Country Driving

by Peter Hessler

  In February I saw a woman drive the front left wheel of her Honda into an open manhole. The car was undamaged; men ran out from nearby shops and lifted the vehicle out of the hole. By the next month the covers had finally been installed. They weren’t metal: a Shanghai-based company called Chunyi had created a new type of lid made of composite plastic, to foil thieves. For the first time, I could drive down Suisong Road without fear of ruining a tire, and it was also on this journey that I noticed women outnumbering men. It had happened all at once: most construction crews had moved on, and now the factory bosses hired predominately girls for the assembly lines. In the evenings, after most shifts were over, workers wandered the street in packs, many of them still dressed in their uniforms. Soon the shopping options changed: two shoe stores appeared, along with a big clothes shop whose year-round sign promised “Half Price!” There was also a medical clinic and a supermarket. A half dozen beauty parlors appeared on Suisong Road, and some of them had the red-tinged lights that suggest prostitution.

  In the span of nine months the place had changed so profoundly that I could sense it with my eyes closed. At night came sounds of leisure, young people laughing and talking, and the daytime noises also took on a new character. For half a year the development zone had roared with construction: bulldozers, jackhammers, drills. This racket was fitful and erratic; a drill would whine for half a minute, and then a jackhammer would rumble, and then for a brief moment there would be silence. But the uneven syncopation ended with the factories. They had rhythm—their assembly lines hummed and sang with the regularity of a chorus. One afternoon, standing on Suisong Road, I shut my eyes and listened, picking out the song of every product. Punch-hisss, punch-hisss, punch-hisss—that was the pneumatic wheeze of the metal press that pounded out unfinished bra rings. Crussshhhh, crussshhhh, crussshhhh—the throb of a polycarbonate grinder making Jane Eyre light switches. Whir-r-r-ring, whir-r-r-ring, whir-r-r-ring—industrial spools wrapping copper wire for Geley Electrical Company. All of the machines sang together—punch-hisss, punch-hisss; crussshhhh, crussshhhh; whir-r-r-ring, whir-r-r-ring—and then I realized the other way in which these noises were different from those of construction. The factory sounds did not stop. Each was steady as a heartbeat, as reliable as breathing, and that was how the neighborhood finally came to life.

  II

  AFTER THE FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL CAME TO WORK AT the bra ring factory, she made no attempt to hide the secret of her age. In fact, she brought her older sister to the plant, explaining that this was the person who actually owned the ID card that said “Tao Yuran.” The real TaoYuran, of course, also needed a job. With the name already on the books, and the woman standing there eager to work, the bosses could hardly do otherwise; they gave her a position on the Machine’s assembly line. Meanwhile there was the issue of what to do with the fake Tao Yuran. Her name was actually Tao Yufeng, and she wouldn’t be sixteen for almost a year; Chinese law forbids factories from hiring people so young. But in practice it’s common, especially in cases where applicants use false IDs. What else can you do when somebody wants to work so badly? And so the bosses kept the girl, training her on the assembly line for underwire.

  The next Tao to materialize was Tao Fei. He was the patriarch of the clan, and he looked the part: tall and big-boned, with the erect posture of a soldier. His hair was white and he kept it shaved close to his head. He had an angular face defined by gaunt, sunken cheeks, and he chain-smoked West Lake cigarettes. There was little about this man that could be recognized in his daughters, at least on the surface. The girls both had soft, childlike features, and they lacked their father’s stately carriage. But there was a flicker of resemblance when the man smiled—a certain quickness of eye that he shared with his daughters. It was a type of native intelligence combined with sheer determination, and this sharp-eyed look was the quality that all three Taos brought to the factory.

  Originally the family had farmed in Anhui Province. They came from Taihe County, the village of Taolou—literally the place name means “Manor of the Taos.” Virtually everybody there was a Tao, and despite the Manored name most of them were dirt-poor. In the past, Mr. Tao and his wife farmed less than an acre and a half of corn, wheat, and soybeans. They had three children, and this line of offspring followed a classic rural progression: daughter, daughter, son. Like many peasants, Mr. Tao and his wife had evaded the planned-birth policy, paying fines after each subsequent child, until at last they were satisfied with a boy.

  In recent years, as everywhere in rural China, young people had been leaving the Manor of the Taos. Often the older generation stayed at home, farming and benefiting from money remitted by their children in the factories. But Mr. Tao and his wife wanted to work, too, so they decided to migrate en masse, as a family. In Lishui they rented a room in a farmer’s home for a little more than twenty dollars a month. It had mud walls, a cheap tile floor, and a total area of less than one hundred and fifty square feet. All five Taos lived there, and they also used the place to stock their goods at night. The parents were among the entrepreneurial pioneers who had settled near the bra ring factory, where they ran a small dry goods stand. It consisted of a long wooden table covered with plastic tarp and arranged with cheap products that catered to factory workers: low-end batteries, plastic razors, shampoo, and other basic toiletries. Next to the stand, Mr. Tao’s wife worked a foot-powered Swan sewing machine. Her specialty was altering worker uniforms: factory girls often didn’t like the baggy company garb, and they could go to the Tao family stand and pay forty American cents for a better fit. It was steady business, and the family also profited from used magazines and paperbacks. Every month, Mr. Tao visited the government-run Xinhua Bookstore in downtown Lishui, where he purchased out-of-date magazines for seventeen cents. On his stand he sold them for twenty cents. He also accepted trades—a migrant who brought two magazines received one in return. These were the margins of the Tao world, and it’s a common business model for people from Anhui Province, who are known for setting up simple stalls in Chinese factory towns.

  The Taos came to Lishui after hearing about the new development zone from other villagers. Over time, more relatives appeared, and periodically a cousin or a nephew showed up in the bra ring factory. Sometimes a full third of the workforce consisted of Taos. The bosses often needed part-time labor, because they were still in the start-up phase, and there was always a Tao willing to work for a few hours. They were the Snopes of Lishui—once the family had a foothold, other members kept coming.

  It had been a stroke of genius to initially send the youngest. If Mr. Tao had been the first to walk through the factory doors, he never would have been hired because of his age—bosses don’t want workers in their forties and fifties. Even if Mr. Tao had been given a job, it would have put him in the awkward position of asking for a favor each time he introduced another daughter or cousin. Instead, the youngest showed up with her sister’s ID, which was essentially a two-for-one; and then it was only natural that the father follow, because he was willing to work for cheap. Once he was ensconced in the factory, Mr. Tao monitored his daughters and made sure they were paid fairly. He collected their salaries every month—neither girl ever touched the money.

  Yufeng, the younger daughter, had left school after seventh grade. She told me that she had never been a good student, and the fees had cost roughly one hundred dollars per year. “When I was in school, I felt like it was a burden for my family,” she said. “I was happy to leave.” Even if she had stayed, she only would have watched her peers vanish one by one, so she figured it was better to get an early start on her factory career. In Lishui the girl hoped to find a better job when she turned eighteen—at that point her age wouldn’t be held against her, and she could work in a big plant, the kind of place that checked IDs carefully and had real uniforms. She liked the idea of a shoe factory; maybe she’d learn something about the business and start a company of her own. “If I could, I’d make a lot of money and go home and build a ho
use,” she told me. “A real house, two or three stories. My grandparents could live there.” The grandparents had cared for the girl during the initial period of the family’s migration, when she had been too young to accompany her parents. These elderly people were now her only link to the village. Once, I asked Yufeng what her grandparents were like, and the girl fell silent and her eyes filled with tears; and after that I didn’t ask about them anymore.

  At the factory she handled underwire. Her job was to take the U-shaped bands of steel, one by one, and place them between the coils of a long tight spring. Fifty-seven wires could fit on each spring, and then the wire tips were dipped into nylon powder and passed through an industrial heater. Yufeng’s job was one of the few in the factory that didn’t depend on the clock. It was piecework: she was paid for each wire she handled. More precisely, she was paid by the pair—after all, the wires represent brassieres. In the factory world, piecework is considered to be the lowest form of assembly-line labor, and it’s often where underage workers end up.

  For each pair of wires, Yufeng made the equivalent of one-twentieth of an American penny. In the beginning, when she was unaccustomed to the work, a full hour of labor earned only about a quarter. But the girl was naturally nimble, and she learned fast; soon she was able to make eighty cents an hour, nearly double Lishui’s minimum wage. She wore a thimble on her left thumb, and the metal clicked each time she inserted another wire into the spring. Clickclickclickclick—the sounds came steady as a metronome, as fast as I could count.

  One afternoon, I watched Yufeng prepare thousands of wires, all of which were size 75, B-cup. The factory went by European measurements, and often she worked ten hours straight on a single breast size. She could answer my questions without pausing or looking up: clickclickclickclick. She said she was glad to work with underwire instead of bra rings.

  “There’s no machine for this,” Yufeng explained. “If you work with a machine, then the machine decides the pace. This way I’m freer. I can work whenever I want, for as long as I want.” The thimble flashed: clickclickclickclick. The girl kept talking. “To be honest, I often have a peaceful feeling. I work alone and there’s nobody to bother me. I don’t think about anything in particular. If I try to think about something specific, then I don’t work as fast. So I just try to keep my mind empty.”

  IN THE EARLY MONTHS, after the factories first started producing, there weren’t any formal entertainment options in the development zone. There were no theaters or bars or karaoke parlors, and the government hadn’t built a public park. But the streets essentially served that purpose—traffic was light, so the roads were available to anybody who wanted to put on a makeshift show. At night, on Suisong Road, an entrepreneur usually set up a television and karaoke machine, charging ten cents per song. And often a traveling troupe came in off the expressway and offered some kind of entertainment. Low-end carnivals were common, especially those that featured games of chance, but there were also more elaborate endeavors. Once, a traditional Wu opera troupe erected a wooden stage right in the middle of Suisong Road and performed every night for a week, drawing hundreds of spectators. In the development zone, such large-scale performances are often free, because of corporate sponsors. Companies like China Mobile and China Unicom target the migrant population, which makes for a good entertainment market. The young workers are far from home, with nothing to do at night, and most are earning money for the first time in their lives.

  One week the Red Star Acrobatic and Artistic Troupe came to town. They drove a battered Yukang freight truck that had been customized so the side panels folded out into a marquee, which featured color photographs of women in bikinis. The center of the marquee had been cut out to form a makeshift box office, and behind the truck they raised a canvas tent. Electric speakers blasted music into the street. A slogan had been painted around the marquee:

  ACROBATIC TROUPE TOURING THE FOUR SEAS

  ATTRACTING GUESTS FROM ALL OVER

  WE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

  They parked next to the Tongfeng Synthetic Leather Company, which is located on Suisong Road, a few blocks from the bra ring factory. Two other pleather plants are nearby: Jinyu and Huadu. The troupe chose this location carefully—they knew the pleather factories hire mostly men, and they set up their marquee with the bikini pictures in late afternoon, around the time that work shifts changed. That’s the witching hour of the development zone, when streets are busy with people, and soon a crowd of fifty gathered to stare at the marquee. A member of the troupe spoke into a microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” he called out. “Bosses and workers! Brothers and sisters! We welcome everybody to our acrobatics show! We know that all of you are hardworking, and you’re tired at the end of the day; we welcome you to relax with our show!”

  The barker was dark-skinned and rail-thin, with high cheekbones and narrow eyes. He wore a pinstriped suit with a vest, and a cheap gold-colored chain hung from his watch pocket. The clothes were baggy, and they had gotten dusty during the tent-raising, which gave the barker a certain scarecrow appearance. Despite his thinness he had big hands and muscular wrists—peasant forearms. He spoke in slow, syrupy tones, stretching out the words. “Wo-r-k-e-rs and bo-s-s-es!” he called out. “Br-o-t-h-ers and si-s-t-ers! Tonight we have a special performance…”

  If there were any bosses in the crowd, I couldn’t recognize them, and there weren’t any sisters either. The bikinis on the marquee drew strictly men: they milled around in front of the sign, listening to the barker. Many of them were dressed in their work uniforms; some wore hard hats. The troupe charged five yuan for entrance—about sixty cents, a little more than an hour’s wages for the average worker. Over the course of half an hour, the barker patiently coaxed them into the tent—“Wor-k-e-rs and bo-s-s-es!”—and all told they drew seventy customers. The audience sat on narrow benches, facing a rough stage of unpainted boards.

  The show began with a middle-aged woman who sang a patriotic song about development entitled “Walking Into a New Era.” After that, two girls appeared wearing bras, panties, and white bobby socks. One girl was tall and thin; the other short and fat; together they danced to electronic music. They ignored the beat and they ignored each other; each woman seemed to dance to some private melody in her head. They did not smile and their eyes remained fixed on the boards at their feet. Periodically the barker—now he had become the MC—called into the microphone: “Shake it girls, shake it! Shake it, shake it, shake it!”

  The crowd was silent, and the only signs of life were the cigarettes that glowed in the darkness. The men looked dazed—maybe that’s inevitable when people breathe pleather for ten hours and then watch such an odd progression of acts. A young man came onstage and performed a halfhearted breakdance routine, and then the girls in panties and bobby socks returned. They were followed by an older man with the haggard face of a consumptive, who gave a thin-lipped smile and sang a popular song called “The Tibetan Plateau.” Next, a man and a woman performed a comedy sketch that ended with the man’s zipper down and the woman wielding a cleaver. After that, the MC took the stage and embarked on a long monologue. He told a story about his childhood, and how he’d grown up a lonely boy in a poor village where most adults had migrated. His mother and father left to find factory work, and over the years they lost touch, which made the boy feel guilty for depending on his grandparents. Finally he took to the road, traveling through coastal regions, searching for his parents. He visited factory towns one by one, but he never found his family; at last he was picked up by a kindly variety show troupe. At the end of the monologue, a woman appeared from the wings, carrying a fresh-cooked meal in a pot. “Mama! Mama!” the MC wailed, and then the woman stepped offstage—it was only a dream.

  After the story was finished, the MC passed around a bowl, looking for donations from the audience. The men’s faces remained impassive but some of them contributed small bills. They gave more freely during the shoulder act. This involved another performer
standing onstage, popping his shoulder out of its socket, and writhing in pain while the cash bowl made a torturously slow circuit of the tent. The show ended when one of the dancing girls—face unsmiling, eyes fixed on the floor—slowly pulled down her panties to flash a good five seconds of frontal nudity. Finally the crowd responded: the men murmured and sat up straight and their cigarettes glowed bright. And then it was over, and the music ended, and the spectators filed outside, where the sky had turned dark and the night-shift lights shone from the windows of the Tongfeng Synthetic Leather Company.

  THE RED STAR ACROBATIC and Artistic Troupe was originally from a poor village called Xiaohong in Henan Province. They were an extended family: three brothers, their father, an uncle, a distant cousin, and the wives of the younger men. They were joined by a disabled man who was a neighbor in the village; he helped with cooking and cleaning while they were on the road. At night they slept on narrow bunk beds that lined the customized truck. All of the couples had children back in the village, where they were being raised by older relatives.

  The troupe was easygoing and talkative, and after the first night’s show I had dinner with them beside the truck. The skinny MC was named Liu Changfu, and he had been performing for fifteen years. He had a fourth-grade education and he was blunt about his limitations. “I’m basically illiterate,” he said. He had no illusions about the show, either. “It’s stupid,” he said. “Our level is really low; we don’t even have real costumes.”