Barbarian Lost

by Alexandre Trudeau

  Through careful prodding, Viv learns that these workers earn 1,600 yuan per month, which is roughly equivalent to $230. Not much from our perspective, but nothing to be balked at in Anhui Province at the time.

  The production line is in a long, brightly lit chamber, but it’s more intimate than the first room, since the assembly mostly happens beneath an elaborate track from which the skeletal car hangs. Technicians are building up the car piece by piece. It’s moving along a series of stations worked by teams of people. At one station, two men weld a component to the build. At another, a team with compression ratchets speedily bolt widgets.

  As we walk alongside the stations, we engage the workers with smiles and nods. Some never lift their heads, but many are more sociable. The workers seem to enjoy and take pride in their work. There also seems to be camaraderie among them. As they work, they joke around and provide each other assistance. At some stations, we observe dedicated transportation systems: tracks to sling parts up and carry them through the air to the car, where they’re fixed; pneumatic trolleys and carts that slide along the floor; and even a robot platform that carries the motor to the build and delicately lifts it into the engine cavity without being controlled. It is a source of amazement for its new masters and their visitors alike.

  As we pause in wonder, I ask questions about the car’s engine. It’s manufactured elsewhere, perhaps assembled somewhere on the premises—or maybe the whole thing is purchased from another company. It’s a Chinese motor manufactured according to a Korean technology licence. Our hosts also admit that many of the more sophisticated instruments and devices are manufactured outside China, in Japan, Korea and Germany. But this will decrease in time, I’m told.

  With more and more of the shell complete, the minivan becomes visible. Windows and interior elements are now fitted into the vehicle. It’s then painted and given some rubber on which to roll off the line. The asking price is between five thousand and ten thousand dollars, a competitive price when one considers the heavy use the minivan is meant to endure, but a price well beyond the means of any of these workers, who make but a fraction of that in a year.

  The product is fresh to the market and thus has not really been put to the test yet, but JAC planners and consumers alike are banking on the idea that the maker of service vehicles, of tractors and trucks that haul and endure, can probably offer a reliable minivan, ready for active service. The vehicle is likely underpowered and not terrifically comfortable, especially after heavy use and tough conditions wear down its suspension. But the minivan will endure long hours, overstuffing of both goods and passengers, and will be easy and cheap to repair and service.

  This particular minivan is emerging at a time when the Chinese consumer class is rapidly expanding. But something tells me that the buyers of the JAC minivan will not soon be found packing the vehicle with children, pets, clothes and groceries for a weekend at the cottage. For now, JAC’s aims are much more modest.

  When we exit the factory, we see that another shift is ending. The workers in their identical colourful uniforms assemble at collection points to be picked up by minibuses. I’m told that many of these young workers live in factory housing in the compound. The young workers have a playful air to them, as if this experience were a kind of summer camp, highly rigid perhaps, but a life less oppressive than that with their families in the villages. Here, they have a clearly identified job that they’re expected to accomplish with crystalline precision, but as they wait for transportation after a shift or when they retire to their dormitories at night, they can be without worries. They can indulge in laughter and flirtation, while in their villages, the expectations and concerns weighing upon their shoulders are incessant.

  Our tour is over and a driver is designated to take us where we please in Hefei. We had chosen online a new hotel with stunningly low prices, but its location is something of a mystery to our driver. It’s in a new part of town. We venture out of the gates in a different direction from that from which we came.

  Hefei is truly surprising. Coming into town on the old Nanjing road, it seemed a dusty, post-industrial wasteland, a Chinese Detroit. Then it revealed itself as a business-oriented place with glass-clad skyscrapers, and, on the way to the factory, it morphed into vast housing and shopping complexes. Now as we leave the industrial area of the factory, apartment buildings and malls-in-the-making again spread out around us, lined up along the boulevard. But behind the rows of buildings, I can only make out empty space. After a few kilometres, we come upon something of a new city centre replete with ultra-modern buildings fitted with posh outdoor lighting. But it too is all core. To complete the picture, rush-hour traffic is heavy at this single great intersection. This afternoon, the city is also cloaked in a sooty fog that makes the empty spaces behind everything seem laden with unearthly mystery.

  We turn onto another main thoroughfare and after a few blocks and some searching find the street where the hotel is located. It has been erected among a bunch of new multi-storey textile buildings. This again is typical of the way the new China works: with largesse. Surplus capacity is built into everything. A shopping mall will be topped with the hull of an office tower. A series of textile factories will be built in one go. Some will be used at once, others will remain empty for some time. While the factories are being built, the planners might also decide to throw a hotel into the construction mix.

  Government entities make for strange industrialists in China. As anywhere else, they control zoning and therefore land use. As they let the market in, they continue to have broad and sometimes obscure priorities. They exert significant control over the procurement of labour and can extract and redirect resources and capital in all sorts of creative and discretionary ways. It seems that government planners at various levels were convinced that a small textile industry was called for in the new part of Hefei, and to market the product, a hotel to host buyers was bankrolled. Still, the planners hope for the free market to take hold. They wish to lure to these rooms hordes of foreign wholesalers intent on buying product from Hefei. If not, they expect corporate buyers and planners from elsewhere in China. And even if the hotel is empty, as it is when Viv and I arrive, it’s not there to turn a profit but to serve other needs. Its operations will continue as long as its owning entity says it will.

  The lobby is grandiose, its ceiling some seven and a half metres high. A huge granite-topped reception desk lines the back of the lobby under the massive glittering fresco of a dragon. The place is full of attendants, fresh and eager youngsters in crisp and fanciful uniforms. Our rooms are on the top floor of the garden wing. Extravagantly dressed porters carry our scuffed-up rucksacks with delicate application. My room is clean, spartan and spacious. It gazes out over a green space between more buildings.

  Viv and I convene in the lobby to go find an interesting place to eat. We walk back toward the core. On our way to the hotel, I’d noticed a fancy-looking place in its own artful two-storey building. Food in China is so cheap that I don’t hesitate to walk into the most ridiculously showy establishments. In the West, I usually do the opposite—I search for the most down and dirty, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, where the food’s full of soul.

  But in Chinese cities, what you want is a restaurant that attracts throngs of people, that has a wide selection and fresh ingredients. A place that has done itself up. These restaurants will have elaborate picture menus, an absolute must for food explorers. In these restaurants, which are all over China, you can often treat a group of friends to a spectacular banquet including drinks for a hundred dollars.

  This one is a little different, though. It’s understated; there’s a muted and earthy character to its decor, with nice gardens out front, a staccato roofline, an elegant, polished, coarse timber entrance and a flowing floor plan creating private alcoves. Although still bright, the lighting is also more discreetly handled than usual. The place is full of respectable diners. They see few foreigners here, and we are seated at the front window looking out o
n a small garden and the parking lot beyond.

  Viv and I explore the menu items with curiosity. I’m always looking for new dishes, though I definitely have my limits: no hair, no feathers, no veins, no raw blood, no gastrointestinal-tract contents. No legged insects except ants and grasshoppers. And no bottom-feeding freshwater fish.

  Reading the menu, Viv suddenly yelps in her high-pitched girlish manner, “Oh! Stinky tofu!”

  After witnessing such emotion for something stinky, I insist on ordering the dish. She warns me that it is like a very strong old cheese, and many people find it overpowering. When it arrives, it proves nothing like cheese in either flavour or texture, having the sponginess of a scouring pad and a bitter and burnt flavour, with hints of metal. Not soon a contender for my good books.

  I also have my favourites. At this moment: spiced pig kidneys, mouth-water chicken and garlic-sautéed dragon beans. When I get Viv to ask the nice, young waitress if they have any of these, she points us to similar dishes and tells us they are even better.

  “You are always eating dishes that fire us up,” Viv grumbles.

  “Yes, I want to bring my fire higher and higher,” I joke.

  Too much fire wears you out, she cautions, causes turbulence in the body and mind. Periodically we must eat motherly foods to restore, to soothe and to rebuild. Eating is a kind of balancing act, she explains.

  The Chinese believe that the forces of yin and yang exist in all things, including us humans. Imbalances can exist in the world, in the body or in the soul; they are causes of misfortune and ailment. So one is constantly seeking to manage these forces in one’s behaviour and surroundings. The old sayings give much guidance in these pursuits. And nowhere are these pieces of information more pronounced than where food is concerned. Foods have numerous meanings and auspicious uses, depending on how they are prepared and eaten. They’re medicine for body and soul.

  In prepared dishes, the various permutations of the yin and yang pair are many. It’s perhaps easiest to understand these two prime forces in their sensual dichotomy: yang, the male element, is in strong-flavoured and spicy foods; yin, the female element, is in soft and mild foods but also in the bitter and cold. Yang gives; yin receives.

  “If we keep eating all this spicy food, I’m going to burn out,” Viv complains.

  “I seek fire at all times unless I am sick,” I tell her.

  “Sounds exhausting,” she says.

  “Maybe. I long thought that a great bonfire is what was needed inside. Until there was nothing left to burn and all passions were extinguished.”

  “You believe this?” she asks with worry.

  “Maybe not anymore. Maybe the bonfire might just burn my whole life, and I’d be forever without peace.”

  “Then you might be coming around to the Chinese way. Balance your passions and you will be able to enjoy them until the end.”

  “Yes, Vivien, but don’t think this will stop me from ordering pickled-pepper pork flank.”

  Early the next morning, we take a bus to Wuhu. The town sits on the Yangtze plain. Everything downstream and east of Wuhu is part of the heartland of central China: Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai. As an element of this important trade and manufacturing region, Wuhu has prospered.

  The bus station area is new. Our hotel is part of the commercial development that has blossomed around the busy terminal. The establishment touts itself as a business hotel and is modern and incredibly inexpensive. The rooms are cramped but clean and well appointed. Many hotels throughout China sell small wares in the rooms—shower caps, toothbrushes and condoms—all labelled with a price. This hotel has pushed the concept further and offers up a variety of perfumes, condom styles and even packages of racy underwear. Clearly, all sorts of business goes down at this hotel.

  Viv has called our contact at Chery Automobile and arranged a meeting at the hotel just after lunch. The hotel has no restaurant but it’s connected to a mini-mall with a food court. The new food courts in China function efficiently: customers pay at a kiosk for a plastic card charged with credit, then wander among the stations offering various dishes, samples of which are on display. For little money, a customer can quickly amass a wide selection of dishes. Each station has its speciality: hot or cold dishes, say, or types of foods, like barbecued meats or noodles. Sometimes they focus on regional cuisines: a counter specializing in southwestern cuisine, another in dim sum, for instance. In one food court in north China, a particularly memorable kiosk had a large colourful sign featuring a banner-sized photo of a friendly-looking ass, forever transfixed with its wide, toothy donkey grin. The braised meat proved succulent if somewhat stringy.

  After an enjoyable lunch, we head out to meet our contact from Chery Automobile. Unlike JAC in Hefei, only recently moved from heavy trucks to cars, Chery has a well-established line of automobiles. It’s one of a small group of nationally recognized automobile brands. The brand name is pronounced “cherry” in English. The different spelling projects a Lenovo-like aura, something familiar combined with something strange. Toyota and Kia were once strange names to us as well, and like them, Chery products are meant to compete. In recent years, Chery has been turning out automobiles emulating the Japanese, Korean, European or American cars we drive. The Chery machines are also increasingly fitted with all the sensors and filters that make our cars legal, and all the lights and gadgets that make them appealing to mass consumers. The retail price of Chery vehicles at the current yuan rate is significantly less than even the most affordable vehicles on the North American markets. Chery’s planners have realized that automobile manufacturing is more than merely churning out product. A product is not just an object but a way of life. And Chery wants to be a part of the new Chinese way of life.

  As with JAC, our contact with Chery is again a junior public relations officer. He’s alone and drives a Chery car as if it were his personal vehicle and we, his guests. It makes him seem somewhat more powerful than were he driven around by a colleague. A man alone with his car projects an image of personal freedom, and to North Americans, this image seems more potent and appealing than rigid hierarchies.

  The Chery industrial complex is at the edge of town among immense rice plots; the people who work at Chery may well be descendants of the disciplined workforces that have laboured in these fields for millennia. The compound is fairly new. We pass a long barbed-wire fence beyond which a giant parking lot is filled with row upon row of new cars still partially cloaked in plastic. I can make out several huge white hangars where production must occur.

  Mr. Wu, our host, engages us in light banter. There’s a muted confidence to him. He’s a little unsure of who we are but can see that we’re clearly not corporate big shots. Still, his instincts tell him to be candid only to a certain point in his answers to our questions. Yet Viv and I try to turn questions in such a way as to not demand difficult answers that might potentially embarrass our host. Although requiring more patience, the soft approach often rewards us with spirited candour in appreciation for our courtesy. Wu takes us for intellectuals and shares with us his mostly unsatisfied desire for a more intellectual life. But he confesses that climbing the corporate ladder brings him satisfaction, even if it’s mostly materialistic.

  Our visit to the Chery assembly lines repeats many of the experiences of JAC. There are also notable differences. At each step of the way, we are joined by a production engineer with expertise about the vehicle and its assembly. Our technical questions are answered frankly and in detail. Chery is far more geared toward corporate relations than is JAC. Tours like ours are more routine. The workers here are more urbane, and pay us no attention.

  We visit a production room high above on a gangway. It’s the engine assembly, something we did not see in Hefei. Big red boxes house hermetic forging and welding processes. Engine machining is far too precise a task to be left to humans and is completely automated. These great machines that make the engines are not made in China but have been purchased from Japan a
nd Germany. The Chery engine aims to be as detailed and computerized as its counterparts in the developed world, but the technical precision to produce the metamachines that make sophisticated car motors still eludes the Chinese. They seem to have accepted that this niche capacity is one they cannot reach for the moment.

  Everything is more organized at Chery than it was at JAC: the way we are kept at a distance from the production and hosted by specialists, the way the assembly lines are articulated. There are no chambers where car parts are piled up haphazardly. No frolicking of the workers as they wait for an item or get ahead of the chain. The process unfolds with a minimum of excess and looseness. The branches of production flow together and form a single movement forward.

  We forgo visiting the body presses. Viv explains that we visited this part of assembly at JAC, and our Chery hosts confirm that the process is both extremely boring and scarcely visible, since, like the machining of the engine, much of the manufacture happens within big machines.

  Chery produces a line of sedans from the economical to the mid-size. They have small engines. They are low on metal and high on plastic. They are highly functional yet inexpensive. They compare to the starter cars many westerners purchase when they first buy a new car, and in many ways, this is exactly what Chery offers: the first-car experience.

  As we witnessed in the Hefei restaurant the night before, there’s a growing class of consumers who will own the car as they own a television set, a rice cooker or an air conditioner. These consumers can now be spotted on any road or highway. At least ten million Chinese must join the middle class every year. But to whom, then, do we refer when we talk about a Chinese middle class? I picture people who buy cars and apartments and who frequent big restaurants. People who make choices: what to do, what to wear, what to eat, what to buy. Whom to marry. Who to be.

  Beneath them are those who have few choices and almost no mobility. Circumstances force their hand, and they accept whatever work they can, usually for very small amounts of money. They can afford only what is cheapest—and very little of it. These people are several hundred million strong in China, but their numbers are declining.