Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (28 page)

Tragically, when we arrived in Guangzhou, Gallon’s e-mail address no longer worked. But Kenny’s did and he’d agreed to show us around Guangzhou.

We met Kenny in the lobby of the hotel after Jack had spent the better part of the afternoon with his feet under scalding water. “Whoa. You guys are big,” he exclaimed. “Cantonese people are smaller than the Chinese up north.”

This was true. The Chinese to the north were considerably taller, quite likely because of differences in diet. It’s noodles in the north, rice in the south. Jack, in particular, towered over everyone in Guangzhou. Kenny wore a T-shirt with a kneeling woman in dominatrix leather. He had lived in Los Angeles and spoke flawless English. He told us he was involved in transportation; when a car-parts supplier needed a widget, he’d find a widget producer for them in China.

We walked with him from Shamian Island back into Guangzhou proper. On the bridge over the highway, we came across a young girl with a horrific leg condition. Her legs were split open to the bone and she sat on the pedestrian overpass with a beggar’s bowl.

Since my encounter with the albino boy in Qingdao, I’d discovered that some people do such things to children in China. Children are burned, disfigured, and maimed simply to provoke pity and an outpouring of
kuai.
But Kenny seemed to anticipate my train of thought.

“Her parents are very poor,” he said. “Don’t assume that this was done on purpose just to make some money. Everyone pays for their own health care here,” he went on. “No money. No doctor. It’s not good for the poor. But in your country, you have what, 250, 300 million people? We have 1.5 billion. Not 1.3—
1.5 billion.
Many people are not counted. And it’s very expensive to insure 1.5 billion people.”

“That’s not legal,” he said as we passed the endangered-animal traders. “And that’s a fake,” he continued, pointing to an enormous root vegetable that looked uncannily like a man with an erection, which was drawing a large crowd. We walked back through the Qingping Market—despite Jack’s fears, it was the only way into Guangzhou proper—and then crossed some invisible line where the animals were no longer meant to be eaten, but to be cared for as pets—turtles, cats, dogs, fish, rats. And then down we went into a gleaming subway station with flat-screen televisions.

The subway seemed the epitome of the new China, and as we rode we talked economics. “You see this part of your shirt,” Kenny said, pointing to a button. “You probably think this was made in a factory, but it wasn’t. It was made in a village, in a house. Much cheaper in the village. Millions of houses in thousands of villages, all making something. And you know what? No one can make it cheaper. You think maybe Vietnam or Malaysia? But no. To get around your quotas, Chinese people buy businesses elsewhere in Asia. Everything is still made in China, but assembled in Vietnam or wherever. Now you buy computers and cameras made in China. And do you know what we buy from America? Corn. Because we have to meet quota rules.”

Walk through a Target or Wal-Mart and it’s difficult to believe that there are indeed quotas on Chinese goods. Everything seems to have been made in China. And yet, while the U.S. government may have abandoned the country’s textile mills, and its steel producers, and its television manufacturers, and its toy producers—really, what hasn’t the government thrown under the bus—somehow, a few corporate farmers were able to draw a line in the sand with corn. It’s miraculous, really. Nevertheless, Kenny had provided a succinct summary of the trade situation. In the U.S., we squawk about shoddy goods, poisonous toothpaste, contaminated toys. We bemoan the lost jobs. We point to the slave labor in China, like the unfortunate people, kids even, snookered or kidnapped to work in the factories. Or we lament what China is doing to the environment. But it’s like blaming an addiction to crack on a poor, illiterate farmer in the highlands of Bolivia. We’re the market. We decide what to buy. But do we decide to buy domestically made, high-quality goods manufactured in a well-regulated environment that ensures humane working conditions? We do not. We want it cheap, no matter what the consequences. And thus China, with its “millions of houses in thousands of villages, all making something.”

We got off the subway in the gleaming new downtown. In front of an enormous shopping plaza, a gathering of uniformed security guards was being led through their paces, marching like a military regiment on parade.

“Now, compare these with the mall security guards at home,” I said to Jack.

He shook his head in wonder. “We’re so screwed, aren’t we?”

Inside the shopping mall, I could sense Kenny’s pride. There were seven or so stories of gleaming stores topped by an entire floor devoted to the amusements of kids, something I rarely saw elsewhere in China. Whenever I thought I had stumbled upon a playground, it was, in fact, an exercise yard for the elderly. But here, there was a haunted house. There was a movie theater.

Kenny suddenly turned to Jack. “How many pixels in your camera?” he asked. “Two?”

“Five, I think. I don’t know.”

“But I see that your camera is three or four years old. In China, we only use the new. Cell phones, cameras, computers, we only want the newest.”

Slowly but surely, Kenny was confirming an incipient impression I had been forming. The Chinese were becoming the Americans of Asia. There was a sureness to the Chinese, a cockiness even, that not so long ago could be found among Americans. Today, of course, many Americans, even conservatives like Jack, would concede that the U.S. has lost its way. From endless war to the expensive absurdities of the health care system, onward through the colossal amount of debt that Americans have assumed, most of us can’t help but begin to feel that things in the USA aren’t looking particularly perky at present. The rest of the world, of course, couldn’t agree more. China, however, was beginning to strut. And they were even beginning to assume some of our most remarkable characteristics, like buying shit they didn’t actually need.

“When I was in the U.S.,” Kenny continued, “I thought everything would be modern, state-of-the-art. But it’s not. Much of it is actually very backward. Here in Guangzhou, we have flat-screen televisions and air-conditioning in the subway.”

And crippled kids begging on bridges. And the foulest air this side of Venus. But I knew manners were important in China, and I didn’t want to be disagreeable with our host. Kenny had offered to take us out for traditional Cantonese hotpot. We left this showcase mall and walked past the Starbucks in the New China Marriot Hotel. Nearby, we were besieged by hordes of young boys not more than twelve years old who began stuffing our pockets with the calling cards of prostitutes, many of whom appeared to be lingering in front of the Starbucks alongside a couple of animal-skin peddlers, including one who was actively hawking a tiger pelt. So, okay. Maybe Starbucks was a little different in China after all.

The restaurant we entered was encouragingly crowded. Kenny did the ordering. “I will tell you what it is after you have eaten it,” he said. “In China, we eat everything with four legs except the table, and anything with two legs except a person.”

“My only request,” said Jack, “is no dog.”

“You don’t want to eat dog?”

“No dog.”

“I better get the waiter again.”

Soon, in a sizzling spiced hotpot, Kenny stirred the meat.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s delicious.”

“Good. This is goose intestines. And those are cow veins. And that is lamb.”

Jack was sweating from the spiciness.

As we ate, we continued to talk economics. “American debt, both public and personal, now runs into the trillions of dollars,” I said. “China sits on more than a trillion dollars in reserves. Should the Chinese Politburo choose to, it could blow up the American economy at will. This is something that is beginning to make many Americans nervous.”

“Yes,” Kenny acknowledged. “But what do we really have—paper, IOUs, nothing. We lend you the money, but we have nothing to show for it. Just paper. Nothing tangible. But you use that money we lend you, and what do you get? Tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers. You use that money that China lends you to secure your oil supplies. You get something very tangible, very important. We just have paper.”

I must confess that I had never looked at things from that perspective. But Kenny was onto something. Official statistics suggest that the Chinese economy grows at roughly 10 percent per year. Unofficially, the rate is far higher, more like 20 percent. That level of growth can only be maintained by secure access to energy, and with oil depletion far outracing the discovery of new fields, it is inevitable that for the next decade or two—or even longer should we fail to move on to a post-carbon-based energy world—resource competition is likely to characterize U.S.-China relations. And that could get very ugly indeed.

But perhaps that level of tension might be offset by increased democracy in China?

Kenny scoffed. “In America, you are always talking about freedom and democracy. But China is a different place. We are not ready for that. We have fifty-six different minorities here. How do you think they’d vote? How do you think those guys who gave you the prostitute cards would vote? If some politician gave them one yuan, they would vote for them.”

Provided, of course, that the voting age was reduced to twelve.

“In China,” Kenny continued, “you will find educated people in the cities. But China is a very big place. Most people are not educated. Most people—900 million—live hand to mouth in the country. Their votes would be bought. So China needs to do this slowly, at its own pace. Now, what we need are opportunities.”

Kenny paid the bill. We offered to pay but were quickly waved off. Indeed, we had been warned not to press too hard. In China, the distinction between host and guest is important.

“So what do you guys say? Are you ready to go to a nightclub?”

“Rock on. Let’s party!” Jack enthused.

We walked a short distance to the nightclub. Though Guangzhou might be China’s wealthiest city, this particular nightclub suggested that the city wasn’t swaggering like Shanghai. True, inside the club, there were rap videos on the big screen. A lounge. A bar. Enthusiastic dancing. Loud, loud music. We could barely talk. But it wasn’t
hip
like the clubs in Shanghai are. I’m not sure why this was so. But perhaps it was just us. Jack went to the bar and ordered Long Island Iced Teas for all. Then another. It wasn’t really my drink, but what the hell, I thought, we were in a nightclub in Guangzhou. I did a yeah, yeah, let’s party dance in front of a group of girls dancing on a couch. I was utterly ignored, shot down, a leper in the disco. Jack was beside himself with mirth. And then he sat down beside a group of young women who could very possibly have been prim librarians. He did something goofy. They got up and moved away. But still, he wanted to have another Long Island Iced Tea. He wanted to party like it was 1999.

“I don’t know, Jack,” I yelled into his ear. “We’ve got a really early morning tomorrow.”

“TOMMORROW?” he yelled back. “THERE IS NO TOMORROW! I HAVE SARS!”

14

W
e escaped.

There really is no other word for it. We had awoken four hours later in the predawn darkness and congratulated each other on our good fortune. Surely we should have been hideously hungover. Our heads should have throbbed, our stomachs churned. There had been beer. There had been Long Island Iced Teas. All consumed on a base of spicy goose intestines. We should have been feeling wretched.

But we were not wretched.

We were buoyant.

“Let’s hear it for watered-down drinks,” Jack said.

And so with unexpected cheeriness we left Guangzhou. We said good-bye to the choking sprawl of urban China. And none too soon, either. I had begun to form dark thoughts about China. I wanted happy thoughts. China was the future, yes? The twenty-first century would be China’s, no? But that thought alone filled me with dread. Perhaps it was the crated kittens in the Qingping Market. I do not object to the consumption of cats. If one can eat a pig, I don’t see how one can morally object to a cat-burger. So
bon appetit,
I say. But must they be skinned alive? Or maybe it was that pervasive tingling I felt, a sense that at any moment, someone might accuse me of being German and proceed to bitch-slap me senseless. But mostly, it was a creeping awareness that there are no rules in China, that so much of life in China is essentially a flirtation with anarchy.