by Spencer Wise
“No,” I said. “It’s got to be our brand, or forget it.”
“Okay. Then that’s it.”
Another silence. His eyes cut across me.
“You know what I’m thinking?” he asked.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“What are you going to do about it?” he said.
“I’ll talk to him.” I said. “What else can I do?”
“He’ll want to do it private label. You know your father. Sell it to some clowns at JCPenney who’ll slap their name on it—St. John’s Bay. Charter Club. Halogen. You okay with someone putting Halogen on your shoes? Giving them all the equity, all the creative control?”
“No,” I said.
“No,” he said. “That’s fucking stupid. But that’s what Fedor wants.”
“The way he’s always done,” I said. “I know that.”
“And you’re saying you won’t let him?”
“That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it, Bernie? We’re saying that, aren’t we? Now’s the time to correct me if I’m fucking wrong.”
“Okay, yeah, I thought so. But you never know. I wanted to make sure.”
“Bernie, I don’t want to be saying something we aren’t saying.”
“We keep saying the same fucking thing here, Al. It’s Fedor you got to worry about, not me. You want me to make the pitch? He loves me.”
“Hell no,” I said.
“Well, you remind him a few years back when all the heels were breaking off his stripper boots, who saved him? Remind him that, okay.”
“Should I remind him you pissed on his bedroom wall?”
“Al, I was seventeen, it was dark. I thought I was in the bathroom.”
“His bedroom, Bernie. You pissed on his wedding portrait.”
“And look what happened. They separated. I’m clairvoyant. I apologized already a hundred times. Put that much rum in a guy and he’s bound to slip up. Are you going to crucify me forever? Listen, I want to meet this woman, Ivy. I do. If she means so much to you.”
“Sometime maybe.”
“Maybe. What a prick,” he said, smiling. Then he tapped his index finger against the table. “When can you get me a mock-up?”
“Be patient. We start small—maybe two constructions, say a flat and a wedge, in three or four styles, four colors. Make nice clean lines.”
“Just get me a prototype. I’ll poach a sales team from Blakes. Comfort-driven, four-season shoe. One hundred percent fit. From work to yoga, we carry you. How do you like that? The independents will eat it up. This is the feeling, Al. If I could bottle it. Once you’re in the shoe business, everything else’s boring.”
* * *
Back at the factory house, I sat at the kitchen table eating some dumplings and stir-fried pork with cabbage, and I took the financials that I’d printed off Yong’s computer out of my pocket.
As I read, the chopsticks kept coming up slower to my mouth. Workers were making about eleven hundred yuan a month. A hundred and sixty bucks. No one could live on that. My face got all hot like I was standing in front of the heat setting boxes, the numbers bonding in my head, and when my cell phone suddenly rang I realized I’d been holding the same piece of pork on the end of my chopsticks for a long time.
I said hello and recognized his voice immediately.
“Alex,” Gang said and all the numbers stovepiped out the top of my head. He wanted to know what I’d found out. I told him I’d just moved into the manager’s house right inside the factory, next to the dorms and the production lines, so I could see and hear everything.
“Good,” he said.
I let out a deep breath.
“It’s important we find them,” he said.
“I understand,” I said, but it was quiet on the other side of the line. For a second I thought he hung up.
Then he said, firmly, “Little problem grows into big problem.”
“Yes,” I said. “Some more time and I’ll find them.”
“You call me when,” he said and the line went dead.
I sat there trying to figure out a way to get rid of Gang. What if I gave him two names? Two workers I’d never met before. Wouldn’t that save the rest? Sacrificing two for the greater whole. Did that make sense? Or was it sick? I was trying to rationalize the whole thing. Where was the Emperor when I needed him?
The truth was right there in my lap. The financials. Tens of thousands of yuan in unpaid social insurance. Bonuses and piece-rates that didn’t make sense. It was a mess. A racket. Reminded me of what Dad had said earlier about the cost sheets. We always make it work. Why? To stay competitive. It had to be so.
It was pretty clear to me now that it was all three-card monte, a shell game. Even if Ivy started a new union, whatever they asked for, we’d just smile and nod our heads and shuffle the money around. All of that was spelled out in these pages. If we gave them a little more in social insurance with one hand, we’d just take it out of their bonuses with the other. Then we’d hold their papers as ransom. So if they chose to leave, they were now basically illegal aliens in their own country.
So how much could I really help Ivy? I sure as hell wasn’t going to throw some poor bastard to Gang. No, he could run my ass out of China before that happened. And I wouldn’t expose Ivy either.
I couldn’t play it from both sides forever. Eventually you had to betray someone.
13
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, led by Ivy, Zhang stepped into my house wearing a red Polo shirt, the horse insignia upside down. He didn’t even flinch when he rounded the corner and squared up against the two giant Mongolian statues. That was what worried me—he was unafraid. Even when he should’ve been.
He smirked at the statues before wheeling around to face me. “Comrade,” he said, shaking my hand, and then reading some hesitation in my face, he added, “I call you this?”
“Alex is fine,” I said. “You had a safe trip?”
“On the freeway outside the city, I am checked three times. Full arm security. Like a war zone. They check my ID and hukou.”
“Maybe they should be afraid of you,” I said, pointing to the couch. “Please.”
“They feel insecurity,” he said as he sat down. “Paranoid. Every citizen is the enemy.”
Ivy sat on the arm of the couch beside him, her feet crossed at the ankles.
“This is a fat, juicy house,” Zhang said, his eyes moving around the room. “No tea?”
“Not this time,” I said. Shitty guanxi maybe, but I needed facts now; I needed to know his plans.
“I met with Gang,” I said and paused, letting that sit with him for a second.
Zhang lifted his hand as if to button his collar and, realizing there were no buttons, his hand slid back down. The first little sign of doubt.
“I’m sure Ivy told you,” I went on. “Gang knows about you, doesn’t have your names, but he knows there’s ‘radicals’ in the factory. It’s not safe.”
My eyes shifted to Ivy, trying to tell Zhang I meant her. It wasn’t safe for her anymore. She was the one on the ground. Not him. He was up in Beijing.
Zhang’s face didn’t betray anything. He didn’t seem fazed. “In life, always dangers, comrade,” he said.
This second time with the comrade business got under my skin a little.
I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “I’m not sure you heard me. He tried to enlist me. He assumes I’m on his side.”
“You are on the correct side,” Zhang said.
“Listen to me,” I said, realizing he was going to make me spell it out. “The way this works with Gang is simple—we answer to him, he answers to Beijing. You understand?”
“You ask if I comprehend hierarchy?”
I rolled my eyes. He was too stubborn. “Gang’s money—no, forget money�
�his power comes straight from the Great Hall. So any change I make—any change you want me to make—cuts into his bottom line. You see? A threat to the factory is a threat to everyone’s pocket all the way up.”
Sharp lines appeared on Ivy’s forehead.
“The law requires you pay social benefits,” she said. “We only ask for the law. We are not radical. This goal is very moderate.”
“No one follows the law,” I said. “Here? In China? You told me this yourself. You’re the whole reason I sound like this.”
Ivy scooted to the edge of the arm of the chair and simulated sewing, back straight, upright. “See this is what my line leader calls being assertive in my performance. This is taking control of my own fate.” Then she slouched. “Bad. Three hundred yuan fine.”
“I’m on your side. The system is broken. But you got to be reasonable—”
Ivy cut me off. “Deduction for using bathroom twice in one hour. Even pregnant. Deduction for humming pop song.” She was speaking fast now, tapping the blade of her left hand against her right palm. “Deduction for text message to sick daughter. In this factory. All of it. Empty promises. Midautumn festival bonus is half month’s wage, correct? In truth, we get fifty yuan and a banana.”
“A banana,” Zhang said, parroting her, a blue vein tracking along the side of his neck. “Migrant factory workers are the shit on the shoe of China. If a million die tomorrow, nobody knows or cares. Lies too many to count. At least in America, if a boss lies, you can punch his face. That is democracy.”
“Not true,” I said, throwing up my hands. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t punch anyone.”
“Better to be born a pig than work here,” Zhang said, rising off the couch.
“You don’t even work here!” I said, standing up tall and rigid, so we were on the same level glaring at each other.
“Calm down, calm down,” yelled Ivy, her voice shaky. She waved us down with both her arms. “We resolve.”
Then it was quiet except for the paddle fan spinning overhead. Air muggy and thick. Zhang ground out his private thoughts with the toe of his sandal against the wood floor.
“What am I supposed to do with Gang?” I asked. “I know you think I’m the enemy. I’m not. Here’s the truth, if we gave the workers back pay on social insurance, if we gave medical and housing subsidies, followed the actual law, we’d lose the whole labor cost advantage of doing business in China. The whole point of being here.”
Ivy flinched when I said that.
“I’m sorry,” I said, surprised a little at the way I sounded. Cynical. But realistic. I didn’t mind how I sounded. “When that advantage’s gone, it hits this factory, this city, hard, then it’s Gang’s problem, then it’s Beijing’s problem. All Gang cares about is saying he does 8 percent growth every quarter.”
Zhang held his palm up, but it was all surging up in my chest. I wanted to say it all. “Any real change—like a 20 percent wage increase—and Gang throws my ass out of the country for hurting his bottom line, and then he brings in different owners, real assholes. You know over at Foxconn the mingong pay to use the bathroom. Pay for water.”
“Okay,” Zhang said, calmer now. “Sorry for the temper before. We want the same path. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“Moderate goals,” he continued. “We both want. The mingong needs same rights as assembly line worker in Detroit. Baggage handler at Delta. Dockworker at General Electric. The legal right to school, social benefits, pensions, health insurance, buying power. It should be the case?”
“Yes,” I said.
“GE still makes big profit,” Ivy said.
“Sure,” I said. “But I can’t give you those things. I don’t have that kind of power and collective bargaining is a sham here. You guys have this vision of American capitalism from the 1950s—but that won’t work in China. It’s more like 1850s America here, run by robber barons—Carnegie and Rockefeller, JP Morgan. But either way, you guys are in the wrong century.”
“I see,” Zhang said.
“It’s a shell game,” I said, and paused trying to remember the actual figures—all a blur in my mind right now, only the point was clear. “We move money around in different piles. So we could ‘negotiate’ by raising benefits 8 percent, great, look like heroes in the press, then turn around and make employees match contributions and that money disappears, so it’s all back to even. Real wages stay the same. I’ve seen the damn numbers. And I’m willing to bet this is how Honda solved their strike. Or you reduce overtime bonuses. Or hours. There’s a million ways to do it. I saw the figures myself. The money always evens out to maintain the advantage.”
A stricken expression spread across Zhang’s face. “Some of this, yes, we know,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe not in the extreme you confirm.”
Ivy put her hand on Zhang’s shoulder. A meaningful look passed between them. It lasted for a few seconds before he turned back to me.
“We need a different plan,” Zhang said. “That is very clear. Unions do not work. Your hands tied behind your back by the government.”
“Correct,” I said. For some reason I found their surprise comforting.
“Impossible to change things alone,” Zhang said. “According to reason. You do not possess the power.”
“Not on my own,” I said.
Zhang paused for a moment. “What if you are not on your own?”
“Meaning?”
“Well, what if other factory owners supported you?”
“They wouldn’t,” I said.
“Then what is a proper course? How does change come forward?”
“You have to put pressure above me,” I said. “You must go higher.”
“To the top,” Zhang said.
“To Gang,” I said.
“Beijing,” he said.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Something about his burning look. I was searching his eyes but couldn’t read his play here.
“How did Mao get the attention of the masses?” Zhang asked. “Before the revolution.”
I shrugged.
“The Long March. You heard this? Six thousand miles. Village by village, spreading the message of liberation. Up into mountains of Yan’an. People, stick your head out of your cave and listen.”
“Or Gandhi’s Salt March,” Ivy added, reading the doubt on my face. “Or in your own country—Martin Luther King.”
“It’s a different time,” I said. “That won’t work anymore.”
“Of course,” Ivy agreed. “But the goal is same. Attention of the people. Attention of the world. You have in the States the same problem. People come to pick grapes, mow lawns, cook. Outsiders. They are invisible in your country, but you need them. So here they circuit-board iPads instead of washing dishes. Live like unwanted guests here in their own country. So the world must see them. The people. Not just products they make.”
Tough to argue that. They came to the cities, slaved away in the factories for their best years and maybe they stayed, but no one really wanted them. In the subway, all the handsome, well-heeled Chinese scooted over, sneaking a few pitying glances at their darker, dirtier countrymen in pith helmets, holding mattocks, covered in tunnel soot, a different species almost, exhausted, their heads rattling against a subway ad, dreaming of high-rises, and the whole thing was enraging. But what could you do about it?
“But this is China,” I said. “There’s nothing you can do. I mean, they locked up Ai Weiwei for flicking off Tiananmen Gate. The middle finger and he’s thrown in jail. You want to start trouble with these people?”
Zhang inhaled sharply with a hiss. “Trouble? No trouble. No violence. We have no army. No weapons. This is not a proper course. We need visibility. Something broadcast. Over internet maybe. A platform. A forum. An instantaneous Long March, right? How
do we get forum? Someone must be ready to take a stand. To step forward.”
“You mean me?” I said.
“I don’t mean you,” said Zhang. “I mean the person who shows the willing.”
“A forum,” I said. “Here at the factory. You’re talking about a demonstration, aren’t you?”
Zhang waved his hand in front of his face. “I don’t like this word.”
“But you’re saying it. Which means a strike.”
“We want to lift the shoe and show the world,” he said. “Put it this way.”
I turn to Ivy. “Do you agree with this?”
She nodded. “Show the world the solidarity of Chinese workers,” Ivy said. “We broadcast speeches. On the internet. YouTube. With VPNs we go around the firewalls.”
“You want to rile people up,” I said. “That’s violent. You sound like neo-Maoists.”
“No, no,” Zhang said, touching his chest. “Remember what Deng Xiaoping said after Mao, ‘Doesn’t matter if a cat was black or white, so long as it catches mice.’ Today we need a new way to catch mice. A calico cat. This is YouTube. Think of me like Deng Xiaoping with an iPhone.”
At the moment I was thinking of him as a lot of things, but none of them were Deng Xiaoping with an iPhone. Zhang was definitely talking about a strike.
“Of course you cannot stop factory operation,” Zhang said, his clever habit of preemptively arguing your side of things.
“That’s right,” I said. “Look, I want to support you guys, but I can’t stop the lines.”
“But maybe for one day this is possible. To give us a forum.”
So he really did mean that. I didn’t know how to respond. Only I was aware that my mouth was open a little and I hadn’t said anything yet. So I forced the words out. “You know that’d hurt my business. Cost money, jobs.”
“We never want to lose jobs,” Ivy said firmly. “We need you in China. Factory jobs are good jobs. Mingong don’t want to go back to rice farming.”
“I don’t want to farm,” Zhang added. “I have a bad back from volleyball accident.”
He chuckled here, a lame little attempt at levity.