Oracle Bones (19 page)

Mr. Wang told me this fact while we were driving back to the Dacheng factory. I wrote it down.

MY FINAL INTERVIEW
was with Mr. Xu, the general director of the Changchun Corn Industry Development Zone. Back in the 1980s, he had founded the Yellow Dragon factory, which was the first cornstarch processing facility in China. It took five years for Mr. Xu to collect all of the necessary government approvals, but after those hassles were cleared away he made a profit of more than seven million dollars in his first year of production. Later he started the Dacheng factory. He was essentially the father of modern Chinese cornstarch. I waited in his office while the man finished a meeting.

I was accompanied by Mr. Wang, the main Dorr-Oliver handler, and two Dutch representatives who were visiting China. Mark was still outside. Occasionally, he called to check if Mr. Xu had arrived, because he was Mark’s best prospect for a cover shot. Mark really wanted that cover. In the meantime, however, he was obsessed with the pile of corn. The Dutch men were named Wim and Kees. They didn’t talk much.

Mr. Wang and I chatted, and he told me about his background. At the age of fifteen, he had entered the Chinese Navy Submarine Academy, where he spent seven years. In 1976, he got out of the submarine corps and took a job with the Foreign Language Press. He studied English and eventually was placed in charge of distributing Communist publicity in Scandinavia. Later, he joined the State Economic Commission. He didn’t explain what he had done for them.

After leaving the government, Mr. Wang took a job with Dorr-Oliver, selling centrifuges and other equipment in China. Like Mr. Guo, and like many other middle-aged and older intellectuals whom I met in China, Mr. Wang didn’t perceive his career as a narrative. Instead, it consisted of a series of mostly unrelated vignettes. He spoke of these vignettes with bemusement, as if each had belonged to a different person, and as if now those people were gone, their traces fading with time.

He was most interested in the man who had once worked for the State Economic Commission.

“I could have become a minister,” he said. “If I had stayed, that probably would have happened.”

“How long would it have taken?” I asked.

“That depends on how well you play the politics.”

He used Mr. Xu as an example of what happens when you involve yourself in politics. In the early 1990s, after the great success of the Yellow Dragon plant, Mr. Xu prepared to open the second location at Dacheng. He intended to name it Dragon Junior, and the two plants would represent the heart of China’s cornstarch industy. Everything went according to plan—but then
there was a sudden political shakeout and Mr. Xu was essentially run out of Yellow Dragon. He lost control of the factory that he had worked so hard to establish.

“So he started Dacheng by himself,” Mr. Wang told me. “He did it as revenge. And he didn’t call it Dragon Junior—he called it Dacheng instead.”

I was growing more interested in meeting Mr. Xu. I wanted to see exactly what kind of clearheaded, cold-hearted, calculating man would start a cornstarch plant as revenge against his enemies.

“It’s always like that with politics,” Mr. Wang continued. “You always get fucked by your deputies. That’s politics. If you want to be president, you have to fuck up your competition. If you’re a mild, nice guy, then you’ll get moved out. They fuck you.”

Wim and Kees jumped every time Mr. Wang used the word “fuck.” Mr. Wang’s English was excellent, but he was one of those foreigners who had learned the language without becoming aware of what happens when you use the word “fuck” three times in one paragraph. What happens is that Dutch people jump.

He was probably about to use it again when Mark telephoned.

“Has the director arrived yet?”

“No,” I said.

“Some factory guy just got angry at me for taking pictures.”

“What was the problem?”

“I was taking pictures of workers with dust on their faces and he didn’t like that. He started yelling at me and he told me to leave. I explained and finally he left me alone.”

“Did he think you were trying to make the factory look bad?”

“Maybe,” Mark said. “Or maybe they thought I was a spy from another factory.”

I considered telling Mark about the blood feud with Yellow Dragon, but it was too complicated. I figured that Mark could take care of himself. I promised to call when Mr. Xu arrived.

I wanted to learn more about Mr. Wang’s role in the State Economic Commission, but he waved off my question. There was something else that interested him.

“When you interviewed that worker this morning, what did he say when you asked him to compare the Dorr-Oliver and Westfalia machines?”

For an instant I was caught off-guard, and then I answered: “He said they were basically the same.”

“What did he say the difference is?”

I answered brightly, “He told me that the Dorr-Oliver machines load from the bottom while Westfalia loads from the top.”

“No, no, no.” Mr. Wang was growing impatient. “Which one did he say was better?”

“He said they were about the same.”

“No, he didn’t,” Mr. Wang said. “He told you that the Westfalia machines were better, didn’t he?”

I considered lying, but I realized that I was trapped, and so was the worker.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what he told me. But he said it wasn’t a big difference.”

Now Wim and Kees appeared interested. Mr. Wang looked at me triumphantly.

“You know what?” he said. “He’s right!”

Nobody said anything. Mr. Wang grinned.

“Our machines aren’t designed as well as the Westfalia centrifuges,” he said. “Those machines are better.”

The two Dutchmen stared at the floor.

“That’s important for us to know,” Mr. Wang said. “How can we possibly do business if we don’t know that our product is inferior?”

The room was dead silent. In my mind, I repeated his question twice over, but still I couldn’t figure out how you could possibly answer it. It was one of the most intelligent questions I had heard in a long time.

“Everybody always says that their product is the best,” said Mr. Wang. “They have to talk about how much better they are than the competition, and usually they believe it. But the truth is that it’s much easier once you realize that your product is inferior. Then you can focus on just doing business!”

Now I realized what kind of work Mr. Wang had done for the State Economic Commission. Whenever I met people like him, I understood why the transition from Communism to a market economy had been handled so well by many Chinese.

The Dutch men seemed uncomfortable until Mr. Wang changed the subject. He talked about modified starch and how it is different from normal, unmodified starch. The distinction was subtle and I had difficulty grasping it; at last Wim spoke up. He wanted to clarify things. “Basically, modified starch is the same material as crude oil,” he said. “It’s a carbohydrate.”

MARK FINALLY FINISHED
with the pile of corn. He came inside the office, where he negotiated with Mr. Wang about the photograph of Mr. Xu, the director. The negotiations were not simple.

Mr. Wang wanted the director to be photographed in his office. He pointed to the wall, which prominently displayed framed copies of calligraphy by Li Peng and Zhou Jiqiu, both of whom had visited Dacheng. Li Peng was the former premier who had announced the official decree of martial law during the demonstrations of 1989. I had no idea who Zhou Jiqiu was, but Mr. Wang assured me that he was an important official. Zhou Jiqiu’s calligraphy read: “The Brilliant Future of Industrial Corn Production.” Li Peng’s calligraphy read: “The Base of China’s Changchun Corn Production.” All across China, Li Peng was famous for having lousy calligraphy.

Mr. Wang wanted Mr. Xu to be photographed with the calligraphy in the background. Mark saw his cover shot evaporating.

“The light’s bad in here,” he said. “It’s better in the factory, and I can take a picture of him in front of the Dorr-Oliver machines.”

“You can’t do that!” Mr. Wang exclaimed. “He’ll never agree to that! You can’t drag the chairman of such a huge company anywhere you wish! It’s politics—it’s not that simple!”

Mark was growing visibly frustrated. “Well, then I’ll just have to use a photo of a common worker,” he said. “Do you think he’ll be happy if there’s a common worker on the cover of the magazine?”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Mr. Wang warned. “With a high official it’s not good to use a photo of somebody below him, especially not a common worker. You have to put the highest official on the cover!”

They argued for a while. Each had his own obsession: Mark worried about lighting and Mr. Wang worried about politics. It seemed that these forces were mutually exclusive, at least until the moment when Mr. Xu walked in. Everybody stood up. As if the argument had never taken place, Mr. Wang asked directly if Mr. Xu would accompany us to the factory to have his photograph taken next to the Dorr-Oliver machines. Without hesitating, Mr. Xu agreed.

We went outside. It was cold, and empty plastic bags blew across the factory grounds. You could see Mark’s pile of corn in the distance. It was enormous. We walked into the machine room.

Mark was careful to keep the Westfalia machines out of the frame. Mr. Xu was barely over five feet tall and he wore a gray checked suit. He chuckled proudly while the picture was taken. He was fifty-seven years old.

Afterward, we returned to his office, where I interviewed him. He gave me his card, which listed his two main positions: vice-secretary-general of the Municipal People’s Government of Changchun, and general director of the Changchun Corn Industry Development Zone. The development zone had been established after the Shenzhen model.

I asked Mr. Xu how things had changed since the 1980s, when he started Yellow Dragon.

“The biggest problem was administrative,” he said. “In those days, I had to go through so many departments. And everything had to be approved by the state council. But now the approval system has been decentralized. I just have to go through the Changchun municipality—and there I can basically approve it myself, because I’m the vice-secretary-general. As long as I put my signature on the applications, the other departments will also approve.”

Mr. Xu beamed after giving this explanation. I wrote it down.

He expounded on how much easier it was now that he could give official approval for the business projects. That cleared up a lot of hassles, and he was hoping to quadruple Dacheng’s cornstarch production. Already they were making half a million tons a year. They benefited from the falling price of corn, which would drop even more after China joined the WTO. Mr. Xu smiled at the thought of the future. At the end of the interview, he remembered one more thing.

“I also want to add processing plants to make enriched starch,” he said. “And I hope that through these new industries we can create job opportunities for the peasants who might have trouble because of the lower corn prices.”

I WROTE THE
story in two hours. The article was one thousand words long, and I stuffed it with as many statistics as possible. I didn’t mention how the Dorr-Oliver machines sometimes jammed up, or the feud between Yellow Dragon and Dacheng, or how Mr. Xu’s government position facilitated the factory expansion. In Manchuria, I had learned one important fact about propaganda: the key information isn’t what you put in, but what you leave out.

A couple of weeks later, a woman from the magazine told Mark that they weren’t going to use the picture of Mr. Xu for the cover. Instead, they wanted to publish the photograph of Mr. Guo, the man who had spent six years researching cigarette filters. They just had to put him on the cover, the woman said, because he had such a beautiful smile.

6

Hollywood

April 25, 2000

OVER THE WINTER, POLAT ARRANGED FOR ME TO HAVE A HOLLYWOOD
VIP card. In cold weather, we couldn’t sit on the outdoor platform at the small Uighur restaurant, and so our Yabaolu routine shifted. Sometimes we ate at Hollywood, which was a nightclub as well as a restaurant; the VIP card meant that they waived the cover charge. Polat knew the manager—he seemed to know the managers at all the Yabaolu clubs.

The Hollywood menu was printed in Russian as well as Chinese, and we almost always ordered the same thing: chicken Kiev for me, steak for Polat. He liked to get there early on weekend nights, so we could have a slow meal and watch the place steadily fill with people. Everybody who entered the club passed beneath an enormous statue of King Kong that loomed above the doorway. Inside, the place had been decorated as an imitation of the Planet Hollywood chain. Fake movie paraphernalia was displayed in glass cases, complete with detailed labels: a silver sheriff’s badge that had supposedly been used in
Sidekicks
(Warner Brothers, 1991); a black cape with red lining (
Dracula
, Castle Rock, 1995), a leather whip (
Bullwhip
, Columbia, 1958). Just inside the door, encased in a huge glass tube, was a life-size statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed as the Terminator. The statue, like many of the movie objects, had been so cheaply made that it was barely recognizable. The place felt like a museum dedicated to the concept of
jiade
: an exhibition whose artifacts reminded you how far you had slipped from reality. In a neighborhood of knockoffs, Hollywood was the biggest fake of them all.

It was also a prime hangout for Russian prostitutes in Yabaolu. Whenever Polat and I went there for dinner, I kept one eye on the progress of the evening’s business. By eight o’clock, the women started to filter in; an hour later, potential customers arrived. Most were small-time Chinese businessmen, the type of men who might have some money but not much education. They wore cheap Buddhist beads on their wrists for good luck, and invariably they clutched the fake leather money bags that were standard for traders. Elsewhere in the city, such men tended to be loud—barking into cell phones, shouting orders at waitresses. But the presence of all those white women in Hollywood left them subdued. The Chinese men stayed in packs, talking in low voices, fiddling with their phones. Whenever a peroxide blonde walked past, the fidgeting increased. Sometimes, I’d watch a man work himself up to action: pick up the phone, put down the phone; light a cigarette, put down the lighter. The cycle gained speed—phone up, phone down; phone up, phone down—until finally he’d rise, walk across the room, and speak directly to a woman. And then I’d glance at my own phone, or turn back to the conversation with Polat, suddenly conscious of my voyeurism.