Oracle Bones (54 page)

Another video was entitled
Surprise Attack on America
, and the opening adopted a documentary tone. A voiceover introduced Manhattan and the World Trade Center, and there were scenes from daily life in New York. Businessmen in suits crossed streets; rows of traders stared at computer monitors. Suddenly, an image caught my eye: a banker hurrying from one desk to another, carrying a sheaf of papers. For some reason he looked familiar, and I wondered if he was somebody I had known in college.

I turned to Willy: “Can you play that back?” He fiddled with the remote and then the banker reappeared. He was onscreen for only five seconds, but something clicked in my head: it was a splice from the movie
Wall Street
.

Hollywood movies kept cropping up in
Surprise Attack on America
. Sometimes the inserts were so short that I couldn’t tell where they had come from, and the effect was unsettling: a flicker of ambiguity between fact and fiction.
Other cut-ins weren’t so subtle. The collapse of the towers was followed by a quick scene from
Godzilla
in which the monster lays waste to Manhattan. A Chinese commentator intoned: “Only in horror films can we see this kind of destruction…” Abruptly, the video segued to a somber President Bush giving a press briefing. None of his words appeared on the soundtrack; the Chinese commentator spoke instead: “The question remains: Is American democracy safe?” After that, the scene merged into a bombing sequence from
Pearl Harbor.

The second half of the video described the history of terrorism. The narrator cited incidents from the past, ranging from the Serbian assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand to the activities of the PLO. Quick scenes flashed by: marching rows of Nazi soldiers, the bombed-out Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a protest in Taiwan. The commentary claimed that terrorism was spawned by a mixture of colonialism and capitalism. “Terrorists are not happy with superpowers like America,” the narrator said. “There are many reasons for their dissatisfaction, and the most important one is that the powerful nations push their principles on other countries.” The film described the aftermath of the 1998 attacks on United States embassies in Africa. America’s retaliation—the unsuccessful bombing raid in Afghanistan—was illustrated by a glimpse of missiles whizzing over San Francisco Bay: a scene from
The Rock
.

AFTER THE ATTACKS,
Phoenix Television had cut advertisements and broadcast live for thirty-six hours. That was the only privately owned Chinese-language news station that broadcast on the mainland, and it was also the only network that covered the event so closely. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owned 40 percent of Phoenix, which was based in Hong Kong but targeted mainland cable subscribers. The station hoped someday to become the CNN of China. Phoenix’s access to the Chinese market depended on a good relationship with the Communist Party, and sometimes the private station’s coverage was even more nationalistic than that of the government stations. Because of better production values and an ability to respond quickly to breaking news, Phoenix had already distinguished itself, and the station reached an estimated forty-two million households on the mainland.

One of the VCDs that I found in Yueqing had been compiled mostly from Phoenix broadcasts. Whereas the government news had avoided any criticism of America, Phoenix’s tone was completely different. In the hours after the attacks, the station featured a man named Cao Jingxing, who was identified only as a “Political Commentator.” He said, “Why aren’t other countries hated like the United States of America? Let’s try to think about that.” He commented
on the hijackings: “Why were the hostages taken so easily? The glory of the Americans was lost in just a few seconds.”

The VCD had been poorly cut, and periodically it shifted abruptly between Chinese commentators and footage from the United States. At a press conference, Bush spoke a sentence—“Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward”—and then disappeared. There was a fragment of a statement from Colin Powell: “Once again we see terrorism, terrorists, people who don’t believe in democracy, people who somehow believe that with the murder of people they can—” Bush again: “Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward.” They played that clip three times, and then the Phoenix commentators reappeared.

The Chinese-language station used Fox footage of New York and Washington, D.C., which was almost as disorienting as the Hollywood cut-ins. The Fox logo appeared in the corner, and the images were the same as the ones that Americans watched, but here the shots were joined by the anti-American commentary in Chinese. I remembered Willy’s comment about the Chinese government being unable to express the way that it really felt. That was politics, but this was business; the media gave the people what they wanted. News Corp. used the same footage to sell patriotism in America and in China, and in both places the people bought it.

WILLY’S CLASSROOM WAS
decorated with a Chinese flag and a framed quote from Zhou Enlai:
STUDY HARD FOR CHINA’S REVIVAL
. The campus was small but neat: new six-story buildings, a rubberized sports field that glistened in the light Zhejiang rain. The hallways were lined with framed examples of children’s artwork. That was unusual in China, where public schools usually decorated with stern portraits of the politically correct: Chairman Mao, Sun Yat-sen, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin. When I asked Willy about the children’s artwork, he told me that it was a type of advertising. “They want the parents to know that it’s a good school,” he said.

One morning, I sat in on his seven-thirty class. They were eighth graders: thirty boys and girls in white uniform shirts and blue pants. Willy stood before them and asked a few simple questions; they answered in English. He said, “The students in the next class, their classroom is like a…”

“Pigsty!” the boys and girls called out in unison, laughing.

“Very good,” Willy said. “Now let’s begin.”

The textbook was
Junior English for China
, and the day’s lesson had been designed for the new economy. It consisted of a short passage in Special English:

Uncle Wang owns a factory. He opened his factory in 1989. The factory makes ladders. One day, I visited Uncle Wang at his factory…

Willy read the passage aloud, and then he jotted some vocabulary onto the board. He shot me a look.

“Nineteen eighty-nine was an interesting year,” he said. “Some very interesting things happened in Beijing that year. Now, repeat after me…”

None of them caught the allusion, which disappeared into the harmony of reciting voices. Willy turned to one boy: “What are they doing at the factory?”

The boy stood up: “They are seeing the machines.”

“Very good. You may sit down.”

Another student rose; Willy gave me another glance.

“Are they making toothbrushes at the factory?”

“No, they are not,” the boy said.

“What are they making?”

“They are making ladders.”

“Very good. You may sit down.”

For half an hour, the class was taught on two levels. The textbook lesson unfolded—Mr. Wang, ladders, factories, the joys of the export economy—but periodically Willy included some remark that was strictly for my benefit. He dropped English translations of Sichuanese slang; he alluded to shared memories from Fuling. When another part of the lesson mentioned 1989, Willy paused once more. “I wonder if Uncle Wang’s factory was opened in
June
of 1989?” he said, and then moved on. The students had no idea that a private line of English stretched above their heads, going straight to the foreigner in the back of the classroom.

Traditionally, a Chinese teacher remained behind the lectern, but Willy walked freely among the students. He never spoke in Chinese, but the class kept pace; their English was good. When he pulled out a few of them to act out a dialogue, he added a simple prop: a blindfold. The boys picked up on it quickly, and soon they enacted a blind inspection of Uncle Wang’s ladder factory. The classroom rang with laughter; with five minutes left, Willy closed the textbook and walked between the rows.

“What do your parents do?” he asked a girl.

“They own a factory.”

“What does the factory make?”

“The factory makes parts of televisions.”

One by one, the other students answered questions about their parents:
They raise fish. They do trade in Beijing. They work for a company. They own a factory. The bell rang; the language shifted back to the Wenzhou dialect; the sounds of break-time chaos echoed from the hallway. Watching my former student teach that lesson was the best thing that happened to me all September.

DURING MY LAST
day in Zhejiang, the Wenzhou government tested the air raid sirens. Taiwan was just off the coast, and usually the tests signaled some military exercise in the strait, or perhaps a political event on the island. But there hadn’t been any recent flare-ups in China-Taiwan relations, and the next Taiwanese election was still two months away. The air raid sirens probably meant that the government was trying to prepare itself for anything that might happen in the post-9/11 period.

In the city, I visited another former student named Shirley. In 1997, she had migrated to Zhejiang, and she had often sent long letters to me and Adam. She described details from her voyage east—a malnourished baby on the train, a conversation with a Zhejiang native during which Shirley pretended that she wasn’t Sichuanese. She wrote beautifully in English, and I always remembered the ending of one letter:

Adam, these stories are the ones that touch me deepest and make deepest impression on me. All of them are true.

Not long before my trip to Wenzhou, Shirley had sent me a note announcing her marriage. Originally, she had taught at a private school, but recently she had found a job as a foreign-trade representative at the Tiger Lighter Company. Tiger was the most famous of the countless Wenzhou factories that produced cigarette lighters. With a salary of over two thousand yuan a month, or $250, Shirley was one of the most successful of my former students.

She gave me a tour of the factory, starting with the executive offices where she worked. Display cases featured high-end products: gold-colored lighters studded with fake diamonds, special barbecue lighters that telescoped out for hard-to-reach places. A metal ashtray was equipped with a tiger’s mouth that breathed fire when you pressed a button. On the wall, the factory had hung a piece of Jiang Zemin’s calligraphy; the president had visited in May of 2000.

On another wall, an enormous world map illustrated the company’s export patterns. Wenzhou sat in the center of the world, and a web of arrows fanned out in all directions: to the United States, Great Britain, Brazil, India, and dozens of other countries. Outside, at the entrance to the production floor, an English sign proclaimed:

LET TIGER BRAND CREATE WORLD FAMOUS BRAND
LET THE WORLD FURTHER UNDERSTAND TIGER BRAND

That evening, I had dinner with Shirley and her husband, Huang Xu. He was also Sichuanese, and he developed software for a local company. We talked about the recent events in America, and they both agreed with Willy’s observation that most people in Wenzhou hadn’t been sympathetic.

“When I first watched it, I didn’t really feel sad,” Shirley said. “I admit that I’ve always had a prejudice against America, because it’s so powerful and it always uses its power in other parts of the world. But the more I thought about what happened, the more sympathy I felt for all those innocent people. It just took some time before I could think about that.”

Her husband had been following Internet chat rooms, which were strongly anti-American. “A lot of people connect it to the bombing of our embassy in Yugoslavia,” he said. “There have been so many problems with America over the years.”

Since the attacks, I couldn’t stop thinking about the videos. The 9/11 scenes were jarring; it was a shock to see such violence taking place in my home country. I was accustomed to dramatic footage coming from the developing world: flooded cities, body-strewn battlefields. Now that I was in China, the distance was the same, but the images moved in an unfamiliar direction. We watched in safety while Americans died.

And there was something particularly warped about the images being sold as movies in a city like Wenzhou, which had so many trade links with the outside world. A basic premise of the United States’ globalism had always been that the spread of American culture and products would naturally lead to greater international understanding. There wasn’t much need for Americans to travel personally; products moved much more easily. In theory, it made sense, but now the lack of a human dimension was obvious. In China, most people had contact with American brands and products, but it was still rare for a Chinese to have any personal interaction with a foreigner. Willy was unusual: he had foreign friends, and a key part of his identity was wrapped up in another language.

For most Chinese, though, the outside world was still abstract—something at the end of an imaginary arrow that began at the local factory. It wasn’t surprising that the attacks became just another American-style product. Over the next month, I collected other 9/11 goods: a “Bush vs. bin Laden” video game, Osama bin Laden key chains. I purchased plastic sculptures of buildings with oversized planes sticking out like tree branches. A Wenzhou lighter company produced a model where the flame shot out of the top of Osama bin Laden’s
head. A company in southern China produced “Monster Candy,” which featured bin Laden’s image on the wrapper and was marketed to children.

I watched the videos over and over, trying to figure out their meaning. During one clip of the Phoenix news broadcast, an anchorwoman named Chen Luyu said, “We are astonished, but we are not astonished.” Like the other commentators, she repeatedly compared the terrorist attacks to scenes in
Pearl Harbor
and other movies. In a sense, that wasn’t different from the Americans, who also tended to slip into Hollywood language. Sometimes, President Bush spoke as if he were in a Western—“dead or alive”—and the early titles for the American military response would have fit perfectly on Wenzhou’s bootleg racks: Infinite Justice, Enduring Freedom.