Patriot Number One

by Lauren Hilgers

  * * *

  • • •

  After their first semester at LIBI, Karen and Little Yan had both picked the specialty that sounded the most respectable and the most practical. Little Yan didn’t remember making the decision herself—she had attended an advisory meeting, and her career adviser had simply told her. In the LIBI catalog it was listed as “medical office.” They would have to take classes from other specialties, like business, computer, and office technology. They would learn record-keeping, insurance billing, and medical terminology. And they would have to do it all in English.

  In the first few weeks of their second semester, Little Yan and Karen worked themselves into the same evening schedule again. Some classes were easy—language classes that focused on everyday life, or classes that focused on computers or math and didn’t require any language. On Wednesdays, everyone filed down the blue-painted hall for a class called “Keeping Financial Records.” Little Yan and Karen agreed that this class was one of the most confusing and difficult on their schedule. Computers lined the walls of the classroom and were bunched on two round tables in the center of the room. Those tables, and all the chairs, made the classroom nearly impassable. Students parted office chairs with their arms as they made their way to their seats. The Chinese students clustered to one side of the room as the other students—four women—spread out their things expansively in front of the computers on the far wall.

  In the classes Little Yan and Karen shared was a young man named Jerry, thin and nattily dressed in button-down shirts featuring geometric shapes or squiggly lines running across them. An older woman named Carol came dressed neatly and took photos of the whiteboard with a new iPhone. Everyone but Carol was working full time and stumbling into the classroom at night, trying to keep up with the homework. They studied all weekend in the lead-up to midterms and finals. The classes moved quickly, and even Karen, with her university experience, found herself cramming on weekends, posting emojis on her WeChat feed of faces crying.

  On a night in early January, Little Yan walked into class with her books neatly tucked in her leather backpack, the weather just warm enough for her to wear her blue suede shoes. “I looked at the homework,” she said, sitting down next to one of the computers, “and then I made the decision not to do it. It was going to take too long.” Jerry, a few seats away, was taking photos of his own homework and loading them onto the computer. Across the room, a similar conversation was going on in another language. “This class has way too much homework,” one woman commented. “I’m gonna complain.”

  Karen had stolen Little Yan’s regular seat that night, seeing as another Chinese student had stolen her own regular seat. The pair grinned at each other, then opened their textbooks. Carol dabbed at her face with a piece of blotting paper and wrapped a scarf more tightly around her neck. She was there because she was interested in learning, not out of necessity, she had told them. She was of the opinion that the most recent round of Chinese immigrants were lazy and unimaginative. They were not so interested in learning or bettering themselves. They were just taking jobs and driving down salaries for everyone else. Carol herself hadn’t arrived long before, but her husband had been in the neighborhood for years. She got out her iPhone.

  The professor was an African immigrant, although Little Yan had never determined from where. He rushed in, dressed in a sweater and slacks, and spread out his books. “Today we’re going to be talking about a general ledger,” he said, speaking quickly. “Can anyone tell me what a general ledger is?” When no one answered, he drew diagrams on the board, imagining a business selling shoes or T-shirts. He motored through all the basics of a general ledger. “What’s a proof of payment?” he asked the silent class. “Check stubs,” he answered himself. “Check stubs are a proof of payment.”

  The instructor took them through credit, debit, and cash accounts, drawing graphs on the board and selling thousands of dollars’ worth of imaginary shoes. The woman who had occupied Karen’s seat closed her eyes. Then she slumped onto her desk. Jerry poked her in the ear with a marker. “Jerry, leave her alone,” said the professor, not missing a beat.

  Karen and Little Yan spoke up whenever they could answer in numbers, an easy way to use English in class. Their instructor plowed ahead, offering three different definitions of “net” versus “gross” income. “Some people say your net income is after costs,” he explained. “Other people mean after taxes.” He segued into Social Security taxes. “Your book says eight percent, that’s wrong. I’m going to use six point two percent, but on the test you’re going to have to use eight percent.” The Chinese side of the class, struggling to follow his quick English, knitted their eyebrows together. Carol took a picture of the board.

  The instructor’s final stretch involved the question of buying a new car. “Who here knows anyone who has purchased a car recently?” he asked, to a silent room.

  “I know,” said one of the non-Chinese students, confident and joking. “You bought a car. Don’t think I don’t see you looking at cars all the time.” The student imagined the instructor purchasing a BMW X5.

  “Okay, if you were me, would you buy it with cash or use credit?” asked the instructor. “Which one would be better?”

  There was a lack of consensus in the class. If he bought with credit, then he would have to pay interest. “But then you could turn in the car,” said one of the non-Chinese students. “And get a new one!” Others thought cash was the safer option.

  Little Yan took the opportunity to speak. “I would use credit,” she said.

  “Really, why?” asked the instructor.

  “Because I don’t have enough money.”

  The whole class laughed and nodded. That’s why they were all here in the first place.

  * * *

  • • •

  The breaks at LIBI were short. At the end of their second semester, as the second frigid winter that Little Yan had spent in New York was finally giving way to spring, the school took a two-week break. Karen enjoyed them, feeling suddenly free. Her life in the United States was more straightforward than Little Yan’s—the more she worked, the more her situation improved. And after two years, she didn’t feel so desperate. She had paid off her debt and saved some money. She was no longer wearing just one pair of pants per season.

  Little Yan, on the other hand, felt the pressure of her life building. She spent the break busing to her most recent job as a home health aide, looking after two elderly immigrants and their little grandson. She cooked, cleaned, played with the child, and hoped they needed her for the full forty hours every week. If she didn’t work, she didn’t get paid.

  Zhuang had run out of driving students recently and seemed to be losing interest in the job anyway. He was cycling through alternatives, unable to find anything that would pay well enough to make it worth his time. He parked cars outside a karaoke bar, then delivered food for a restaurant in Long Island. Nothing stuck. He spent his days reading the news on WeChat, thinking about Wukan and his son.

  Zhuang did not worry about Kaizhi as much as Little Yan did. His own childhood had been difficult and itinerant, but he had survived it. Children were resilient, he told her. The delay was even, now that Zhuang thought about it, a bit of a relief. He was convinced that it would take at least a year for Kaizhi’s papers to arrive. He would have time to try a few more jobs and business ventures. A year was enough time to find something more secure. They would apply for a green card in the summer, and by the time Kaizhi was ready to come over, they would be free to travel. Little Yan could still go get him herself.

  Zhuang was occupied with his own set of worries. His life in New York might grow more stable, but the peace in Wukan, he felt, was temporary. He hoped the village could hold on for another year.

  13

  Wukan! Wukan! Land and Committee

  土地和村委会 / Tŭdi hé Cūnwĕihuì

  MA
RCH–OCTOBER 2012

  The first election in the history of Wukan Village was held on a sunny day in early March 2012, not long after Zhuang and Little Yan’s marriage. A month earlier the village had voted on a commission to oversee the election and had decided on a two-day process in which villagers would choose from over twenty different candidates. The villagers would be able to select any name from the list of candidates for any of the seven spots on the village committee. The village election committee had also decided that the best spot for the event was at a local school, where rainbow-colored umbrellas were set up for shade on the athletic fields and pink sheets strung up in the classrooms for privacy. Wukan’s villagers were buoyed and hopeful as the day approached. People discussed the election in open-air mahjong parlors and over games of dice on the street corners. Fishermen moored their boats for the day, and villagers working in factories scattered throughout the Pearl River delta took time off to travel home.

  Everyone who had been prominent in leading the protests felt optimistic about the future—and nearly everyone put their name forward in the election. Those who ran campaigned openly, talking about freedom and democracy but thanking the Communist Party all the same. The wounds of Xue Jinbo’s death and the thirteen-day standoff were deep, but the time for revolution was over. Criticizing Beijing, or suggesting that Wukan could be a model for other villages, could jeopardize the progress Wukan was making. When Old Lin stood up in the village square and announced his candidacy, he kept his remarks generic, telling the crowd of enthusiastic villagers about the hard work and hopeful days ahead of them. “I’m an old man, without much ability,” he told them. “But my heart is close to the villagers.”

  Zhuang’s friend Jianxing decided he was too young to run, but Xue Jinbo’s daughter, Jianwan, put her name forward. She had asked Zhuang to her house in advance of the election to discuss it, and he told her to follow her instinct. After the first day of voting, however, which put Jianwan in a runoff election, she withdrew. Her grandmother had threatened to drink poison if she continued.

  Newspapers around the world, meanwhile, speculated that Wukan’s election marked the beginning of a trend. “Wukan offers democratic model for China,” ran one headline in the Financial Times. “Rebel Chinese village prepares to run extraordinary elections,” declared the Telegraph. Even China’s Communist Party–run media outlets praised the way officials had resolved the village protest. A commentary in the party-run Global Times praised leaders for “putting the public first and helping them fulfill reasonable interests.” In the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, prominent democracy activists expressed hopes that events in Wukan marked the beginning of a sea change—a foothold for democracy and rule of law.

  All these reactions ignored a simple truth: Wukan was betting on a political reform that had already failed. The first village elections in China were held in the late 1980s, when a trial run of the proposed national Organic Law on Village Committees was launched. The law laid out a basic structure for governance, with a village committee of seven to nine people (depending on population) selected to administer the affairs of the village. Shortly after it was formally passed into law in 1998, at the peak of the village election movement, nearly 40 percent of Chinese villages had elected their own councils. The European Union and the Carter Center in the United States provided money and expertise to help train the new village committees. Scholars came to observe the elections. Farmers were convinced that China’s central government was serious. And then, in the second decade of the experiment, village elections started to fail because of land.

  As was the case in Wukan, these village committees were “overseen” by town- and county-level officials—party leaders from places like Lufeng City. When land became more valuable, and elected village officials began asserting their rights over it, elections became more fraught. County-level officials needed control over the land to balance budgets and line pockets. They started rigging elections and detaining candidates. And when villagers tried to take their complaints to a higher level of government, petitioning and protesting as Zhuang had, they were ignored. China’s central government had already come down in favor of land-grabbing officials. In this sense Wukan’s election was less a model for future liberalization than a holdout from the past.

  As the villagers saw it, that Wukan had never before had an election was both result and cause of the corruption that had been chipping away at their land. Yang Semao, in particular, had used the 1998 law to anchor his argument in favor of elections, and he had found a receptive audience in the village. People in Wukan clung to China’s written laws the same way Zhuang had done while petitioning. They were uneducated villagers. They didn’t have money or influence. If China’s laws meant nothing, then they would have to admit they were exposed, poor, and inconsequential.

  Around 80 percent of the village showed up to the polls. Old Lin was elected village chief, winning 6,200 out of 6,800 votes cast, and Yang Semao earned enough votes to serve as his deputy. After two days of voting, Zhuang, his friend Hong, and three other people were elected as council members—Zhuang having received 4,115 votes. The village celebrated late into the night. They had fought off wealthy developers, corrupt leaders, and armed thugs. They had been kidnapped, imprisoned, and beaten. But on election night, the whole village was hopeful and naïve all over again.

  * * *

  • • •

  The council held its first official meeting in May, all seven of them seated at a long table in the biggest room at Wukan’s village committee headquarters. It was a three-story, salmon-pink building a few dusty blocks east of the village square. Old Lin, as village chief, occupied his own office on the second floor of the building; everyone else shared.

  The meeting room was on the third floor, filled with benches and infrequently used. Most often it could be found strewn with plastic bottles and pamphlets on good governance, the relics of previous events. For the first village committee meeting, however, they cleaned it up. The event was going to be photographed and recorded: a new day for the village. The council members took their seats along the benches. They grinned and joked and divided responsibilities—Zhuang Liehong would be in charge of village security, civil mediation, and funeral reform. He asked if Hong Ruichao might help him with some of his tasks. There would be no training sessions. “You need to have a deep understanding of your responsibilities,” Old Lin told the new committee. “And you need to have regulations in place that are clear and keep things functioning.”

  Old Lin was the only one among the protest organizers who had previous experience in village governance. He knew how to organize people, although he described himself as a simple man who likes to keep to himself. “How the stomach feels is real,” he once told me, nearly a year after the election. “Everything else is illusion.”

  Lin had worked as a cadre—a low-level official in the Communist Party—in the village from 1969 to 1974 after serving as a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army. Lin was appointed to serve as a village leader under Xue Chang, the man who would go on to steal most of Wukan’s land. The pair did not get along, and Old Lin left quickly. He was one of the first people to leave the village and go into business, opening up a grocery store and then going into clothing manufacturing. He had done well for himself. His relative wealth, people theorized, would make him a virtually incorruptible village leader.

  When Lin moved back to the village in 1997, he intended to retire. He was ill; his children were grown up. “I am a loner!” he says. “I don’t gamble, and I’ve quit smoking and drinking, so there is no place in the village to socialize.” On top of this, he says, he had no interest in politics. The protest leaders and the Lufeng government pushed him into leading. “The government was afraid if I didn’t lead, the village would fall apart,” Lin said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Zhuang Liehong knew he wasn’t well suited to governme
nt. He was too loud and brash and lacked a talent for compromise. Enthusiasm, however, was not one of his shortcomings. People in the village had pushed him to run. They looked to him for leadership, and Zhuang wanted to execute his duties well. He wanted to bring Wukan’s management up to unimpeachable standards. In the days following the first committee meeting, Old Lin was walking to work when he passed a pile of garbage. Trash is a common problem in Chinese villages—there are barely enough dumps and incinerators for China’s cities, so villages tend to just wing it, dumping in empty lots if they are organized. No one in the new council had yet thought to organize the village trash collection. A few yards past the trash pile, Old Lin came upon Zhuang, trotting down the street, a camera in his hand.

  “Where are you going with that camera?” asked Lin.

  “I’m going to photograph the trash pile as evidence.” Zhuang was planning to post the photos online to push the committee into action.

  “You are part of the committee!” said Lin, blinking. “If there is trash, you should clean it up, not put it on the Internet!”

  Zhuang began thinking of ways to improve the village through his own role as the head of village security. He stayed up nights and looked for advice online, taking a full week to craft a proposal to present to Old Lin. He wanted to establish a strict on- and off-duty schedule for the security team, with incentives and penalties for people who did not show up on time. He wanted to score each team member’s performance in a monthly report. He wanted to replace the current head of the security team (who happened to be Zhuang’s cousin) with someone new. He handed his suggestions to Old Lin, written up and printed out in a folder.