“The factory makes parts of televisions.”
One by one, the other students answered questions about their parents: They raise fish. They do trade in Beijing. They work for a company. They own a factory. The bell rang; the language shifted back to the Wenzhou dialect; the sounds of break-time chaos echoed from the hallway. Watching my former student teach that lesson was the best thing that happened to me all September.
DURING MY LAST day in Zhejiang, the Wenzhou government tested the air raid sirens. Taiwan was just off the coast, and usually the tests signaled some military exercise in the strait, or perhaps a political event on the island. But there hadn’t been any recent flare-ups in China-Taiwan relations, and the next Taiwanese election was still two months away. The air raid sirens probably meant that the government was trying to prepare itself for anything that might happen in the post-9/11 period.
In the city, I visited another former student named Shirley. In 1997, she had migrated to Zhejiang, and she had often sent long letters to me and Adam. She described details from her voyage east—a malnourished baby on the train, a conversation with a Zhejiang native during which Shirley pretended that she wasn’t Sichuanese. She wrote beautifully in English, and I always remembered the ending of one letter:
Adam, these stories are the ones that touch me deepest and make deepest impression on me. All of them are true.
Not long before my trip to Wenzhou, Shirley had sent me a note announcing her marriage. Originally, she had taught at a private school, but recently she had found a job as a foreign-trade representative at the Tiger Lighter Company. Tiger was the most famous of the countless Wenzhou factories that produced cigarette lighters. With a salary of over two thousand yuan a month, or $250, Shirley was one of the most successful of my former students.
She gave me a tour of the factory, starting with the executive offices where she worked. Display cases featured high-end products: gold-colored lighters studded with fake diamonds, special barbecue lighters that telescoped out for hard-to-reach places. A metal ashtray was equipped with a tiger’s mouth that breathed fire when you pressed a button. On the wall, the factory had hung a piece of Jiang Zemin’s calligraphy; the president had visited in May of 2000.
On another wall, an enormous world map illustrated the company’s export patterns. Wenzhou sat in the center of the world, and a web of arrows fanned out in all directions: to the United States, Great Britain, Brazil, India, and dozens of other countries. Outside, at the entrance to the production floor, an English sign proclaimed:
LET TIGER BRAND CREATE WORLD FAMOUS BRAND
LET THE WORLD FURTHER UNDERSTAND TIGER BRAND
That evening, I had dinner with Shirley and her husband, Huang Xu. He was also Sichuanese, and he developed software for a local company. We talked about the recent events in America, and they both agreed with Willy’s observation that most people in Wenzhou hadn’t been sympathetic.
“When I first watched it, I didn’t really feel sad,” Shirley said. “I admit that I’ve always had a prejudice against America, because it’s so powerful and it always uses its power in other parts of the world. But the more I thought about what happened, the more sympathy I felt for all those innocent people. It just took some time before I could think about that.”
Her husband had been following Internet chat rooms, which were strongly anti-American. “A lot of people connect it to the bombing of our embassy in Yugoslavia,” he said. “There have been so many problems with America over the years.”
Since the attacks, I couldn’t stop thinking about the videos. The 9/11 scenes were jarring; it was a shock to see such violence taking place in my home country. I was accustomed to dramatic footage coming from the developing world: flooded cities, body-strewn battlefields. Now that I was in China, the distance was the same, but the images moved in an unfamiliar direction. We watched in safety while Americans died.
And there was something particularly warped about the images being sold as movies in a city like Wenzhou, which had so many trade links with the outside world. A basic premise of the United States’ globalism had always been that the spread of American culture and products would naturally lead to greater international understanding. There wasn’t much need for Americans to travel personally; products moved much more easily. In theory, it made sense, but now the lack of a human dimension was obvious. In China, most people had contact with American brands and products, but it was still rare for a Chinese to have any personal interaction with a foreigner. Willy was unusual: he had foreign friends, and a key part of his identity was wrapped up in another language.
For most Chinese, though, the outside world was still abstract—something at the end of an imaginary arrow that began at the local factory. It wasn’t surprising that the attacks became just another American-style product. Over the next month, I collected other 9/11 goods: a “Bush vs. bin Laden” video game, Osama bin Laden key chains. I purchased plastic sculptures of buildings with oversized planes sticking out like tree branches. A Wenzhou lighter company produced a model where the flame shot out of the top of Osama bin Laden’s head. A company in southern China produced “Monster Candy,” which featured bin Laden’s image on the wrapper and was marketed to children.
I watched the videos over and over, trying to figure out their meaning. During one clip of the Phoenix news broadcast, an anchorwoman named Chen Luyu said, “We are astonished, but we are not astonished.” Like the other commentators, she repeatedly compared the terrorist attacks to scenes in Pearl Harbor and other movies. In a sense, that wasn’t different from the Americans, who also tended to slip into Hollywood language. Sometimes, President Bush spoke as if he were in a Western—“dead or alive”—and the early titles for the American military response would have fit perfectly on Wenzhou’s bootleg racks: Infinite Justice, Enduring Freedom.
During my dinner with Shirley and Huang Xu, I asked if they thought that the events would affect them. “We don’t export much to America right now,” Shirley said. “Actually, some people have been saying that if the dollar drops it will help our exports to other parts of the world.”
Her husband added that even the possibility of an economic downturn didn’t frighten his friends. “It’s all relative,” he said. “The Chinese often say that you only feel poor if you’re next to somebody who isn’t poor. If the whole world drops and we drop with it, then things haven’t really changed.”
Initially, I had trouble believing this—I doubted that somebody in Wenzhou would agree to reduce his income if that meant that people in America would suffer more. But then I realized that this wasn’t viewed as an active choice. The Chinese looked at distant, uncontrollable events and searched for some consolation in the worst that might happen. It was a passive, remote worldview, and it came from a hard history, but it had also been encouraged by a distinctly human gap in the flow of goods and culture. The world might not seem a smaller, more understandable place if you sent off cigarette lighters and received Hollywood in return.
Near the end of the meal, I asked Shirley how she imagined the average American would view her. She was twenty-six years old, with big black eyes and an easy smile. Back in Fuling, I had known her as the best student in her class, but now she seemed to describe somebody else.
“I’m sure they’d say I’m poor, and backward, and of a low education level,” she said. “I think that Americans look at Chinese like this. They wouldn’t know where Wenzhou is—in their eyes, it’s just another city in China.”
AFTER THE ATTACKS, William Jefferson Foster became even more dedicated to studying English. Almost every evening, he wrote in his journal, tracking events and compiling vocabulary lists:
milestone
maul
lounge
lodger
lobe
kidney
keepsake
jockey
In addition to transcribing the Voice of America, he also translated articles from the Wenzhou newspapers:
Mid-east a
rea countries are our city’s important trading partners. Wenzhou-made clothes, lighters, leather shoes, small medals are exported to these area countries via shipping…. After 9-11 terrorist attacks in U.S.A. the situation in Afganistan has intensified. Wenzhou’s exported products will be asked to give extra wartime money according to international regulation.
When he translated items from the national wires, he signed them proudly at the bottom:
Xin Hua News Agency
U.S. President George Bush made adress at the press confrerence in the White House on late evening of October 11th, he said that Sudam is an evil person. Because he has been trying to make large-scale deadly weapons since the Gulf War.
Bush says that these days’ attack is aiming at Afganistan. But shortly after that the anti-terrorism attacks will be extended to other countries in the world….
Bush says American has known that that Sadam has been concentrating on producing massive deadly weapons and says Sadam is an evil. Meanwhile Bush urged Iraq give permission to UN weapon inspectors’ entry to Iraq.
Translated by William Jefferson Foster
ARTIFACT I
The Horse
THE HORSE IS A DIVERSION. IN THE MIDDLE OF A LONG JOURNEY ACROSS northwestern China, I decide to stop in Wuwei, a small city in Gansu province. Wuwei is not my final destination, and the interlude isn’t planned; but the basic routine is familiar. Sometimes, while traveling through a place known for some important archaeological discovery, I’ll stop and ask questions about the find. Invariably, my perception of the artifact changes dramatically in the course of a few hours.
Wuwei is known as the home of the Flying Horse. The object is now exhibited in the provincial capital of Lanzhou, but it was originally discovered in Wuwei, where a tomb contained a procession of bronzes: thirty-eight horses, twenty-eight foot attendants, seventeen warriors, fourteen chariots and carts, and a single ox. The tomb dated to the third century, near the end of the Eastern Han dynasty.
Of all the figures, one stands out. The horse is less than two feet tall, but its shape is magnificent: in full stride, nostrils flaring, tail blowing in the wind. Three hooves are in midair; the fourth rests lightly upon the back of a sparrow. It’s become known as the Flying Horse. China Tourism has adopted the artifact as its national symbol; everybody recognizes it as an icon of Chinese culture and history. That’s the image in my mind when I arrive in Wuwei.
THE WUWEI CURATOR is named Tian Zhicheng. We meet in the local museum, which is located in a massive fifteenth-century Confucian temple complex. Its size is a testament to the former importance of this Silk Road city. But the days of trade along the Gansu Corridor are long gone, and Wuwei has faded: dusty, remote, forgotten. The temple buildings are rotting; the wood is cracked and the paint peels. Tian explains sadly that the city doesn’t have enough money to maintain the complex. He pours me a cup of tea, and then he tells the story of the Flying Horse, which was discovered at the height of the Cultural Revolution.
“They found the horse on September thirteenth, 1969,” he says. “Marshal Lin Biao had told the Chinese people that they should dig air raid shelters, in case China was attacked by the Soviet Union or America.”
Tian explains that local peasants were shoveling under a Taoist temple when they stumbled onto the tomb. Because of the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution, archaeology was essentially nonfunctioning, and the peasants handled the excavation. Afterward, they kept the bronzes in their homes until somebody from the Wuwei cultural relics bureau finally collected everything. Eventually, the artifacts were taken to the provincial museum in Lanzhou, where they were forgotten in a storeroom.
“They didn’t recognize the value of those pieces,” Tian says. “Nobody really noticed them until the early 1970s, when Guo Moruo accompanied Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia on a trip through Gansu. They toured the museum, and afterward Guo Moruo asked to see the storeroom. The moment he set eyes on the Flying Horse, he knew that it was something special. He said that it was by far the best object in the museum. And that’s how it first became famous.”
Guo Moruo: romantic poet, oracle bone scholar, historian who was compromised by his association with the Communist Party. Prince Sihanouk: exiled king, friend of China, notoriously mercurial figure. Somehow, they make a perfect pair, traipsing through the museums of the Silk Road during the Cultural Revolution.
After talking with Tian, I visit the empty tomb, which has been restored for tourism. At the ticket booth, I ask if any of the original peasant excavators still live around here, and a woman gives me a name: Wang. The man’s home is nearby, a simple dugout that has been carved into the dry Gansu soil. It’s essentially a cave with windows and a door. The man’s wife plants herself firmly at the entrance.
“He can’t talk to you,” she says.
In the countryside, when women reach middle age, they often acquire a certain solidness that seems to draw from the earth itself. It’s also true that in these areas a foreigner tends to attract a crowd. The more people who show up, the more solid Wang’s wife becomes. She stands in front of the door, arms crossed. She remarks that the excavation was unofficial; she doesn’t want trouble. I try to reassure her: there’s no risk; this is a story about history; it will only take a minute.
“He’s too drunk to talk to you,” the woman finally says.
A ripple of laughter passes through the crowd. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and, at an altitude of over five thousand feet, the desert sunshine falls like a hammer. Obviously, the woman is grasping at straws, and so I keep trying: I’ve come all the way from Beijing; I won’t stay for long; I just want to ask a few questions. The crowd murmurs support, and finally the woman shrugs: “Go ahead.”
Inside: as dank as a tomb, as dirty as a dump. A half-dressed man sprawls on a wooden chair—skinny arm dangling, white head lolling. Mr. Wang, amateur archaeologist, discoverer of lost treasures, liberator of bronze armies, is snoring. The cave reeks like a baijiu distillery. That’s the image in my mind when I leave Wuwei.
IN 1987, VICTOR H. MAIR, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, led a Smithsonian tour group through Xinjiang. In Urumqi, at the provincial museum, he happened to wander into a back room and saw three bodies under glass: a man, a woman, and a small child. They had long noses, deep-set eyes, and blond hair. They were remarkably well preserved—the most intact ancient corpses that Mair had ever seen. A curator told him that dozens of such bodies had been discovered recently in Xinjiang.
They were accidental mummies: preserved by the environment rather than technique. Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin is as far as you can get from an ocean, and rainfall is rare; winters are brutally cold. A body buried in the salty soil can last for centuries, or even millennia; some of the Xinjiang corpses are over three thousand years old. Their clothing is remarkably intact. They wear fur-trimmed coats, felt boots, and long stockings. Their wool patterns are plaid. They have blond or red hair, full beards, and features that look European. They seem completely out of place in a desert of western China.
Like many artifacts, the corpses were essentially excavated by Reform and Opening. In the 1980s, as the national economy grew, the government pumped investment into Xinjiang. There was a political motivation: officials hoped that rising living standards would placate the Uighurs, and meanwhile Han Chinese migrants were encouraged to settle in the region. Xinjiang was the only place in the country where significant numbers of migrants arrived to farm. Sometimes, when they tilled a new field or started a construction project, an ancient corpse appeared. As more Chinese arrived, more foreign-looking bodies came out of the earth. The symbolism could have been uncomfortable—while modern Xinjiang became more Chinese, the ancient past looked more foreign—but initially nobody made much of the artifacts. The mummies were essentially unknown to the outside world when Victor H. Mair visited the Urumqi museum.
During the early and mid-1990s, Mair returned repeatedly, escorting foreign specialists. Working with Chinese and
Uighur archaeologists, they collected samples, and it turned out that the corpses’ clothing contained particularly useful information. The twill weave—a plaid design of blue, white, and brown—was extremely similar to textiles discovered in the ancient tombs of Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia. The clothes seemed to confirm Mair’s first impression: these people were Indo-European.
The Tarim Basin sits near the exact center of the biggest land mass on earth. Like many parts of Central Asia, the formal history is thin and scattered; the past seems as empty as the landscape. All you need is a spark—some amazing artifact—and then the human imagination begins to fill all that space.
In 1994, the mummies were featured in Discover magazine, and then Reader’s Digest reprinted the story. Other publications followed suit, speculating that the corpses could be evidence of early contact between East and West. Television crews traveled to Xinjiang; the Discovery Channel titled their program The Riddle of the Desert Mummies. A PBS documentary was hosted by Alan Alda, M*A*S*H alumnus. The Uighurs began to call the corpses the “Uighur mummies”; in their view, the bodies were excellent evidence that the Chinese had no right to be in Xinjiang. In fact, Mair and other scholars speculated that the corpses may have been the ancestors of the Tocharians, an ancient people who disappeared around the ninth century A.D., when the Uighurs’ Turkic ancestors first arrived in significant numbers. The Turkic settlers may have even wiped out the Tocharians, absorbing some of their genetic material along the way—a possible explanation for why some Uighurs have fair features.
None of the theories appealed to the Communist Party. As the mummies became more famous, the authorities began to restrict access to them, and soon Mair and his colleagues weren’t allowed to take more samples out of the country. Foreign journalists were turned away; photographers were restricted. Alan Alda, M*A*S*H alumnus, reported that his camera crew had been kicked out of a museum. But it was too late for the Chinese to control the meaning of the mummies, which had already reached the point where less research only meant more imagination. Nowadays, thousands of mummy theories serve thousands of agendas. White supremacists love the corpses as much as the Uighurs do. If you go on-line, you find people like the Pastor Bertrand L. Comparet, who explains the mummies’ origin in an article entitled “What Happened to Cain?” The pastor is a native Californian, a Stanford alumnus, and (his own words) “a tried and true Christian and a loyal and patriotic American, a believer in a Sovereign America under Constitutional government.” He also believes that after the Fall, Adam and Eve fled east of Eden to Xinjiang, where, beneath brilliant desert skies, Eve gave birth to two boys.
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