by Ian Williams
“It really is a good market,” Ching said. “Promise me you’ll at least take a look, Tony.”
Morgan said sure, he’d look, and put the envelope into his bag. He reminded Ching about the quote on garden gnomes, saying that was urgent.
Morgan got out of the van, saying thanks for the ride, and Ching shouted after him, “Hand-job machine, Tony. Hand job. It’s the future.” Morgan quickened his pace towards the lobby, absolutely sure everybody anywhere nearby was looking at him.
It then took Morgan what seemed like an eternity to cross the cavernous hotel lobby, weaving around fat marble pillars and huddles of buyers back from a trade fair, buses depositing wave after wave of them at the hotel’s revolving doors.
His hotel was new, built to service a series of hangar-like exhibition halls built nearby, but convenient as well for Ching’s factories. Large chandeliers hung from a distant ceiling, and one wall was lined with tall mirrors and built-in television screens looping kitschy videos. A log fire. A coral reef. Mountains.
What it hadn’t quite mastered yet was service, and dazed and overwhelmed bellboys ping-ponged between the buses, yelled at in dozens of languages as they juggled overstuffed boxes of samples from the trade fair.
And to cap it all, the concierge seemed to have lost Morgan’s golf clubs.
He ordered a gin and tonic in a packed corner bar, hearing Russian, Arabic, German, some kind of Scandinavian, an African dialect or two, and several varieties of English.
Some were first-time visitors, overwhelmed by what they’d seen.
“Can you believe that place?”
“Two hundred thousand exhibitors!”
He knew what a buzz these trade fairs could be. You could spend days walking through halls the size of several football pitches and lined with everything from televisions to toys, to shorts, socks, shoes and Christmas decorations. He was hard-pressed to think of anything you couldn’t find there.
Morgan also knew how a buyer’s day was organised. From hotel to bus to fair to lunch to fair, then maybe to a company showroom before the bar and dinner, maybe with a supplier, and always at a good restaurant. Maybe a bit of karaoke. From one air-conditioned space to another, chilled face towels and iced water always at hand before the serious drinking began later.
Rarely did buyers get to see the factories themselves. Those who did ask to visit would be politely told it wasn’t convenient or the production line was undergoing maintenance. Most preferred not to know the conditions under which their products were manufactured, or else they employed middlemen like Morgan to be their buffer with the factory bosses, paid to provide assurance that things were absolutely fine. That it wasn’t a sweatshop.
He signed for his drink and headed to the lift. In spite of the buzz he knew that the numbers of visitors and exhibitors were well down this year. Ching had told him, and Ching knew. Things were getting tough for China’s exporters.
He admired the enthusiasm of the buyers, especially the first-timers. Once upon a time that had been him. But years of working in China had taught him to be very cautious.
Ching was just about the most solid, dependable and honest man he’d met down there. A man of principle. But everything was relative. Especially trust, and especially in Shenzhen.
He’d been stung early on in his business career after handing to a factory owner the full spec for some garden furniture, a really funky design. Pretty original, he’d thought, only to find that within a month the market was flooded with cheap knock-offs.
The factory owner had not only copied the design, but also set up a parallel production line, right out the back, churning out the copies under his own brand and right under Morgan’s nose.
Even after Morgan had discovered the scam there wasn’t much he could do. The law wasn’t clear, and nobody enforced it anyway. The factory owner just shrugged, as if to say what do you expect?
The lift was packed with buyers from Hong Kong, who all appeared to be talking at once. He could tell they were from Hong Kong since they all had restless fingers, which meant that every time the lift stopped and its doors opened, several index fingers made a lunge at the close button. The one that got there first jabbing away as if each lost millisecond was lost business. Maybe it was.
You had to have your wits about you simply to get out, which Morgan did, at the twenty-fourth floor, where he went to the business centre and copied Mr Fang’s documents, the information for the St Kitts passports. He also copied the document from his wife about the Colonel and his Ferrari-loving son, placing the copies together in a brown envelope. He put the envelope in his bag.
Morgan put the bag over his shoulder and took the lift up to thirtieth-floor bar. He ordered another drink, a vodka-soda this time, went outside and walked down to the darkened end of a long open-air terrace looking out on a new area of the city.
He tried to activate his VPN, so that he could share some more material to his @Beijing_smog Twitter account. But his VPN refused to work.
“They’re fucking with you, man.”
It was Chuck Drayton, by his side with a beer in hand, telling him that VPNs were being blocked now, particularly on smartphones.
“They don’t want you accessing what they can’t control,” Drayton said.
“Can they do that, technically I mean?”
“They can try. It’s a challenge for the VPNs though. Have to keep coming up with new addresses, fresh ways to tunnel out of China, keep one step ahead. You should install a couple more of them. Have some back-up.”
Morgan said it was stupid. Business people needed to be able to access information. He waved his glass in the direction of the growing numbers of buyers now spilling onto the far end of the bar.
“China’s going to lose business.”
“You think the Communist Party gives a shit,” said Drayton. “They want to do business on their terms or not at all. You know that.”
Drayton said the US Embassy had complained to the Foreign Ministry.
“And what did they say?”
“Not much. They said Chinese internet was run in accordance with Chinese laws. Which seems to mean blocking anything they don’t agree with.”
Drayton said he’d been looking after Mark Zuckerberg, who was visiting China, doing some university talks, speaking Chinese to the students.
“The Facebook boss? He speaks Chinese?” Morgan said.
“Badly.”
“So what’s the point?”
“He thinks that if he makes the effort with the language, and tells them about his Chinese wife, then maybe they’ll lift the ban on Facebook in China. He told the students that he first learned it so he could speak to his wife’s family.”
“Seems a lot of trouble to go to.”
“He told them he likes Chinese culture too,” Drayton said.
“What did the students make of it?”
“Not sure if they understood frankly, but they lapped up the soppy stuff all the same. He never mentioned a word of politics, so they’ll probably invite him back.”
Morgan said, “Who knows, they might even let Facebook in.”
“For speaking Chinese? I doubt that. Maybe if he puts the Communist Party in charge of everybody’s privacy settings, makes the Party a default Friend to all, so they can scoop up or block everything they want, any time. Maybe then they’ll let him in.”
“So I guess you told Zuckerberg that.”
“Not in so many words, Tony, because you know at the end of the day I’m just a lowly public servant. He did tell me afterwards that he likes a challenge, though.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, ‘Mark, you’ve got one’.”
There was a piercing cackle of laughter from the far end of the terrace as more buyers, several drinks into their evening, came
out onto the terrace.
“So how was your Mr Fang?” Drayton said.
“A little strange, I’d say.”
Morgan told him how he’d switched the venues for lunch, had seemed a bit desperate. Didn’t say much.
“And still wants a little slice of Caribbean beach and a bunch of American property?”
Morgan said yes, that’s what he was most interested in. Said to go ahead and buy without even looking at the details and not caring about the price.
“And the documents, for the passports?”
Morgan took a brown envelope from his bag.
“It’s all here, I think. The basic info on those who want citizenship of St Kitts, even a summary page. I’ve not looked at it in detail, but it appears to be a kind of who’s who of Mr Fang’s associates.”
“Perfect,” Drayton said. “And the Colonel?”
“It’s in here too,” Morgan said, patting the envelope. “That’s still a bit of a work in progress, since there’s not too much recent stuff on the father. Plenty on the son though.”
“I can imagine,” said Drayton, taking the envelope, folding it lengthways, and putting it into an inside pocket of his jacket.
Drayton asked Morgan what his plans were now, and Morgan said he was heading over to Hong Kong for an annual company get-together and a big rugby tournament. And Drayton said he expected the rugby might be more fun and wasn’t that a bit like American football.
“Yeah, a bit,” said Morgan. “But without all the armour.”
There was no sign of a server, so Morgan told Drayton he’d go inside for a refill, but by the time he came back, drinks in hand, the American had gone.
Morgan had another drink and treated himself to a steak dinner washed down with two glasses of Bordeaux.
Then he decided to go for a massage, a little place he knew called the Pink Lady, close to the hotel, where he asked for his regular masseuse who called herself Mimi.
She was tall, from northern China. Not the best masseuse by a mile, but Morgan thought she was sweet and attentive. He had a hot shower, and then lay naked on his front while she pummelled his back like some not-so-prime buffalo steak that needed a good amount of tenderising. Drowning him in oil too.
Then he turned over, wondering how the next bit would unfold. She was always a little unpredictable. That’s why he liked her, though right now she seemed to be in a hurry, and after a couple of half-hearted stokes to the thigh, she just grabbed him.
If before she’d been tenderising a steak, now she was working his member like she was milking the last and most stubborn cow on the farm. Morgan winced, grabbed her wrist and slowed her down. She seemed to get into a better rhythm after that.
But it was erratic. There’d be moments of almost hysteric activity, then nothing. The action just stopped. He opened an eye and saw one of Mimi’s hands round him, while the other was holding a smartphone, texting.
He exploded, though not perhaps in the way she’d been expecting. He leapt off the bed yelling that it was the worst bloody massage he’d ever had. He got quickly dressed, his clothes clinging to the oil and telling her she should be concentrating on the job in hand, not the bloody phone. He refused to pay.
She looked at him as if she didn’t understand a word of that, which mostly she didn’t, saying it was her sister on her way to town. He said he didn’t care who it was, and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
As soon as he left the massage place his phone rang. It was Drayton, who sounded agitated.
He’d just landed back in Shanghai and was at the kerbside outside the airport, waiting for Cyril to pick him up in the old taxi to take him to The Facility. He’d just taken a first look inside Morgan’s envelope.
“Tony, man.”
“Yes, Chuck.”
“What the fuck is an ‘Automatic Sperm Extractor – Mark 2’?”
– 22 –
Happy Birthday to Wang
Lily brought to Wang’s table a large brick-like slab of chocolate, which she described as a birthday cake. It was topped by two small flickering candles and an arrangement of leaves, real ones possibly. It was hard to tell, but Wang reckoned it must have been a while since they were part of any living plant.
“It’s from them,” she said, nodding towards Zhang and Liu, who each raised a hand, very briefly, without looking up from their screens.
“Happy birthday,” said Lily, with no great enthusiasm, before telling Wang it had been a month since the roommates last settled a bill at The Moment On Time coffee shop. Wang thought she might repossess the cake at any moment, but instead she went straight back behind the counter to add it to their lengthening tab.
He blew out the candles and then hacked away at the cake, passing crumbling slices to his roommates before starting on a piece of his own. It was hard going, and he thought about asking Lily for a hacksaw, but then thought better of it. She wouldn’t see the funny side.
It wasn’t a very happy birthday.
He opened a message app to find several new ones from his mother, wishing him happy birthday and inviting herself to Beijing. She said she was planning on coming anyway, during her break at the kindergarten.
She thanked him so much for the lovely photograph of his girlfriend Eu-Meh, saying she was gorgeous, and sending her love. Wang’s itching knee and trembling foot returned, worse than ever. He’d regretted sending the photo of the Chinese-Australian beauty queen almost as soon as he’d hit the send button, figuring it would make his mother even more determined to meet her, which it had.
He sent a brief note back thanking her for the birthday wishes and saying he’d pass on her love to Eu-Meh. He said he’d just been offered a place at one of the most prestigious universities in America, near New York, to study business and computer science, thinking that might provide a distraction from the girlfriend. He ignored the bit about her visiting Beijing.
The American offer was true, or almost true. He’d applied to a whole bunch of American colleges and now had his first offer of a place, which had arrived by email just that morning. It was from a college somewhere in a state called Iowa, which he hadn’t heard of and couldn’t remember having applied to. He checked on a map and found it was in the middle of the country, though pretty much in line with New York. Which was close enough.
The reason why he struggled to remember his applications was that he’d never made them, not in person anyway. He outsourced the whole process, hiring a company to write his application essays and provide fake letters of recommendation from teachers. Zhang had completed the English proficiency tests on his behalf.
So when Wang told his roommates about the offer, Liu congratulated Zhang instead.
“Well done,” he said. “Good job. Have you ever thought about applying for yourself?”
Zhang shrugged. He didn’t want to leave China. Liu was planning to stay put too, or maybe go to Hong Kong, at least for now. He was hoping for an internship with a big Western finance company, and his father, the big-shot government official who advised the Prime Minister, would fix that for him. His father knew all the major foreign financial outfits, and none could operate without his approval.
Liu said they should offer the college application service through their online shop, but he knew that Zhang was the only one of the roommates with the academic and language skills to make it work, and Zhang didn’t want to go there. He didn’t mind helping out his roommates, but he didn’t have time to make a business of it.
Having somebody else do his applications seemed pretty sensible to Wang, since he struggled with English language and couldn’t think of a tutor who’d give him a real reference. Though he did worry that colleges might check up or ask to interview him on a video link.
“No way,” said Zhang. “They just want your money.”
Which was anot
her issue, since Wang didn’t have the cash to pay the roommates’ lengthening tab at The Moment On Time, let alone American tuition fees.
Alongside those from his mother, his smartphone had several messages and three missed calls from Fatso, and he knew they weren’t to wish him a happy birthday. After an initial burst, sales of the rebranded 3M PM2.5 Super Mega Blockers had slumped. It wasn’t so much the quality this time, but the competition. The market was now saturated with cheap masks, mostly as shoddy and ineffective as the Super Mega Blocker. That meant complaints were more evenly spread.
The Star Wars caps weren’t selling either, and in Fatso’s workshop the piles of boxes of unsold caps were now competing for space with those of unsold masks.
“Let’s face it, nobody wants to wear a Darth Vader cap. Maybe we should have concentrated more on the other characters,” Wang said.
Zhang agreed and said they’d maybe been a bit hasty, and that who wants the Dark Lord on his head. “It’s bad luck, bad feng shui. We should have thought of that.”
Which is when Wang said, “We should get back into the other business.” He said they’d left it long enough and it was sure to make more money than their online shop.
For a while neither Liu nor Zhang answered him.
Then Liu said, “Which other business?”
“Come on, Liu. You know. Nobody needs caps. I mean really needs them, but everybody needs help figuring out computers.”
“Oh, that business. No way. Not yet,” Liu said.
For a while the roommates sat in silence, working their keyboards.
Wang shared a video of some air-rage incident on a flight from Shanghai to Shenzhen, a woman tipping her scalding noodles over a flight attendant because she wanted the rice and they’d run out of rice. Then he went back to the game that matched blob-like animals on a grid and where he was stuck on level forty and running short of happy coins.
Zhang was on his phone watching the latest episode of Stranded in Another Time, a science fiction series about a time-travelling farmer whose fridge turns out to be a portal to different worlds. The series had been banned, at least briefly, after the Party accused the producers of distorting historical reality. Zhang wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but in the latest episodes the farmer seemed a good deal less keen on finding freedom and justice in faraway lands, and was always pleased when his fridge brought him back to China.
