Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory (38 page)

“
Bu hao
,” he finally said. “It’s no good.”

I asked Wei Jia why the name was no good, and he answered in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

“
Bu hao ting
,” he said. “It sounds bad.”

And that was all he said—he refused to expand on the topic. At dinner we ate fish and dumplings, and I could tell that Cao Chunmei was distracted. After the meal she made a phone call; she must have been trying to reach Wei Ziqi’s cell phone, but somebody else picked up. She listened for a moment and then cut in impatiently. “He’s drunk, isn’t he?” she said. “Is he coming back tonight? He has to go to Huairou tomorrow morning. Tell him to call me!”

She brooded at the table for most of an hour. Wei Jia seemed oblivious—he was in good spirits, and after dinner we played a game with his chess pieces. He had a bad cough; for a week now he had been struggling with another cold. Finally the phone rang. Cao Chunmei went to the next room to answer it, but I could hear her words.

“You need to come home tonight,” she said sharply. She told him there was a village meeting tomorrow morning at seven o’clock. “Do you understand? You have to come back tonight!”

If Wei Jia heard anything, he gave no indication. We read a couple of his books, and then I told him I’d be back in the morning, to take him to school. On the way out of the house I was surprised to find that Wei Ziqi had returned. He was in the front room, leaning against a table; all the lights were off. When I flicked a switch I realized that the man was so drunk he could hardly stand.

“Are you OK?” I said. But he couldn’t speak either. He slumped against the table, eyes unfocused. Cao Chunmei had followed me into the room. I asked her how he had gotten home.

“Somebody drove his car back,” she said.

“Will he be all right?”

“It’s fine,” she said.

The next morning it was still dark when I picked up Wei Jia. His parents were asleep on the
kang
, and the boy got ready for school in the family dining room. The place was a mess; a bag of sunflower seeds had been scattered across the floor. I asked him what had happened.

“Dad was drunk,” he said matter-of-factly. “He was trying to pour some water and he spilled it and then he got mad and knocked those seeds everywhere.”

Wei Jia had already dressed in his school uniform and now he packed his bag.

“Is he like that often?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. The boy was still focused on his school bag. He didn’t look up and I changed the subject.

“Do you have your red scarf?”

“Yes,” he said. The scarf is the symbol of the Young Pioneers, worn by all schoolchildren.

“Then put it on,” I said.

He tied the knot around his neck. As usual Wei Jia’s scarf was ragged; it had a big rip in the side and greasy stains covered the front. Most Young Pioneers are well scrubbed but occasionally you see one with the look of a frontline soldier. Down in the valley we stopped for breakfast. Wei Jia had a racking cough but he ate his wonton soup eagerly, hunched over the bowl in the cold of the roadside restaurant.

FOR THE NEXT MONTH
the new name hung over Wei Jia’s head. His father told him he had no choice, and they needed to make the change now; in another year and a half he would enter middle school. They would register him as Wei Xiaosong, and he might as well get accustomed to it now. Once he started using the name, it would feel more natural.

The boy never gave any reasons for his reluctance. He didn’t explain why he liked the old name, or what it was about the new one that bothered him; he didn’t ask for a third option. He didn’t get angry and he didn’t cry to his mother, as he sometimes had during past conflicts. In fact he hardly said anything at all. When the topic came up, his only response was, “
Bu hao
”—No good. He muttered the words to himself, and over time the refrain acquired an odd combination of impotence and power. His father couldn’t penetrate
Bu hao
; soon he became frustrated. It reminded me of Bartleby—“I would prefer not to.” But I also
recognized both parents in that simple phrase. His mother washed her hands of things she couldn’t control:
Bu hao
. His father was determined to change his world at all costs:
Bu hao
. As for Wei Xiaosong, the computer promised good fortune and longevity, and wealth and honor, and self-restraint and generosity; but in the end it was all
bu hao
. The boy simply refused to accept the name. After a few weeks his father gave up and never mentioned the change again. He had always been Wei Jia, the last child in the upper village, the first child to grow up in a businessman’s home; and now he would be Wei Jia forever.

THAT WINTER THE IDIOT
didn’t receive his Spring Festival holiday bonus from the government. He was given the usual sack of rice, along with the jug of cooking oil, but the twelve dollars were missing. The amount was too small for the family to bother with a complaint, and they knew exactly what it meant. The Party Secretary was sending a message: she still had power in the village, and she wasn’t happy about the election rumors.

By now the talk was everywhere, and even Cao Chunmei couldn’t hide her interest. “People are discussing it all the time,” she told me. “They don’t want the Party Secretary and the Vice Party Secretary to be in office anymore. Lots of people curse them—behind their backs, of course. In the past people were satisfied with the Party Secretary, but now they don’t feel that way anymore. Her ideas are different. As time goes by, her thinking is, ‘I’ve been in power for some time, so I deserve some benefits.’ It’s bureaucratism.”

I often heard villagers use that phrase—
guanliao zhuyi
, or “bureaucratism.” “It means she doesn’t listen to other people’s ideas,” Cao Chunmei said. It’s an old Cultural Revolution term: during the Maoist campaigns, rural people sometimes used the phrase to justify attacks on local cadres. In those days, revolutionary politics were all that mattered, but now the Sancha villagers used the same accusation in a new context—they were worried about capitalist profiteering. They complained about recent land deals, whose details remained mysterious but were now starting to show their effects. A new restaurant was being constructed between the
two sections of the village, where it would become the largest building in town. And two new roads were being built in the high valleys. Nobody had proven any corruption, but for many villagers the secrecy of these deals was evidence enough. In any case, the sudden influx of outside investment suggested that eventually most profits from tourism would leave the village.

People began to talk, but there still wasn’t anything like a grassroots campaign. In rural China, significant political disruptions often begin on the peripheries of authority. Trouble can start within the Party itself: a member becomes personally aggrieved, or a lower-level official gets angry about something. Such people have traction—they know the rules, and they know how to stir things up. And they’re accustomed to a degree of authority, as opposed to the average farmer, who might grumble but do nothing.

In Sancha, the trouble began with the Shitkicker. Many villagers distrusted him, but he had an undeniable power, and it came in different forms. He had links to the past—some people believed he was a clairvoyant—and he was also a Party member. He understood how local elections operated, and he recognized the ability of Wei Ziqi. And he was patient: at first, for a period of days, he visited the Wei family home, talking idly and never mentioning the campaign. After a number of casual conversations, he made a more open proposal. Accompanied by another Party member from the lower village, the Shitkicker told Wei Ziqi that he should run. “They said my abilities were better than hers,” Wei Ziqi told me, after the meeting. “They talked about my speaking ability, and my ability to take care of things outside of the village, and my thinking. It has a lot to do with my doing business—they see that as a reflection of my abilities.”

Despite the praise, Wei Ziqi remained noncommittal, which was the expected form. But soon the men began to review a list of local Party members, evaluating who would be likely to support which candidate. All told, there were now twenty-three members in the village, and the most powerful loyalties were those of blood. They were split down the middle: five people were closely related to Wei Ziqi, and five were closely related to the Party Secretary. Among the other members,
some were good friends of Wei Ziqi, and others seemed likely to want change; the men tried to calculate how many would fall into his camp. They began to interview people face to face, in secrecy. At this stage of the process, Wei Ziqi never participated; he needed to be able to step away if support was thin. The Shitkicker served as his lieutenant, and for weeks he moved discreetly around the village, conducting the dirty work of hushed discussions and late-night meetings.

Soon the Party Secretary mobilized a lieutenant of her own. One evening, the Vice Party Secretary came to the Wei family home, greeted Wei Ziqi politely, and sat down to talk. The men had never been close, but this visit wasn’t a surprise, and the Vice Party Secretary quickly came to the point. “You’ll be a good candidate someday, but it’s better if you wait,” he said. “You’re young, you’re doing well—wait until next time. Be patient.”

Wei Ziqi smiled and said something to the effect that his words made sense. But by this point it was too late—the Shitkicker had already finished the canvassing, and he believed the numbers were promising. By his calculation, ten Party members could be counted on to support Wei Ziqi, and ten belonged to the Party Secretary. That left only three who were undecided.

THERE WERE NO ISSUES
in the campaign. Nobody talked about specific plans for the village, or changes that needed to be made; there was no platform or philosophy. Only a fool would have made public promises. The goal was to be as vague as possible, and each candidate avoided speaking directly about the election. Family mattered more than anything else: people marshaled their close relatives and tried to recruit more distant cousins. A great deal of energy was spent on analyzing motivations, trying to figure out who was likely to support whom. Politics had been distilled to its purest essence—an exercise in village
guanxi
.

Everything took place out of sight, among the local elite. Now it seemed that every night the Shitkicker came to the Weis’ home, and often there were other visitors, men who gave terse greetings and then
waited for me to leave. The only people who talked openly were the ones who weren’t involved. Cao Chunmei and the other women discussed the election all the time; they loved to speculate on the outcome and the strategies. They said the Party Secretary was nervous, and whenever I saw the woman I sensed some tension in her face. But she still greeted me gruffly: “Hey! You just get here?”

In the final stages the campaign proceeded to formal dinners. The Shitkicker hosted a banquet at a good restaurant in Huairou, where ten Party members showed up. These men had all promised to vote for Wei Ziqi, and the meal was intended to confirm their support. But when I asked Wei Ziqi about the banquet, he told me that nobody had said one word about the election. The men enjoyed the meal, drank their
baijiu
, smoked their cigarettes, and then at the end the Shitkicker asked a question. “Has there been any change?” he said. One by one, the men responded no, and that was the end of the banquet in Huairou.

Three days later the Party Secretary invited Wei Ziqi and the four youngest Party members to a restaurant down in the valley. Since the start of the campaign, there had been little contact between the woman and Wei Ziqi, and after the dinner I asked what they talked about.

“Not about the election,” he said.

“So what was the conversation about?”

“I don’t know, just normal things,” he said. “I don’t remember very well. It wasn’t so comfortable.”

If it represented a last-ditch attempt to convince Wei Ziqi to withdraw, it was as indirect as every other aspect of the campaign. In the final days, there were rumors that the Party Secretary had offered money to some voters, but nobody could substantiate it, and such talk came mostly from nonmembers. Eventually the political rumors must have moved beyond the village, because at last, three days before the election, officials from the township government made a visit.

THERE WERE TWO CADRES.
The higher-ranked official worked at the township’s Communist Party Committee, and he was accompanied
by another cadre who served beneath him. In China, a township has authority over local villages, and it’s rare for officials from this level to appear in a place like Sancha. Usually villagers travel to the township for meetings—that’s the typical movement along the chain of power. But something about the current political campaign was important enough to bring the men to Sancha, where they called a meeting of all Party members.

The Committee cadre began with a speech. He talked about the upcoming election, and he emphasized the importance of following correct procedures. He told the Party members to guard diligently against the sale of votes—he emphasized this point several times. After that, the man’s words became vague. He didn’t mention the recent land sales in the village, or the lack of financial openness; he avoided all specific local issues. He seemed to ramble, talking about development and infrastructure improvements.

“He talked for a long time,” Wei Ziqi said after the meeting. “The basic meaning was that we should stay with the same Party secretary. It’s hard to describe, because he said a lot of things and most of it wasn’t very direct. But the meaning was obvious. Basically he was saying that our current leader has done a lot of good things for us. Then he started asking questions about things that have improved in the village. He said, ‘You have a new road, don’t you? You just received streetlights, didn’t you?’ Finally at the end he said, ‘You can see that this leader has ability.’”