Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory (36 page)

In China such lack of transparency is common, especially in the countryside. If the Party Secretary had profited from these deals, she was smart enough not to show the money. Her house was the nicest in the upper village, but it wasn’t extravagant, and nothing about her appearance changed. Whenever I saw her, she greeted me with the same friendly gruffness as always: “Hey! You just get here?” But some villagers believed that she had stashed money in a Huairou bank account, and her son had recently purchased a new apartment in the city. Soon, people began to talk about something else: the upcoming village elections.

In Chinese villages, two political offices matter most: the Party Secretary and the Village Chief. The Village Chief is elected directly by all residents, through secret ballot, and candidates are not necessarily members
of the Communist Party. But only members can become Party Secretary, which is the highest position. In Sancha, Liu Xiuying had begun her political career as Village Chief. She first won that position in 1993, and five years later she was elected Party Secretary. Since then she had held both offices simultaneously, a situation that has become increasingly common in rural China. The government encourages it, so bureaucracy will be streamlined, but it also serves to consolidate power.

In Sancha there had never been a serious challenge to the Party Secretary’s authority. But by 2006 the situation had changed, and the difference was money. In 2001, when I moved to Sancha, the per capita income was around two hundred and fifty dollars; in the span of five years it had risen to over eight hundred. In 2003, the day wage for a laborer was three dollars; now it was six. The village had acquired a good road, a cell phone tower, cable television—it even had garbage to sell. All of this could have represented a success for the Party Secretary, because the village had prospered under her leadership; but the frame of reference mattered more than anything else. Instead of comparing their situation to the past, people in Sancha had started to think about the outside. They saw city people moving in, and they knew that real-estate deals were being struck, and all at once they feared missing out on profits.

For an alternative they naturally turned to the most successful local businessman. In the evenings, after it grew dark, the Shitkicker often visited the Weis’ home. If I was there, the man would greet me with a curt nod, and then he would take a seat away from the table. He never participated in our conversation. He simply waited for me to leave—his arrival was a cue that I should go home. When I asked Wei Ziqi why the Shitkicker had started coming around, he shrugged off the question. “It’s not a big deal,” Wei Ziqi said, and left it at that.

It took me a while to realize that this is how a village political campaign begins. After weeks of visits, Wei Ziqi finally brought up the subject. He told me there would be an election in the beginning of 2007, and some people in Sancha wanted him to run for Party Secretary.

“Are you going to do that?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “It’s too much trouble.” But something about his tone
seemed less than absolute. I asked who was encouraging him, and he mentioned the Shitkicker’s name.

“But didn’t he oppose you when you first tried to join the Party?”

“Yes,” Wei Ziqi said. “That’s true.”

“So why does he want you to become Party Secretary now?”

“It’s complicated.”

I asked if he trusted the man, and Wei Ziqi grinned.

“He has his own objectives,” he said. “Everybody has his own objectives.”

The Shitkicker’s motivation was as obvious as the unfinished walls of his house. And it was just as clear why Wei Ziqi represented a logical candidate. He had learned to negotiate the worlds of both the Party and Huairou, and nobody else’s status had risen so rapidly. In 2003, the Wei family business earned thirty-five hundred American dollars; in 2006 they made more than eight thousand. Once, when I asked him about the business income, he qualified his success with a telling remark. “It’s the highest
known
income in Sancha,” he said. “There might be other people with more money, but it’s not open. As far as farming and business go, I make the most money.”

In June of 2006, as the local political campaign gained momentum, the Party members traveled to Chengde on their annual junket. The city lies to the northeast, and during the Qing dynasty it was the summer retreat of the Manchu rulers. Emperors went there to hunt; the court stocked game parks with deer and boar. Now the parks are open to tourism, and people can wander through the palaces and temples that once served the Manchus. The Sancha contingent visited all the sites, and in the evenings they shared
baijiu
banquets at the hotel. Upon his return Wei Ziqi showed me photographs, which looked like the ones from previous trips. In every picture the Sancha Communist Party members stand in a long row and stare at the camera. They wear casual clothes but nobody smiles. It’s hard to tell that they are vacationers, and their relationship is also unclear: they could be coworkers or neighbors or even extended family. There is, however, a striking combination of intimacy and distance to their pose. These people aren’t necessarily close friends, and their union may not be by choice; perhaps they even dislike
each other. But it’s clear from the photographs that they spend a great deal of time together.

ONE MORNING IN AUGUST
, Wei Ziqi telephoned to announce that he was standing at an intersection near my apartment. As usual, the call took me by surprise, although this time I guessed the reason for the trip to Beijing. For half a year he had been thinking about buying a car.

Nobody else in the upper village owned one. In recent years motorcycles had become more common, and a couple of locals had the kind of three-wheeled mini-trucks that are used for freight in the countryside. One man purchased a used Lada sedan—but as Wei Ziqi said, that didn’t really count. The old Russian-made car was in such bad shape that it could hardly be driven, and the owner got rid of it almost immediately. As far as the village was concerned, the parking lot at the end of the road was still waiting for the first locally owned automobile.

Ever since acquiring his driver’s license, Wei Ziqi had been saving money. He stocked
guanxi
as well—whenever he went to Huairou, he asked friends if they knew of any good secondhand vehicles. But the biggest stroke of luck came when a used-car salesman from Beijing happened to stay at the guesthouse. Wei Ziqi filed away the man’s business card, and a few months later, after he had saved enough, he called the number. The salesman told him to meet just after noon at the Beijing Old Car Transaction Market.

Wei Ziqi and I took a taxi to the market. The moment the cabbie heard the address, he perked up. “You buying a car?” he said. “How much you want to spend?”

Wei Ziqi said shyly that he hoped to keep the price under fifteen thousand yuan, which was around two thousand dollars.

“You should get a Xiali,” the cabbie said. “They save gas and they’re easy to repair. If you’re getting an old one, this is a really good time to buy. A lot of the old Xialis aren’t registered legally, so the police check them more often. People are afraid of getting hassled, so they’re less likely to buy them. That’s why the prices are good right now.”

That’s a Chinese market fluctuation: police problems go up, prices go down. And the Xiali is a classic Beijing car, with a distinct owner stereotype: lower-income, chain-smoking, tough-talking. Until the year 2000, the most popular Xialis were modeled after a Korean car with the inauspicious name of the Daihatsu Charade. They were boxy, ugly vehicles, but they were durable, and our cabbie told us he had bought an illegal Xiali three years ago for fourteen thousand yuan. “I drove it for a year as a cab and then sold it for eleven thousand,” he said. “I never got fined!” As we cruised along the Fourth Ring Road, he pointed out old Xialis (“That’s a ’98!”). He advised us to avoid a Citroën at all costs (“Wastes gas!”). Jilis and Suzukis were better (“Saves gas!”). The man laughed when Wei Ziqi asked if a Xiali is safer than the tiny “breadbox” vans that are common in the countryside. “Of course!” he said. “You get in a wreck going sixty kilometers per hour in a breadbox, and everybody inside is going to die! Guaranteed!”

While waiting for Wei Ziqi’s contact to arrive, we wandered around the Beijing Old Car Transaction Market. It’s located on the city’s southern outskirts, where dusty lots sprawl amid cheap apartment blocks. This is Beijing’s biggest used-car exchange—on any given day, as many as twenty thousand vehicles are offered for sale. Some permanent dealerships stock high-end models, but most sellers are individuals who pay twenty-five cents an hour for the right to park their cars in the dirt lot. They scrawl makeshift ads on strips of cardboard: “2003 model, one owner. All registrations legal.” Paperwork is a prominent selling point—often that’s the first thing people mention, because buyers worry about passing inspection. Owners give the age of a car in months, the way people do with babies. “December, 1998,” one woman with a red Xiali said to Wei Ziqi. “That’s basically the same as a 1999!” To the Chinese, usage matters more than model, which is why they track the months.

On the day we visited, it was hot and dusty, and apparently nobody had thought of washing their cars. Virtually every vehicle was caked with dirt, and there seemed to be a competition for the most hideous seat covers. Owners had to stay near their cars, in case customers walked by, and people dealt with the boredom by playing cards and Chinese chess. Sometimes an owner was sprawled in the backseat, sleeping. Almost
nobody openly named a price; if you asked, they invariably responded, “How much do you want to pay?” A major selling point was the inclusion of a spare and a tire jack. Another common sales pitch was
san xiang
: “Three compartments.” Owners called it out proudly—“Three compartments! Three compartments!”—and I asked Wei Ziqi about the meaning. “It means the car has front doors, back doors, and a trunk,” he explained.

“But that’s obvious. Why do they have to say it?”

At last it dawned on me that nobody in the market had the faintest idea what he was doing. How many people in China had experience buying or selling a car? They were all flying blind, and Wei Ziqi did his best to go with the flow. He looked at a few Xialis, but he was too intimidated to ask the price. When we passed a Citroën, he brightened and said, “Wastes gas!” He looked immensely relieved when his contact finally arrived.

The man’s name was Yuan Shaochun, and he wore a white tank top, khaki shorts, leather loafers, and black socks pulled up to his kneecaps. He carried a fake leather money bag in one hand and a dirty white towel in the other. He gasped in the midsummer heat—he had a fat belly and short bowlegs that seemed on the verge of collapse. He used the towel to mop sweat off his neck. The moment the man arrived, Wei Ziqi whipped out his Red Plum Blossoms—red pack, city use only—and offered Mr. Yuan a smoke. The man shook his head disdainfully, wiped his neck, and took out a pack of Zhongnanhai Lights. He didn’t offer one to Wei Ziqi. When he saw me standing there, he cocked his thumb: “Who’s the foreigner?”

Mr. Yuan became more friendly when he learned that I had written books. He told me he had
guanxi
with a publishing company, and perhaps all of us could get together and work something out. “Maybe they can translate your books into Chinese,” he said. He scratched a number in my notebook and told me to call if I ever wanted a hookup with the Ningxia People’s Press. Ningxia is the Muslim province in the far west; years ago that was where I got the City Special stuck in sand. Mr. Yuan also ran a cigarette and
baijiu
shop in the southeastern outskirts of Bei
jing. As a sideline he had been dealing cars on and off for a decade. He drove a Citroën. (“Wastes gas!”) In the back of the car he had an aluminum Louisville Slugger, color red, Model FP29. I had never seen a real softball bat in Beijing; the handle was taped and everything. I asked the man if he played. “
Fang shen
,” he grunted. “That’s for protection.”

At the moment he had nothing to sell. He was there to help Wei Ziqi find a car, and he led us around the lot, brandishing his sweat rag and complaining about the budget. “You’re not going to find anything for fifteen thousand,” he said. “If you want something from the year 2000 or later, it’s going to be twenty thousand at least.” Periodically he stopped to criticize a parked car. “That one was definitely in an accident,” he said, after inspecting a green Xiali. “The owner’s lying about that.”

Wei Ziqi paused at a white Xiali sedan. It was a decommissioned cab; the taxi sign was still stuck to the roof. According to Beijing law, any Xiali that had been used as a taxi could stay on the road for only six years. The city instituted these rules for reasons of safety and pollution, but they were also a boon to the auto industry.

The man with the white Xiali told Wei Ziqi that the cab was five years old. “You can drive it for one more year in Beijing,” he said. “After that you can still use it in the suburbs.”

“Has this car ever had an accident?” Wei Ziqi asked. He had picked up on that question from watching Mr. Yuan.

“It’s a taxi!” the salesman retorted. “If you want a car that’s never had an accident, don’t look at taxis!” He shook his head and continued. “Almost all the Xiali cabs are red,” he said. “There are so few white ones that they don’t get checked as much. Cops are always pulling over the red Xialis and checking the papers. You won’t get noticed in a car like this.”

But Mr. Yuan advised against the Invisible Xiali. He had a better option: a friend in the suburbs who specialized in vehicles from bankrupt work units. If a work unit registers an automobile, it can remain in use for fifteen years, regardless of how bad the condition happens to be. The trick is to find a car that’s outlived its company; fortunately, countless state-owned firms have gone belly-up during the Reform years. Later that week we embarked on a mission to find the Bankrupt Xiali.

THE FIRST SIGN OF
an imminent deal was when Mr. Yuan began accepting Wei Ziqi’s cigarettes. At the auto market he hadn’t touched a Red Plum Blossom; now he took them graciously. That was also a pretty good indication that he had some stake in the sale. His shop—the Magnificent Cigarette and Liquor Emporium—was located directly across the street from the car dealer, who ran a repair garage. We were fifteen miles southwest of downtown Beijing, in a place called Fangshan. It’s home to one of the capital’s largest cement plants, and white dust covered everything in the neighborhood, as fine and light as a cold-snap snow.