Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

by Peter Hessler

  The first year I went to Sancha for Qing Ming, the apricot trees were in full bloom, sweeping white across the hills like a spring snowstorm. By 6:30 a.m., all the men were there: Wei Ziqi, the Shitkicker, the Party Secretary’s husband, the cousins who lived down in the valley. Mimi came along; because she was an outsider, the usual rule about women didn’t apply. There were no children—Wei Jia was too small to participate. Some people had arrived from out of town, including an old man named Wei Minghe, who had moved to Huairou years ago. He shoveled dirt onto his parents’ grave, and then he poured a bottle of grain alcohol in front of the mound. “The pile represents a house,” he explained. “We have a tradition here that you have to come before sunrise. If you pour dirt on the grave before the sun comes up, it means that in the afterlife they get a house with a tiled roof. If you don’t make it in time, they get a grass roof.”

  Each man began by tending the tomb of his most immediate relatives: parents, grandparents, uncles. Sometimes they left special gifts, like small bottles of alcohol or packs of cigarettes that had been enjoyed by the departed. Then they worked their way down the generations, carefully weeding the mounds and shoveling dirt, and as they moved back in time they became less certain of identities. Wei Ziqi thought that one mound belonged to his great-grandfather, but he wasn’t sure—it might have been another uncle. On the last rows, the work became communal: everybody pitched in for every mound, and nobody knew who was buried where. The final pile of dirt was isolated in its own row. I asked Wei Ziqi who it belonged to.

  “Lao Zu,” he said. “The Ancestor.” There was no other name for the original settler, whose details had been lost with the jiapu.

  In the afternoon, Mimi and I gave Wei Minghe a ride home. The old man said that nowadays he rarely returned to Sancha; apart from the occasional holiday, there wasn’t much reason to go back. He lived in a suburb of Huairou, where a row of brick houses had been laid out beside the road to Beijing. When peasants move to cities, they often end up in neighborhoods like this: dozens of identical buildings, cheaply built and poorly planned, lined up with all the imagination of a factory floor. But I remembered what Wei Minghe had said about shoveling dirt before dawn—tile roofs versus grass roofs. The ancestors are abstract, but today’s choices are tangible, and the old man had made his decision. One thing he said about Huairou was that now he finally had good heat.

  ON THE FIRST DAY of school, Wei Jia wore new khaki trousers and a red T-shirt. The clothes looked stiff and foreign—all summer the boy had played around the village wearing nothing but a dirty tank top and a pair of underpants. For school, I had given him a Mickey Mouse backpack, and his mother had put a new pencil box in one of the pockets. Inside the box was a single pencil, freshly sharpened.

  The boy still wasn’t saying much, and he walked in silence to the road. Mimi had borrowed her parents’ Volkswagen Santana for the weekend, and all of us climbed into the car. I sat in front with Wei Jia on my lap; his parents took the backseat. Between them sat the Idiot.

  Once, I asked Cao Chunmei what the Idiot’s real name is, but she didn’t know. He is Wei Ziqi’s oldest brother, born in 1948—the year before the Communists came to power, when the civil war still raged across northern China. Those were difficult times, and poverty probably caused the Idiot’s disability. Most likely it was a lack of iodine: if a pregnant woman doesn’t consume enough, she runs the risk of bearing a mentally disabled child. Nowadays the government ensures that iodized salt is widely distributed in the countryside, and such birth defects have become rare. But there is still an older generation of disabled people, a reminder of China’s recent poverty, and I often encountered them on my drive across China. Many villages have one or two residents with mental disabilities, and locals typically call them Shazi: “Idiot.”

  In Sancha, the Idiot lived with the Weis, who made sure that he was clothed and fed. They gave him simple chores: he swept the floor, shelled walnuts, and searched for kindling along mountain trails. But he couldn’t participate in the harvest, and he couldn’t cook for himself. He was deaf and dumb. Whenever he wanted to communicate, he contorted his face with such passion that it seemed as if the power of speech had fled precisely at that moment and he was just beginning to grapple with its loss. But in fact he had never spoken. The villagers ignored his contorted face, and they didn’t address him by any of the usual terms for an adult: “uncle,” or “big brother,” or “little brother.” To them, he was simply Shazi, the Idiot, and although he was well cared for, he was never treated like a full-fledged person. Wei Jia was the only villager who took an interest—he was too young to understand that his uncle was disabled. Sometimes the child played with the Idiot, and the man’s face lit up with joy. Mimi and I often talked with him, engaging him with eye contact, but the villagers were quick to tell us it was pointless. “He doesn’t understand anything you say,” Wei Ziqi always told me.

  On the first day of school I was surprised to see the Idiot accompanying us, and I asked Wei Ziqi if anything was wrong. “It’s nothing,” he said. “We just have a little problem to take care of at the government office.”

  We drove out of the village, and Wei Jia leaned forward with both hands on the dashboard. The boy was obsessed with automobiles—he seldom saw cars, and the experience of riding in one was a rare treat. It was anything but passive: at every turn, I felt Wei Jia edging toward the windshield, trying to see what was around the bend. He lurched forward on hills; he leaned back at stops. He should have been in the backseat—I knew it was wrong to keep a child on my lap like that. But nobody in rural China uses child seats, and it would have broken Wei Jia’s heart to be relegated to the back. And so I held him tightly, and Mimi drove carefully, and the six of us descended into the valley of the Huaisha River.

  The walnut harvest had begun, and the roads were busy with farmers on their way to the fields. We passed dozens of men who carried thin sticks, ten feet long and perfectly straight. Some of them rode bicycles to their orchards, poles balanced across the handlebars like knights at the joust. They used the sticks to knock walnuts off the trees, and the road was full of discarded husks. They crunched beneath our tires—another drive-through harvest.

  In the valley we began to see packs of children on foot, dressed in new clothes and making their way down the road. “See, they have backpacks, too,” Cao Chunmei said to Wei Jia. “They’re going to school just like you.”

  We passed a farmer carrying insecticide in a plastic box on his back. “He’s going to school with his backpack, too,” I said.

  “That’s not a backpack,” Wei Jia said quickly. It was the first time he’d spoken since we left the village; his arms were stiff against the dash. For an instant we caught a whiff of insecticide, the heavy sweet smell filling the car, and then it was gone.

  AS WE APPROACHED BOHAI Township, Wei Ziqi asked Mimi to stop at the government office. She was pulling into the driveway when he finally explained why the Idiot had come along.

  “The government is supposed to pay a monthly fee to help us take care of him,” Wei Ziqi said. “That’s the law. I’ve asked the Party Secretary in Sancha about it, but she hasn’t helped. So the only thing to do is to come here ourselves. I’ll ask them to pay the fee now, and if they don’t, then I’ll leave the Idiot until they’re willing to pay it. It’s their responsibility.”

  “You’re going to leave him at the government office?” Mimi asked.

  “Yes,” Wei Ziqi said. “It’s the only way to get their attention.”

  Mimi asked how much the monthly fee should be.

  “Fifty yuan at the very least,” Wei Ziqi said. It was the equivalent of about six dollars.

  Before we could respond, Wei Ziqi had already helped his brother out of the car. He led him through the front courtyard, which was decorated by a massive sculpture. It consisted of a shiny steel ball surrounded by a twisted rod; the shapes were vaguely abstract, like so much of the public art in China. Around Sancha, all local townships have erect
ed sculptures in such a style, accompanied by slogans intended to inspire images of modernity and prosperity. The Bohai Township slogan is “The Star of the Century.” Wei Ziqi led his brother past the twisted sculpture and through the open gate. The Idiot’s face was blank—he’d been silent ever since entering the car.

  Wei Jia kept his hands impatiently on the dash while we waited. Five minutes later, the boy’s father returned. He was alone. We kept driving.

  THE CROPS SHIFTED AS we descended into the Beijing plain. There was more corn here, as well as wheat, and the harvest had started earlier; walnut trees were already stripped bare. Roadside villages became bigger, with real traffic: buses and cars and minivans. There were shops, too. Suddenly words appeared everywhere—in these larger villages, the government had covered brick walls with family planning slogans. “Daughters Are Also Descendants,” proclaimed one sign. “Planned Birth Benefits the Country.” Usually I found the slogans oppressive, but here they were almost reassuring. Nobody had bothered to paint them in Sancha—that was the clearest indication that the village was dying.

  In fact, if any young people had stayed in Sancha, they wouldn’t necessarily have been limited to a single child. A couple who initially gives birth to a girl is allowed to have another baby, with a maximum of two children. Sancha is granted that right because of its remoteness, and because of the traditional desire to have a boy who can help with farming. But if you descend to the Beijing plain, a journey of less than ten miles, the rules change, and families are restricted to one child regardless of gender.

  The Chinese planned birth policy is heavily localized, depending on geography and ethnicity. It requires an enormous bureaucracy, and in the countryside I often saw evidence of enforcement. During my drive across the north, in Gansu Province, I once saw a new Iveco van with the words painted across the side: “Planned Birth Services Vehicle.” It was equipped with police lights, propaganda speakers, and a gas-powered generator; the back doors opened to reveal a sink and two hospital-style beds. I talked to the driver, who told me that they took the van into rural areas, where they performed surgeries. When I asked about the most common procedures, he matter-of-factly jotted two terms in my notebook: “abortion” and “tying tubes.” In that region, family size depends largely on race: Han Chinese are limited to one child; urban Mongolian residents can have two; and rural Mongolians are allowed to have three.

  In Sancha, people can have two children if the first is a girl, and there are other exceptions as well. Because the Weis care for the Idiot, they can legally have another child, but Wei Ziqi refused; he believed that raising two children would be too expensive. Chinese with aspirations often feel that way, especially in the cities, where the government has been effective in convincing people that they’re better off with only one kid. Urban Chinese rarely complain about the rules, and they tend to be scornful of those in the countryside who try to have more children. But one unintended result of the policy is a marked gender disparity. Accurate statistics are hard to come by, because some rural people avoid registering their children, but the most reliable figures indicate that there are 118 boys born for every 100 girls. Even the government acknowledges that it’s a problem—the National Population and Family Planning Commission has reported that there will be thirty million more men of marriageable age than women by the year 2020. That’s the same year that Wei Jia will turn twenty-three.

  It’s illegal for a Chinese doctor to tell a pregnant woman the gender of her child, but bribes are common. Once, I accompanied the Weis to a doctor’s appointment in Huairou, where the hospital room contained an ultrasound machine. Printed atop the equipment was a large sign in both Chinese and English. The foreign words had been miswritten so they ran together, but the meaning was clear:

  BOYORGIRL

  LETITBE

  WE PARKED AT THE back gate of the Xingying Elementary School. A teacher greeted us and led us inside; Wei Jia’s face was expressionless. He walked into the classroom, stopped dead beside the blackboard, and announced loudly, “This place is no good!”

  The boy’s parents tried to grab him but he squirmed free and ran out the door. He was crying now, rushing back toward the car. “I’m going home!” he yelled. “I want to go home! I don’t want to be here!”

  His mother followed, while the rest of us lingered in the classroom. I had to admit that Wei Jia had a point—these were by far the worst conditions I had ever seen in a school in the Beijing region. There was a gaping hole in the ceiling, and the classroom was filthy; metal bars covered the windows. The blackboard was chipped and scarred. On the walls, the only decorations consisted of a half-dozen Styrofoam cutouts of animals. They had been so hastily made that the figures were barely recognizable: a warped elephant, a twisted monkey, a clumsy-looking mouse.

  The other children had already arrived, and they sat quietly behind tiny desks, playing with Lego-like blocks. There were twenty total, only three of whom were girls. One was a strikingly pretty five-year-old with pigtails, and another had her hair cut short like a boy. The third girl was undersized, with enormous black eyes, and the teacher told us immediately that she was a ruozhi. It’s another term for somebody who is disabled: literally it means “weak wit.” The girl looked up when the teacher said it—obviously she was accustomed to people uttering this word in her presence.

  Outside, Wei Jia stood in the dust beside the car. He was crying harder now, and he struggled against anybody who tried to lead him back to the classroom. First his mother spoke to him, and then his father. Usually Wei Ziqi was strict with his son, but he seemed to sympathize with this particular fear. “Everybody goes to school,” Wei Ziqi said gently. “I went to school, and so did your mother. Aunt Mimi went to school, and so did Uncle Monster.”

  The fact that Uncle Monster was educated didn’t soothe the boy in the least. In the schoolyard, the daily flag-raising began: loudspeakers crackled, the national anthem played, and children marched out wearing the red kerchiefs of the Communist Party Young Pioneers. Wei Jia’s face was creased with panic; he had never seen so many children together in one place. By now he was mute—he simply lunged at the car whenever somebody tried to pull him away.

  It took nearly forty-five minutes to calm the boy. Finally his father carried him into the classroom; his mother seated him behind a desk. Other kids turned to stare—the girl known as the ruozhi spun around in her chair, eyes blazing. Wei Jia’s chest was heaving; his cheeks shone with tears. After ten minutes, he made another attempt for the door, but this time they caught him. He cried again, a final hard burst, and then he calmed down, exhausted. Lines of resignation crept across his forehead, like the furrows of an old man’s brow.

  We left as quietly as we could. I asked Wei Ziqi where the bathroom was, and he told me to use the schoolyard fence on the way out. I could hear children’s voices—talking, laughing, reciting lessons—while I pissed in the weeds. On the way home the car seemed empty without the boy and the Idiot.

  THAT DAY THE IDIOT escaped twice from the government office. The first time, the cadres caught him just outside the gate. The second time, he made it into Bohai Township, and it took a while for them to track him down.

  The officials telephoned Wei Ziqi and told him to pick up his brother; Wei Ziqi demanded the subsidy. Neither side would budge, and finally, late in the day, the cadres put the Idiot in a car and drove into the mountains. They dropped him off two miles outside of Sancha. The Idiot had never been alone so far from home, but he found his way back—some instinct must have told him to walk uphill.

  I learned all of this later from Wei Ziqi. He said his brother had been exhausted and frightened, but otherwise he was fine; nobody in the government had mistreated him. Wei Ziqi seemed satisfied with this chain of events: in his view, he had shown the cadres that he was serious. They had finally agreed to submit the request to the county government, a higher level of authority, and Wei Ziqi believed he had a good chance of receiving the subsidy. As far as he was concerned, t
his had been the best course of action. Officials are often inclined to ignore responsibility, and sometimes you have to act aggressively in order to push them.

  I felt guilty about the incident, although I had no idea what I should have done differently. And I hadn’t fully understood the situation while it was unfolding. I often felt like that in China; the place had a way of making me feel slow-witted. Sometimes I benefited from this stupidity, especially as a writer. Over the years I had learned to be patient, and probably I was more open-minded than I had ever been in America. But my reactions could be slow and sometimes a situation developed before I could respond. In any case, life is complicated in China, and often there isn’t a good solution regardless of how quick you are. The people have a common expression for that: Mei banfa, they often say. Nothing can be done.

  I had always liked the challenge of living in China, and there was something about the foreigner’s solitude that appealed to me. The villagers accepted this—they understood that I was different, and that I spent a great deal of time alone, and they didn’t judge me for that. They were curious only in the broadest sense: people often asked me what time it was in America, and they were always interested in how much something had cost. They asked detailed questions about the things I eat and don’t eat. But they never inquired about my writing or my personal life, which was one reason I felt so comfortable in Sancha. Often the villagers referred to Mimi as my laopo, or wife, and I didn’t bother to correct them. In fact we had dated briefly before finding the country home, but we rented the place as friends. Over time, each of us dated other people, and we continued to share the house; sometimes we brought new partners to Sancha. The villagers couldn’t have cared less—that was the distance between their world and ours.