ever been here before?”

  “No.”

  The other man finished talking on the telephone and closed the drawer. For a moment, I thought that perhaps they would let me go. They seemed more relaxed; they asked me where I had learned Chinese, and we chatted. But then the telephone rang.

  Everybody stared at the desk. The man opened the drawer and picked up the receiver.

  “He’s here,” he said.

  There was a pause.

  “Only one.”

  Another pause.

  “Do you think you’ll be here before twelve thirty?”

  He dropped his voice and said something else. He replaced the phone in the drawer, locked it, and pocketed the key. He leaned back as if nothing had happened.

  “When will they come?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  The official didn’t say anything.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong and I’m not worried about that. I’m just telling you that if it’s fine with you, I can leave now. It will save everybody trouble.”

  “Wait and we’ll give you a ride. It’s safer.”

  “This is a very safe area and it’s a nice day,” I said. “I can leave the same way I came in.”

  The man looked away and said, “The car will be here soon.”

  I HAD BAD luck with detentions. In China, a foreign journalist was supposed to apply formally to local government bureaus before going anywhere to report, but nowadays almost nobody followed the rules. Usually, there weren’t any problems, but every once in a while somebody got detained. I knew of one British reporter who had been detained while carrying classified government documents that he had recently acquired from a contact. The police had been tipped off, and when they caught him, a television crew was waiting. The cops triumphantly pulled out the pape
rs—another foreign enemy exposed. That was a worthwhile detention: the police had the satisfaction of catching somebody who had broken the law, and the journalist at least knew that he had reported well enough to anger the government.

  Twice in China, the police nabbed me while exiting a public toilet. In Fujian province, I was in the middle of a reporting trip that hadn’t uncovered anything sensitive; in Gansu, I had simply wandered unknowingly into a county that happened to be closed to foreigners. These detentions were not satisfying for anybody. Ideally, there was an atmosphere of mutual antagonism: the journalist pursued the truth; the cops upheld the laws of the People’s Republic. But it was hard to get inspired about a foreigner who was caught pissing in a town that was closed to outsiders.

  The worst part was watching the stages of recognition. In the beginning, the police were often excited, and the interrogation moved briskly. After a while, though, it dawned on them that this foreigner simply had no clue what he was doing. Sometimes, by the end, I recognized pity in their eyes.

  It was also true that I usually learned more about the region after being detained. In Xituogu, the villagers wandered freely in and out of the Consumers’ Center, and we chatted; the official who was minding me didn’t care. The villagers told me that Xituogu had a population of eight hundred, and chestnuts were the most profitable local crop. April was the prettiest month—in two weeks, the almond trees would bloom. The only question that nobody would answer was whom they had voted for. Every time I asked a villager, his face became serious: “It’s a secret.”

  One old man requested that I write an article about Xituogu. “If you describe it beautifully, then visitors will come,” he said. “We can turn it into a tourist area.”

  I said that I’d think about it. After a while, the official opened another drawer and took out a microphone. His voice boomed over the village loudspeakers: “It is now ten minutes before twelve o’clock! If you have not voted, please hurry because after twelve o’clock the election will be closed!”

  The sunshine was at its peak, and it seemed unnecessarily cruel to keep the American locked in the Consumers’ Center. I walked outside and the official followed me.

  “Please come back inside,” he said.

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “It’s warmer out here.”

  He looked at the other official who was working the voting box; the man shrugged and left me alone. I joined an old woman in the sunshine.

  “What’s the purpose of the Consumers’ Center?” I asked.

  She said, “If you buy something and get cheated, then you can go there and complain.”

  At exactly twelve o’clock, the last voter sprinted up to the metal box. After a brief argument, the official allowed him to cast his ballot. A police car pulled up in a cloud of dust. The villagers became very quiet. I heard murmurs in the crowd.

  “Why are they here?”

  “What’s happening?”

  “It’s because of the foreigner!”

  The crowd pressed forward. Four officers stepped out of the car. I turned to get my pack and one of them barked: “Don’t try to go anywhere!”

  “I’m just getting my bag,” I said. Suddenly I felt tired; the sand itched every time I moved. The villagers looked solemn as we pulled away.

  SPINDLY POPLARS BORDERED the dirt road, which followed a dry creek through the valley. The other villages seemed devoid of life; the first vehicle that we met was another police car. Both drivers stopped for a moment, and then the second car turned and followed us. I wondered exactly how many officers had been dispatched to handle the sandy journalist.

  The road was rough and the three of us in the back bounced against each other. They had seated me in the middle. An officer in the front seat turned around.

  “When did you come here?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Why did you come?”

  “I wanted to take a break from Beijing and I like to go camping.”

  “You camped alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wasn’t the wind strong?”

  “Yes. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that.”

  “What is your job in Beijing?”

  “I’m a journalist.”

  “Where is your passport?”

  “I left it in Beijing.”

  “Did you know they were having an election?”

  “I had no idea. I’ve never been there before.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “In a cab.”

  “Do you have a camera?”

  “No.”

  The man paused for a moment and then spoke again: “Did you bring food?”

  “Yes.”

  He was trying hard to think of other questions. There was a long silence and then the cop to my right spoke for the first time.

  “How much is your salary?”

  WE ARRIVED AT the Bulaotun Township police station, where I asked to use the bathroom. They sent an officer to accompany me. Afterward, he escorted me to the interrogation room, where three men in uniform waited. The name of the township translated directly as “Not-Old Station.” They poured me another cup of tea. One cop asked questions and another wrote on a pad of paper.

  “Why didn’t you go to Simatai or Badaling?”

  “There are too many people at those places and I like the unrestored parts of the Great Wall.”

  “Why were you at the election?”

  “I came down to the village and there were a lot of people, so I asked them what was happening. I didn’t think it was sensitive. There are elections all the time.”

  He became interested in chronology and I explained in detail exactly when everything had occurred. Once that topic had been exhausted, we returned to the outdoors.

  “Weren’t you afraid to sleep alone?”

  “No. It’s a very safe area.”

  “But what about wolves?”

  “There aren’t any wolves there.”

  “Yes, there are.”

  I didn’t believe that for a second, but I was in no position to argue. The cops were young—the oldest seemed to be in his forties. My friend Mike Meyer had a theory that Chinese cops never got any older, and he might have been right. In five years, I hadn’t seen one who looked a day above fifty.

  After a while the interrogating officer narrowed his eyes.

  “You claim to have forgotten your passport,” he said. “I think that’s just an excuse.”

  “Why would that be an excuse?” I said. “It causes trouble for me as well as you. I told you that if you’re really concerned, we can go to Beijing and I’ll show it to you.”

  “Where’s your camera?”

  “I didn’t bring a camera.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Search my bag,” I said. “I don’t have one.”

  “Why would you travel without a camera?”

  “It’s too much trouble.”

  “That’s very strange. Wouldn’t you want something to remember the trip?”

  I thought: memories are not going to be a problem. For the next half hour he kept circling back to the imaginary camera. Chinese cops loved cameras; they made for productive detentions—rip out the film, throw it away. But it was far more complicated when nothing had happened and no device had recorded the nonevent. The questions kept coming.

  THEY ALLOWED ME a break for lunch. The police station had a banquet room, and I was seated at a table that had been laid out for eight. It smelled strongly of grain alcohol. They served me bean curd, celery, and rice.

  One official had been assigned to accompany me. He was not in uniform; the man’s face was gentle and we began to talk. I asked him why this place was called Not-Old Station.

  “It’s because of a local legend,” he said, and then he told the story: Once, in ancient times, an immortal came down from the heavens. He visited Cloud Summit, the highest mountain in the area. A villager named Wang Zhi climbed the mountain and met the immortal, who gav
e the man a peach. Wang Zhi believed that it was a normal peach, given by a normal man. But after Wang Zhi ate the peach, he also became immortal.

  Finally: an explanation for Chinese cops. I asked the young man what he did for the local government. He said, “I work for the Propaganda Department.”

  AFTER MORE THAN two hours, a policeman arrived from Beijing. I recognized the man; every year, he handled the visa applications for journalists. I also recognized a certain look of pity on his face, but at least he granted me the dignity of a few more questions. The other officers watched.

  “Do you know that if you want to report, you have to apply to the government?”

  “Yes, I know that. But I wasn’t there to report. I was camping.”

  “It seems strange that you would happen to be there when they had an election.”

  “Look at me,” I said. “There was a sandstorm last night. I’m carrying all of this stuff. Why would I do this in order to see an election?”

  Now the pretense was gone and the cop asked, curiously, “What was the election like?”

  “There were five candidates,” I said. “Two were named Peng and two were named Zhou and one was Tang. They had to choose three. That’s pretty much all I know.”

  “Have you ever seen an election in a village before?”

  “In Sichuan, when I lived there.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “There’s no difference.”

  “What’s the difference between this election and an election in America?”

  It flashed across my mind: at American elections, they don’t send two police cars when they see a reporter. But I swallowed the thought: “Hard to say.”

  The cop said, “They made a mistake with the ballot last year in America, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, in a few areas.”

  “There were other problems, too,” he said. “Why did it take so long? Why didn’t Ge Er win? He had the most votes.”

  In Chinese, I attempted a clear and concise explanation of the Electoral College. I should have known better; during my teaching years, I had never been able to explain it in English. I had always believed that an excellent way to motivate American election reform would be to force each and every citizen to introduce the system to a Chinese classroom.