China Witness (57 page)

M
RS
X
ie
, a shoe-mender,
interviewed in Zhengzhou, capital of
Henan province in central China, near the Yellow River. She has
worked on the same street for twenty-eight years in all weathers,
repairing the shoes of passers-by. At the end of the day she returns
with her husband, a bicycle repairman, to the same place they have
lived since she came to the city from the Hubei countryside almost
thirty years ago: underneath some factory stairs. Yet, with their
hard-earned savings they have sent both their children to two of
China's best universities. Their son is starting his PhD and their
daughter is studying for an MA.

The way I saw it in 2006, there are five kinds of roads in China.

The first kind is what are called the national roads – fast highways planned and built at the national level and maintained by local government. I could clearly "feel" the difference between those built after 2000 and those built before; on the newer ones, you didn't get the stomach-churning effects of their appallingly fissured and bumpy surfaces. Nor did you need to hire a local guide to alert you to traffic hazards along the road, although not even the newest map could steer you accurately through the ever-changing road system. The toilets on the national highways are "national-grade toilets" and are, most of them, much better than the houses the local peasants live in. No wonder a lot of drivers say that these highways are not only good for driving on – you get "national-grade" treatment while you're at it.

The second kind are city trunk roads built by the municipal government and generally very wide: six to ten lanes in big cities, two to four in smaller ones. The roadsides reflect a government image and vary little in their "local touches". They are uniformly lined with tower blocks and smaller buildings, flowers or sculptures. The wealthier municipalities have real flowers, the ones that have no money use plastic ones. In most cases, there are pavement studs for blind pedestrians. The traffic lights show a standing person on red, and a scuttling one on green. The most enjoyable thing about them for ordinary Chinese who can't afford cars is the wide green verges, squares and benches on which you can sit and chat and get a breath of fresh air. They are unlike the city roads of ten years ago. Then, scooters, mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians were all jumbled together. The narrow pavements were too packed to move during peak times, and all you could hear were car horns tooting in competition with each other, the endless cursing of drivers as they jockeyed for position, and the shouted admonishments of the traffic cops.

The third kind are streets in working-class districts. There are more bicycles than people and cars, the streets are narrow, and there is only a single lane for scooters, into which vehicles going in both directions are squeezed by traffic jams on the main carriageway. The sides of the roads are crammed with daily necessities and everyday life, businesses and things. There you can see people who yesterday ran stalls, and today have opened shops. The space where goods are piled high during the day is converted at night into the place where the family eats and sleeps. These city streets are more or less equivalent to the high streets of a small country town, although with fewer agricultural items and cheap plastic goods.

The fourth kind are the back streets and alleys which link the homes of the teeming populace. These are chiefly inhabited by small traders and craftspeople who have come in from the villages to "make their fortune" in the big city, and make a start by setting up stalls and kiosks. There are a few cars who don't believe that the streets are impassable to traffic until, half an hour later, they have proudly made it fifty metres through the people and goods only to discover that their triumphant vehicles are a mass of scrapes and scratches and bespattered in grime. These back streets are one big "breakfast bar" in the morning, a street market by day and a kind of leisure market in the evening, providing profits all day. The beneficiaries of all this activity are the residents' committees. In order to ensure that "no manure should escape onto someone else's land", the levels of administration are the most regulated in China; there are toilet attendants, security guards, overseers of regulations, administrators of local commerce, guardians of public order and of household registration. Then there are the "bound-feet vigilante aunties" with their "keep order" armbands, who focus on things that "don't look nice". These range from serious matters, such as accusations that city folk are treating peasant labourers unfairly, and the rights and wrongs of a fight between husband and wife, to the more trivial – a man with inappropriately long hair, or a woman with an indecently short skirt. City folk say that the red-armbanded aunties look after stuff that the government and people's families ignore. No matter what rank the administrators are, so long as they have a sleeve badge, wear a uniform and can show their certificate, they are all "supported" by the local stallholders who keep the local government or street committee going. Those who scrape along at the bottom of society are fleeced on a daily basis by one or other of these numerous administrative charges. But they still feel that they are living
better than in the countryside. I sometimes think that their past lives must have been unimaginably hard.

The fifth kind are the dirt roads of the countryside, and the "construction roads" of the cities. Twenty years of frenzied urban construction in China have given rise to many original ideas in the heads of those whose inspiration has been stifled for a century: why not install a "zipper" in the ground so that you don't have to dig down to make repairs? Why not set up a crane so that new-builds which have been "programmed out" can be lifted out of the ground and shifted to the countryside for the peasants to live in? Why not get an advance picture of what's in the minds of people who are going to be important officials in ten years, so that today's policymakers don't have to start all over again? So many ideas! And most of those who thought them up have trodden these "construction roads", quite a few of which are made from metal grids. These are fine in dry weather – apart from being wobbly – but when it drizzles, they turn very greasy underfoot, just the thing to send you flying head over heels! The worst sort are made of a dozen or so planks of scrap wood, and before you walk on them you have to check there's no one at the other end. There is? In that case, make sure you know who's the heaviest, or you may be "seesawed" into the mud on either side. And then there are roads made of bricks and stones, forcing you to "skip". Some of them simply take you over building rubble.

While our group was on the road doing interviews, we became thoroughly familiar with the five kinds of roads of modern China. Not only that, but these roads somehow came to embody in a very real way the
China Witness
experience. Once off the plane, we would be on a state highway, the sort used by upper-class Chinese in their daily lives. When we interviewed famous people, we would take the city trunk roads to go and call on them – famous Chinese people invariably move into the cities, and always have done. Town streets were what we used most – breakfast, night markets, nosing around and making purchases, all were successfully accomplished there – and we had experience of construction roads in Gansu and Anhui. Finally, the back alleys "developed" by migrant workers gave us a story to add to our interview plan.

On 10 September, we took a taxi to a chaotic and jam-packed back street in the Zhongyang area of Zhengzhou city, to interview an intriguing woman who had turned her back on her village to come to this back street and make her living as a shoe-mender. By dint of twenty-eight years spent
repairing shoes in all kinds of weather, Mrs Xie had managed to put her son and her daughter through the best universities in China.

As we drove, the female taxi driver said to us: "I can hear you speaking a foreign language. Which kind of English are you speaking? Which English-speaking country are you from? What have you come to do in this dirty old street?"

We wanted to make sure she was not one of those Chinese taxi drivers whose "alertness and vigilance" might lead to trouble from the local police, so we earnestly told her about educational charity work we were involved with. She was so moved by our description that she refused to charge us. We wrangled for some time before we could get her to accept the fare.

We went into the side street, past a store selling cigarettes and other sundries, a stall selling home-cooked flatbreads from a cooker, two carts with general household items, a fruit stall, and a cart selling cold dishes from a glass box mounted on it, before arriving at the shoe-mender's stall. This consisted of a crudely made cart topped with an old oil-paper umbrella. On the cart lay a collection of insoles, and an assortment of creams and folk remedies for foot problems, together with bits and pieces for repairing shoes, such as soles, heels, heel tips and so on. Her stock, while not large, was neatly arranged. A few customers waited by her stall, apparently queuing to have their shoes repaired. A man in his early forties sat opposite, and there was a middle-aged woman, and a girl in her teens.

Mrs Xie did not look much more than fifty. Her dry, wispy hair was tied into a ponytail and she wore a Western-style, mixed-fibre purple top over a pair of very cheap denims. On her feet were a pair of ill-fitting leather shoes – which I guessed were someone's cast-offs – and her arms were covered by a pair of flower-patterned oversleeves. Nothing she wore appeared to match, city-style, but she was clean and neat.

The friend who had set up the meeting for me went over to greet her: "Big sister," – country folk respectfully call women in the towns, big sister, and men, big brother, sometimes even when they are younger than them – "I often come and get you to mend my shoes. But you have so many customers, do you remember me?"

*

MRS XIE:
Of course I remember you. You never try and bargain my prices down. Your husband is in the army. You're a good person.

FRIEND:
This is my friend Xinran, whom I've known for nearly thirty years.

XINRAN:
Hello. I'm delighted to meet you.

MRS XIE:
Hello. I've got a job in hand. Why don't you sit down?

XINRAN:
Can you mend my shoes? They've come unglued inside at the bottom.

MRS XIE:
I'll have a look. [Gives a quick glance.] Yes, I can, it's very simple. Wait till I've finished this pair, and I'll do them for you.

*

But the middle-aged woman customer sitting on a stool objected that she had been there first. And I quickly agreed.

*

MRS XIE
[to the woman customer]: Don't worry, her shoes just need gluing. They'll only take a second to stick. Yours need new heel tips. She'll have to wait half an hour or more, and everyone's busy . . .

XINRAN:
No, really, I'm happy to wait my turn. It gives me a chance to learn your craft and chat to you. My friend told me that you've scrimped and saved your shoe-mending money to send your children to university. You're amazing!

MRS XIE:
Aren't all Chinese mothers like that?

XINRAN:
When I came here looking for a shoe-mender, everyone said you were the best. They all sing your praises.

MRS XIE:
They look after me. They look after poor people like us.

XINRAN:
When did you start mending shoes here?

MRS XIE:
In 1978.

XINRAN:
Nearly thirty years! Where do you come from? Did you come alone or with your family?

MRS XIE:
From Hubei. I came with my husband.

XINRAN:
And your children?

MRS XIE:
It was only my son then. He was just born. We left him at home, for the grandparents to bring up. We left to earn money.

XINRAN:
Why did you leave?

MRS XIE:
We were so hard up there. The land was truly poor and barren.

XINRAN:
You have one son and one daughter?

MRS XIE:
Yes.

XINRAN:
Where are they at university?

MRS XIE:
My son works, my daughter is at university.

XINRAN:
Where does your son work?

MRS XIE
[maternal pride in her voice]: He's doing his doctorate at Xi'an
Communications University [one of the top science and engineering universities], and he has some teaching work there.

XINRAN:
And your girl?

MRS XIE:
She's doing a master's at
Beijing University.

XINRAN:
Do they come and see you?

MRS XIE:
Of course! My daughter comes more often than my son. She's good at getting jobs to pay for her fare. My son has a girlfriend, so he's busy with her family too!

XINRAN:
Why did you decide to come to Zhengzhou to earn money?

MRS XIE:
In 1978, you weren't allowed to leave your home, and if you just left, you would be arrested. It's not like now, when you can go wherever you want. But where we were was poor and there was no education, so when my son was born, we discussed it and decided we definitely wanted to leave so that my son could go to school.

XINRAN:
Was there no school in your village?

MRS XIE:
There was, but it was a disgusting place! A primary school needs a schoolhouse and a teacher, but this one had neither. A relative of the village accountant just took it on for a bit of money. For middle school you had to go to the county town. Hang on a minute and I'll tell you a story about the county middle school!

MRS XIE
[to the middle-aged man]: These shoes are ready. Thank you.

MIDDLE-AGED MAN:
We agreed on the price, four yuan, isn't it? Here, four yuan.

MRS XIE:
Thank you for giving me your business. [The middle-aged man does not respond and leaves. She turns to the middle-aged woman.] Your shoes?

MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:
Last time you put a new heel on. I've worn them six months, and the heel tip has worn through again. Can you put a better one on this time?

MRS XIE:
What I used last time was the best. You walk on the outside of your foot, so you wear away the outside of your heel. You've had those shoes at least two years now, and the leather has stretched and the shoes have lost their shape. Now when you walk, your foot moves in the shoe and wears it down even faster. I can put in an insole so the shoe and your foot fit better, and that should improve it.