Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

by Peter Hessler

  Despite the praise, Wei Ziqi remained noncommittal, which was the expected form. But soon the men began to review a list of local Party members, evaluating who would be likely to support which candidate. All told, there were now twenty-three members in the village, and the most powerful loyalties were those of blood. They were split down the middle: five people were closely related to Wei Ziqi, and five were closely related to the Party Secretary. Among the other members, some were good friends of Wei Ziqi, and others seemed likely to want change; the men tried to calculate how many would fall into his camp. They began to interview people face to face, in secrecy. At this stage of the process, Wei Ziqi never participated; he needed to be able to step away if support was thin. The Shitkicker served as his lieutenant, and for weeks he moved discreetly around the village, conducting the dirty work of hushed discussions and late-night meetings.

  Soon the Party Secretary mobilized a lieutenant of her own. One evening, the Vice Party Secretary came to the Wei family home, greeted Wei Ziqi politely, and sat down to talk. The men had never been close, but this visit wasn’t a surprise, and the Vice Party Secretary quickly came to the point. “You’ll be a good candidate someday, but it’s better if you wait,” he said. “You’re young, you’re doing well—wait until next time. Be patient.”

  Wei Ziqi smiled and said something to the effect that his words made sense. But by this point it was too late—the Shitkicker had already finished the canvassing, and he believed the numbers were promising. By his calculation, ten Party members could be counted on to support Wei Ziqi, and ten belonged to the Party Secretary. That left only three who were undecided.

  THERE WERE NO ISSUES in the campaign. Nobody talked about specific plans for the village, or changes that needed to be made; there was no platform or philosophy. Only a fool would have made public promises. The goal was to be as vague as possible, and each candidate avoided speaking directly about the election. Family mattered more than anything else: people marshaled their close relatives and tried to recruit more distant cousins. A great deal of energy was spent on analyzing motivations, trying to figure out who was likely to support whom. Politics had been distilled to its purest essence—an exercise in village guanxi.

  Everything took place out of sight, among the local elite. Now it seemed that every night the Shitkicker came to the Weis’ home, and often there were other visitors, men who gave terse greetings and then waited for me to leave. The only people who talked openly were the ones who weren’t involved. Cao Chunmei and the other women discussed the election all the time; they loved to speculate on the outcome and the strategies. They said the Party Secretary was nervous, and whenever I saw the woman I sensed some tension in her face. But she still greeted me gruffly: “Hey! You just get here?”

  In the final stages the campaign proceeded to formal dinners. The Shitkicker hosted a banquet at a good restaurant in Huairou, where ten Party members showed up. These men had all promised to vote for Wei Ziqi, and the meal was intended to confirm their support. But when I asked Wei Ziqi about the banquet, he told me that nobody had said one word about the election. The men enjoyed the meal, drank their baijiu, smoked their cigarettes, and then at the end the Shitkicker asked a question. “Has there been any change?” he said. One by one, the men responded no, and that was the end of the banquet in Huairou.

  Three days later the Party Secretary invited Wei Ziqi and the four youngest Party members to a restaurant down in the valley. Since the start of the campaign, there had been little contact between the woman and Wei Ziqi, and after the dinner I asked what they talked about.

  “Not about the election,” he said.

  “So what was the conversation about?”

  “I don’t know, just normal things,” he said. “I don’t remember very well. It wasn’t so comfortable.”

  If it represented a last-ditch attempt to convince Wei Ziqi to withdraw, it was as indirect as every other aspect of the campaign. In the final days, there were rumors that the Party Secretary had offered money to some voters, but nobody could substantiate it, and such talk came mostly from nonmembers. Eventually the political rumors must have moved beyond the village, because at last, three days before the election, officials from the township government made a visit.

  THERE WERE TWO CADRES. The higher-ranked official worked at the township’s Communist Party Committee, and he was accompanied by another cadre who served beneath him. In China, a township has authority over local villages, and it’s rare for officials from this level to appear in a place like Sancha. Usually villagers travel to the township for meetings—that’s the typical movement along the chain of power. But something about the current political campaign was important enough to bring the men to Sancha, where they called a meeting of all Party members.

  The Committee cadre began with a speech. He talked about the upcoming election, and he emphasized the importance of following correct procedures. He told the Party members to guard diligently against the sale of votes—he emphasized this point several times. After that, the man’s words became vague. He didn’t mention the recent land sales in the village, or the lack of financial openness; he avoided all specific local issues. He seemed to ramble, talking about development and infrastructure improvements.

  “He talked for a long time,” Wei Ziqi said after the meeting. “The basic meaning was that we should stay with the same Party secretary. It’s hard to describe, because he said a lot of things and most of it wasn’t very direct. But the meaning was obvious. Basically he was saying that our current leader has done a lot of good things for us. Then he started asking questions about things that have improved in the village. He said, ‘You have a new road, don’t you? You just received streetlights, didn’t you?’ Finally at the end he said, ‘You can see that this leader has ability.’”

  The cadre never mentioned Wei Ziqi’s name or the surreptitious campaign. After he was finished, he called upon each individual member to comment openly on the Party Secretary’s performance. One by one, people stood up and followed the cadre’s cue, praising the Party Secretary. They mentioned the new road, the cell phone tower, the streetlights, the garbage collection. Only a handful of members said anything negative. The Shitkicker was the most outspoken—he complained about the land deals and the mystery of village finances.

  Finally the township cadre called on Wei Ziqi. Wei Ziqi stood up and spoke one sentence. “Gande bucuo,” he said. “She’s done a fine job.” And then he sat back down again.

  AFTER THAT THERE WERE no surprises. Three days later, they held the vote, with every member listing his top candidates, and the Party Secretary’s name appeared on fifteen ballots. Wei Ziqi received ten nominations. Standard protocol called for voting to go to a second round, with choices limited to the top five names, and Wei Ziqi came in fourth. The Party Secretary won, and the Vice Party Secretary took second, which meant that both positions were retained. Third place became the village’s Party Committee Member. Wei Ziqi was left with nothing—he failed to pick up even a low-ranking office.

  He learned that one of his supposed adherents, a farmer who lived in the lower village and claimed to admire Wei Ziqi, had in fact served as a spy in the campaign. The farmer had pretended to back Wei Ziqi, attending all the dinners and late-night meetings; and meanwhile at every step he secretly briefed the Party Secretary. With this knowledge the woman was able to track the campaign, finding ways to convince key voters. As for how she managed to convince them, nobody could say for certain. Wei Ziqi refused to speculate—he was tired of the politics.

  He had realized it was hopeless the moment the township cadre gave his speech. “Mei banfa,” Wei Ziqi said. “There was nothing I could do.” In his opinion the man’s words represented the turning point, even more so than the actions of the spy. And the speech was the reason that Wei Ziqi said so little when asked to comment about the Party Secretary’s performance. That was his final calculation of the campaign—at the last moment, after all the secrecy and planning, he hedge
d his bets.

  FOR A SPELL WEI Ziqi drank heavily. He claimed the loss didn’t matter, and he often said that he had campaigned only because he had been recruited to do so; but in truth the defeat left him depressed. He often remembered the fortune-teller’s warning: Avoid politics at all costs. But Wei Ziqi hadn’t listened, and now he paid for his pride; he swore that never again would he challenge local authority. The only way he would run for office was if the Party Secretary retired and approved Wei Ziqi as her successor. “If she supports me, then I’ll do it,” he said. “If she doesn’t, then I don’t have a chance.”

  Their relations were strained on a personal level, but Wei Ziqi believed she wouldn’t seek revenge. He said she still feared his abilities, and she remembered what had happened when Wei Ziqi dropped off the Idiot at the township government. In Wei Ziqi’s opinion, the memory of that action was critical to his security in the village. “If somebody goes to a higher authority like that, it causes a problem for her,” he said. “Others don’t do this because they don’t really understand the policies and the law. I understand because I studied the law.”

  In 2007, the Communist Party started a national campaign called “Develop Modern Agriculture.” They hoped to introduce new technology and management strategies to the countryside, and they also wanted to give rural cadres a glimpse of city life. In Sancha, that year’s annual Party junket took the members to Dalian, a major city on the northeastern coast near the Korean peninsula. For Wei Ziqi, and nearly everybody else in the delegation, it was the first time they had ever flown in an airplane. The Air China flight was delayed by five hours and it was after midnight when they finally departed.

  For half a week the Sancha Party members toured Dalian. Every night they ate seafood, the local specialty, and during the days they were taken to see various tourist sites and examples of modern infrastructure. Dalian is one of the most prosperous places in northern China, and it’s also one of the best planned, with elevated highways that ease congestion. The Sancha cadres rode on the highways, and they visited Dalian’s new development zone. Pfizer, Toshiba, and Mitsubishi had already set up operations in the industrial park, and Intel had recently announced that it planned to build a Dalian factory dedicated to making semiconductors.

  But the cadres seemed most deeply impressed by a variety show that featured Thai transvestites. In recent years, the Chinese government had loosened restrictions on international travel, and Thailand had become a popular destination for middle-and upper-class people. Whenever Chinese tour groups went to Bangkok, they made sure to schedule an evening at a transvestite show. As more and more people went abroad, the shows became increasingly famous, until finally the folks in Dalian decided to import some Thai transvestites of their own.

  After Wei Ziqi returned from the northeast, he couldn’t stop talking about the variety show. “You’ve been to Thailand,” he said. “About the renyao—is that true?”

  I said I was pretty certain they’re actually men.

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “We were told they take children when they’re really small, maybe four or five years old, and then they train them to be transvestites. They said they spend years and years on this training. Is that true?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “I think they probably do this as adults. It shouldn’t take that long to become a transvestite.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Wei Ziqi said. He seemed happy that I had confirmed his analysis. “All the other Party members believed it,” he said, “but I didn’t.”

  IN 2007, CAO CHUNMEI decided that she wanted a driver’s license. Now that they had a car, she thought it made sense; she could pick up groceries down in the valley. But Wei Ziqi wouldn’t spend money on another driving course. “It’s not necessary,” he told her. “We already have one license.” For a while, Cao Chunmei tried to change his mind, but he was too stubborn, and eventually she gave up on the idea of driving.

  In the spring she began to experience panic attacks. Periodically her heart raced and her mind filled with dread; sometimes she was struck almost helpless. Finally she saw a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, and she also went to Huairou to visit the clairvoyant. The man took her right wrist, felt her pulse, and informed her that new spirits had entered the home. Now she needed to appease a snake spirit, a rabbit spirit, and a fox spirit. Rabbit spirits are particularly jumpy; they often cause marital problems. Cao Chunmei prayed diligently at her shrines, and she did everything she could to avoid the slaughter of fish and chickens, and by summer she felt calmer again.

  Wei Ziqi seemed to recover when the customers reappeared. He cut down on his drinking, and he focused once again on expanding his business; he renovated the patio and built a new pond for the Swiss trout. To determine the most auspicious location for the pond, he called in a clairvoyant from down in the valley. Wei Ziqi had never been religious, and he ignored his wife’s shrines in the living room, but he obeyed the clairvoyant’s instructions. That was one thing Wei Ziqi had learned—never again would he ignore a fortune-teller’s warning.

  As for Wei Jia, he picked up his own lessons about politics. In school, fifth grade is the first year that Chinese children campaign for classroom cadre positions, as opposed to being appointed by the teacher. Wei Jia had been successful as Politeness Monitor; he was well liked by other kids and the instructors trusted him. They encouraged him to run for office, but he flatly refused. “It’s too much hassle,” he told me. “Let somebody else do that stuff.” His favorite subjects were English and computers. He never talked much about what he wanted to be when he grew up, but he said that someday, after he left the village, he’d live in downtown Beijing, near the lake of Houhai.

  In autumn the Party Secretary’s mother died. It happened at the end of harvest, and the villagers gathered in the dead woman’s home to pay their respects. She had been an important person: the first Sancha woman to join the Party, and the inspiration for her daughter’s rise. The funeral lasted three days. On the first day, I happened to walk past while the Party Secretary was mourning. She wore funeral white, and she had fallen onto her knees before the coffin. She was keening—her high-pitched wails echoed off the stony walls of the valley. In the past I had only seen her brusqueness, the sense of control that she carried around the village, and I had never entirely trusted her. But the sight of the funeral made me feel something different, and I realized that part of me was relieved that Wei Ziqi had lost the election. Cao Chunmei was right: he already had enough to worry about. In the countryside there are many ways to be humbled, and a man is lucky if a brush with politics turns out to be his worst moment.

  The Shitkicker’s new house remained empty. The unfinished brick walls still dominated the upper village, and piles of cement lay abandoned along the walk. He never found a buyer, and he never made another attempt at a local coup. But in other respects his status grew. Half a century after pouring tea for the local clairvoyant, he seemed to draw more of the old man’s power. The Shitkicker was gaining clarity—he could see the unseen; he could speak the unspoken. He felt the wrists and he described the visions, the spirits of snakes and rabbits and foxes, and soon more villagers sought wisdom in the shadow of the empty house.

  BOOK III

  THE FACTORY

  I

  IN THE CITY OF WENZHOU THEY RENTED OUT CARS WITH an empty tank. The first time I went there and picked up a Volkswagen Santana, in July of 2005, that was my welcome: I paid my deposit, put the key in the ignition, and the low-fuel warning light flashed on. There was barely enough in the tank to make it to a gas station. In the past, when I’d rented from Beijing’s Capital Motors, I complained about inconsistent fuel levels, but the folks at the Wenzhou Prosperous Automobile Rental Company had solved that problem in their own entrepreneurial way. If I returned the Santana with so much as a gallon left in the tank, it would be siphoned out and sold.

  Before that year, I had never rented a car in the south, and I hadn’t spent much time driving in
Chinese cities. Almost all of my journeys had been in the countryside of the north, where I became accustomed to rural rhythms: the busy mornings of spring planting, the road-threshing of autumn. In winter I spent quiet days in villages where most young people were already gone. But there had never been any mystery about where they were going, or how they were getting there. They followed the new roads south, and each year there were more migrants, more ways to leave. In 2003, the central government embarked on a major two-year road-building campaign in the countryside, and after that was finished they turned their attention to the cities. These places were being transformed by the auto boom: in the four years since I acquired my driver’s license, the number of passenger vehicles in China had more than doubled. In January of 2005, officials announced plans to construct another thirty thousand miles of high-speed expressways. Eventually this network would connect every city with a population of over two hundred thousand people, stretching all the way from the factory towns of the eastern coast to the far western border with Kyrgyzstan. China may have come late to the world of high-speed transport—the nation’s first expressway wasn’t completed until 1988—but by 2020 they intended to have more highway miles than the United States.

  When the government announced the expansion, they specifically mentioned the States as a source of inspiration. Zhang Chunxian, the Minister of Communications, hosted a press conference in Beijing, and he responded to one question with a story about Condoleezza Rice. Recently she had visited China, where apparently she told an official that they should follow the example of America in the 1950s and build more roads. “She said when she was young, she took a lot of trips with her family across America,” Zhang explained. “This was how she became interested in the country’s highways, and she said those trips helped her love the United States. By building expressways, we can boost the auto industry, but that’s only a small part of it. What’s important is the implication for national development and the improvement in people’s lives.”