Enigma of China (4 page)

When Detective Wei left the office, Chen went over his notes for a long time before he decided to call Detective Yu.

FOUR

Peiqin was home alone, hunched in front of the computer, reading a blog entry about toxic pork being sold in the markets. She tried not to worry about politics too much, but she was concerned about practical matters, minor yet relevant to her family.

The blog entry was entitled “The Pig Farmer Eats No Pork.” It revealed the shocking fact that most pigs were fed a so-called compound feed-in reality, it was an additive-laced feed, which included hormones to make the pigs grow faster, sleeping pills so they would sleep all day and gain weight faster, and arsenic to make them look pink and healthy. Among the various additives, one commonly used chemical compound was called lean meat essence: it consisted of ractopamine or clenbuterol, with which the farmers could both produce more lean meat and reduce the amount of feed. The pig farmers didn’t care about the consequences for the consumers. For their own use, however, they would keep one or two pigs raised on natural feed.

Knocking on the table in frustration, Peiqin wondered how reliable the information was. What she knew for a fact was that pork nowadays tasted different.

She had heard, however, that for high-ranking Party officials, there was a secret supply of pork and other meat raised on special organic farms. Such meat could be expensive, but it was all paid for by the government. It was beyond the reach of ordinary people like Peiqin and Yu.

It wasn’t only the toxic pork, Peiqin reflected, as she stood up to pour herself a cup of tea. The vegetables were sprayed with DDT, the fish raised in contaminated water, and even the tea leaves-at least some of them-were said to be painted green. She couldn’t help gazing suspiciously into the cup.

“What’s wrong with China?”

An article like that wasn’t going to appear in newspapers like
Wenhui
. In the official media, there was only the good and great news about China. The authorities wanted to present a picture of a harmonious society and didn’t permit any negative news or commentary. Like an increasing number of people, Peiqin felt she had no choice but to get more and more of her news online. In contrast to the official media, the Internet provided less-filtered information, though even it wasn’t free from government control.

Peiqin used the computer Qinqin left at home for her Web surfing. The campus computers ran much faster, and Qinqin studied there most of the time. He only checked e-mail or played games at home on the weekend, so Peiqin could use the computer as much as she liked during the week.

She heard voices and footsteps approaching the door. She rose and opened the door and saw, to her surprise, not just Yu but also Chen standing there.

“What wind has brought you over today, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“He was talking to me about a case,” Yu said, “involving Internet searches. I told him you’re a pro-”

“So here I am,” Chen said, holding high a bottle of Shaoxing rice wine. “A student’s gift to his teacher, a must in the Confucian tradition.”

“Don’t listen to him,” she said. “It’s dinnertime. You should have told me earlier.”

“I’m no stranger, Peiqin. That’s why I’ve come without giving you advance notice. We’ll just have whatever you’ve already prepared.”

“But there’s only one bowl of eight treasures hot sauce,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the table. “With Qinqin off at college, we sometimes have nothing but noodles with a spoonful of sauce on top.”

“The sauce isn’t bad,” Yu cut in, “fried with diced pork, dry tofu, peanuts, cucumber, shrimp, and whatnot-”

“So it’s called eight treasures,” Chen said with a grin. “I know. It’s a Shanghai specialty. Really delicious!”

“No, it won’t do for a distinguished guest like you. We can’t afford to lose face like that,” Peiqin said in mock dismay. “But have a cup of Dragon Well tea first and I’ll see what I can put together.”

In less than five minutes, Peiqin was able to put two cold dishes on the table: tofu mixed with chopped green onion and sesame oil, and sliced thousand-year egg in soy sauce with minced ginger.

“Something for your beer,” she said, putting a bottle of Qingdao and two cups on the table.

“Don’t go out of your way for me, Peiqin.”

“Let her have her way,” Yu said, opening the beer bottle with a pop.

She put the sauce of eight treasures into the microwave and a bunch of noodles into a pot of boiling water. While those cooked, she stir-fried several eggs into an omeletlike dish called super crabmeat and roe.

Chen helped himself to a spoonful of the omelet the moment it was placed on the table. “It tastes absolutely exquisite,” he declared. “You have to tell me the recipe.”

“It’s easy. You just need to separate the yolk from the white. Fry the white first, and then the yolk. Add a lot of minced ginger, Zhenjiang vinegar, and a generous pinch of sugar too.”

She ladled out the noodles, placed them into bowls, and poured the sauce on top of them.

“Laomian style,” she said before serving a soup of dried green cabbage.

“Wow, that’s the soup I’ve been missing.”

“The fresh cabbage was so cheap back in the early spring, I bought several baskets and dried it at home,” she said. She shook out several drops of sesame oil onto the greenish surface of the soup.

“When I was a child, my mother used to dry cabbage at home, too. She would boil the cabbage, then air dry it on a rope stretched across our small room.”

“Oh, we have not visited your mother for a while.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s doing fine for a woman her age.”

Chen changed the subject: “I hear you’ve become quite Web savvy, Peiqin. Yu told me about it.”

“She’s absolutely hooked,” Yu chipped in, adding another spoonful of the spicy sauce to the noodles. “She hurries to the computer the moment she gets home-before she even thinks of cooking or washing.”

“You’re always so busy with your work. What else can I do alone at home?” She turned to Chen. “I’m simply fed up with the newspapers. Just yesterday, I read about the exposure of another corrupt Party official. It served him right, but in the newspaper, it’s always due to the great leadership of the Central Party authorities that a rotten cadre is exposed and punished. As to why and how it happened, we are never told anything. The former premier made his famous statement about preparing ninety-nine coffins for corrupt officials and one for himself. It was an unmistakable and heroic gesture promising to fight corruption, no matter the cost. He got a five-minute ovation for his speech. But did he succeed in rooting out the corruption? No. The situation has been getting worse and worse.

“That’s why people rely on the Internet for detailed information on how these officials fatten themselves like red rats. The Web is also censored, but quite a number of sites aren’t run by the government. Consequently, one or two fish may still, from time to time, escape the net. These are commercial Web sites, run for profit, so the contents have to be eye-catching and feature information that’s unavailable in the Party newspapers.”

“Thank you so much, Peiqin. That was a very helpful overview,” Chen said. “But I have a specific question for you. What is a human-flesh search?”

“Oh, that. I hope you aren’t the target of one, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” she said, with a teasing smile. “I’m just kidding. When and where the practice of crowd-sourced investigation started, I don’t know. Possibly in one of the popular, controversial Web forums, where users-or netizens-can post their own comments. They are called ‘netizens’ because the public space of Internet is a kind of nation, of which they are citizens. For many, it is the only space wherein they can act like citizens, with a limited freedom of speech. As for the term
human-flesh search
, it was originally used to describe an information search that is human-powered rather than computer-driven. The netizens-the most dedicated Web users-sift through clues, help each other, and share information, intent on tracking down the target information one way or another. But the popular meaning nowadays is that it is not just a search
by
humans but also a search
for
humans, one which plays out online but is intended to have real-world consequences. The targets of this kind of search vary, from corrupt government officials, to new Big Bucks who appear suddenly with surprisingly large fortunes, to intellectuals too obsequious to the authorities, or any other relatively high-profile figure you might imagine. However, almost always there is an explicit or implicit emphasis on sensitive political and social issues somewhere in the target’s background.”

“Can you give me an example, Peiqin?”

“Recently, there was one in Yunnan Province. An amateur hacker broke into a local Party official’s laptop, downloaded his diary, and put it online. That official, named Miao, was the head of the county tobacco bureau. He wasn’t a particularly high-ranking cadre, but he had a lucrative position. The contents of the diary proved to be very spicy. It included detailed descriptions of his extramarital affairs, his under-the-table deals done in the name of Party interests, his pocketing government funds, and his bribing others while others bribed him, all in a complex cobweb of connections. The diary reads like a novel, with the persons involved labeled only by initials-such as B, M, S, and so on-but with dates and locations too. You might think this would be no big deal, since no one could tell if the diary was true or not. But you know what? A crowd-sourced search started immediately. Netizens threw themselves into it wholeheartedly, like kids at a carnival. All the women mentioned as having been in a sexual relationship with the official were located. They even found photos of most of them. The same with the other Party officials connected to him. By relentlessly digging into the dates and locations, the forum members were able to establish the authenticity of the diary beyond question.

“Consequently, Miao was fired and jailed for being an official corrupted by the evil Western bourgeois influence.”

“So these netizens did a good job of sorting out a rotten egg,” Chen said. “On the other hand, who gave them the right to invade others’ privacy?”

“No one did. But who gave the Party officials the right to do all those horrible things in the first place? China has a one-party system, with absolute power, absolute media control, and an absolute highway to corruption. People have to do something, right? No problem is really solved by conducting a crowd-sourced search like that. But exposing one Party official is better than none. These searches have now developed a pattern. When an official is first named on the Internet, he or she denies any wrongdoing, fights back, and threatens to take legal action against anyone posting about them online. The government, meanwhile, supports the targeted official while, it goes without saying, remaining in the background. But the ongoing search inevitably brings up new hard evidence, irrefutable, of corruption and abuse of power, much to the embarrassment of the government. The government then has no choice but to shuanggui the official thus exposed.”

“I’ve heard about the role played by these netizens in bringing the melamine-contaminated milk powder scandal to the nation’s attention,” Yu chipped in again. “The local government tried to suppress the stories because the milk powder company was important to the local economy, but once they were on the Internet, the stories spread like wildfire. There were statements and pictures posted online of some of the victims of the contaminated milk powder. Ultimately, the Party authorities had no choice but to put the head of the company in prison.”

“Back to these crowd-sourced ‘human-flesh’ searches, Peiqin,” Chen said. “Have you heard about what happened to an official named Zhou-and all because of a pack of cigarettes?”

“Oh yes, the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty. It was just the rottenest luck for that guy.”

“What do you mean, Peiqin?”

“Let me begin by telling you something about a small store close to my restaurant, Chief Inspector Chen. The store specializes in buying back and reselling expensive cigarettes and liquors. As you may know, Party officials of a certain rank usually are given one or two cartons of cigarettes per month for their so-called socialist business needs. The cigarettes they are given may not be as pricey as 95 Supreme Majesty, but they sell for at least five or six hundred yuan a carton.”

“Yes, I have to admit, I get a carton every month,” Chen said, “but I always finish it before the end of the month.”

“But nonsmoking officials also get them as a perk of their Party positions; they get cartons and cartons as ‘gifts.’ Because the gift isn’t cash, they have nothing to worry about. They could never finish all those cigarettes, even if they did smoke. Instead, they sell the cartons back to stores like the one next to my restaurant and pocket the cash. It’s no secret.”

Chen couldn’t think of a response. He, too, had such “gifts” pushed onto him occasionally, though he’d never tried to sell them back for cash.

“As expensive as 95 Supreme Majesty may be, it is not surprising or scandalizing in itself. The Chinese people have seen too much. You know the term
socialism with Chinese characteristics
, do you? A big shot like Zhou would have surprised people more if he smoked a less expensive brand.”

“Then why was Zhou chosen as a target for a crowd-sourced search?”

“The picture of the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty showed up after he spoke at an important meeting. Do you know what the speech he made that day was about?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “It was about the absolute necessity of keeping the housing market stable. What does that mean? It means prices cannot be allowed to fall. At present, a square meter at Lujiazui costs a 130,000 yuan. I would have to work for four or five years to earn enough to buy one square meter. Now, for our family, the present situation is not too bad. We have one and half rooms in an okay location assigned to us through the state housing quota, thanks to your help. But what happens to Qinqin after he graduates college? He will need an apartment for himself. How can people like us possibly afford a place to live if housing costs don’t come down? It’s more than probable that he will have to live like we did before we moved here. Remember, we lived with Old Hunter for years, with three generations squeezed together in one wing unit.”