The Forbidden Game

by Dan Washburn

  “The situation became very chaotic,” Wang said. “The governor said we had to sell. He said the prices were not negotiable. So why assemble the entire village for a meeting when nothing is open for discussion? He may be one of us, but the village governor is just a mouthpiece for the government.”

  The meeting came to an end, but the village remained abuzz. There was too much information to take in. Too much to think about. Too much change, too soon. Lost in all of the chatter was the village governor’s off-handed, and perhaps off-script, remark that the land the villagers were required to sell was to be turned into golf courses – probably because no one in Meiqiu knew what a golf course was. There was also no reason for the villagers to know that Junhao, the company purchasing the land, also had an English name: Mission Hills.

  None of the villagers signed off on the land deal, but the government had. And the bulldozers were soon on their way. While talks between Mission Hills and local government authorities had no doubt been ongoing long before that meeting under Meiqiu’s phoenix tree, most agree the “Yangshan District Land Consolidation and Ecological Restoration Project” was officially launched on September 1, 2007. Many villagers assumed the numbers associated with that date explained the project’s code name: Project 791.

  *

  Ken Chu and Mission Hills were at it again. And this time they were determined to go bigger and bolder than ever before. In July 2007, Chu reached out to a small circle of associates with news of a project so ambitious it far exceeded almost anyone’s wildest dreams. Mission Hills was looking at two sites, both in Hainan, and had plans to build forty-eight courses, three times the number of golf courses that existed in the province at that time. The smaller location, where just twelve of the courses would go, was forty-five miles up the east coast from Sanya, Hainan’s southern resort city. The other plot was to the north, not far from the capital city of Haikou, and it was massive. Ken was intent on building thirty-six courses there – and he wanted construction on all the courses to be simultaneous. The Haikou project was currently on standby, he said, but it might start moving by the autumn. His people were already working on a plan to get 1,500 pieces of heavy machinery to the island. Ken noted that the Hainan government was especially keen to work with Mission Hills, given the company’s reputation and track record for aggressive thinking. The government, he added, was eager to see the world-record-setting project completed in eighteen months.

  Thirty-six courses. Eighteen months. When word finally made its way to Martin, the numbers hit him like a tsunami. He was excited – this had all the makings of a historic, not to mention wildly lucrative, project – but he was also cautious. He didn’t want a repeat of Mission Hills Kunming, which had fallen through a little more than a year before and left Martin red-faced, trying to explain to dozens of foreign workers why the big job he had promised them was no more.

  “What are my chances of calling these same guys back and telling them now I’ve got thirty-six golf courses I’m going to build?” Martin thought. “They’re going to look at me, and I’m going to be the laughing stock of the world.”

  On top of that, the schedule seemed impossible. Martin spent days crunching the numbers, and the fastest timetable he could come up with for the construction was thirty-two months. And even that was working at an unprecedented pace. “We don’t have near this much time,” was the response from Ken Chu.

  Ken reminded Martin of the logic that had made the five courses a reality in Shenzhen in 2003. “If someone asked you to build two courses in eighteen months, would you tell them you could do it?” he challenged Martin, who saw where this was going, and said yes. “Okay, well, just treat this like eighteen separate two-course projects,” Ken explained, making it sound simple. Too simple?

  Martin started doing the sums in his head. He’d need eighteen project superintendents. He’d have to have four shapers per project. “We’d need sixty-four shapers,” Martin told him.

  “Confirmed!” Ken exclaimed.

  “Ken, I don’t know if there’s sixty-four shapers in the industry.”

  Martin spent the better part of the next two months at his desk in Scottsdale, Arizona, trying to wrangle the army required to meet Ken’s audacious demands. He called everyone he knew in the industry: project managers, superintendents, irrigation specialists and, of course, shapers. He called them all. “If a guy knew how to turn a fucking key and run a bulldozer, bring him on,” Martin joked.

  But with each call, Martin made sure to remind everyone that this was China. Building golf courses there was a tricky business. Everything could fall through at any moment. He couldn’t make any guarantees. The new hires would soon realize what he meant.

  It was a “huge undertaking” getting all the foreign workers to Hainan, as Martin expected it to be. But he didn’t expect the headaches that continued once everyone had arrived at the job site. He’d usually spend around six days at a time on the site. Two of those days would be consumed by dealing with, as he called it, “the white guys fucking whining,” just like he did in his first days working in Thailand. Most of the crew had never worked in Asia before. And much of their whining had to do with the food brought to them in Styrofoam containers during lunchtime. They sent me soggy French fries today. My salad and my spaghetti got all mixed together.

  “I have to get all the expats in one big group and tell them all to shut the fuck up and work,” Martin said. “I said, ‘I got a list of thirty other guys who want this job.’” He tried to explain that the conditions were good, really good, for a Chinese construction site. “I mean, I go down to a different job and they’re fucking eating fish heads. Mission Hills did a very good job.”

  In fact, the Chus had a little cinder block village built just for their foreign workers. Cereal was served for breakfast in the morning. There was a karaoke bar, an internet café and a basketball court. “The only negative was that they’d pack six to eight people in one room,” Martin said, remembering the conditions in the employee dormitories, which were pretty typical.

  Even though nice hotels in Haikou were on offer, Martin would make a point to stay at the compound with the rest of the employees. Everyone would laugh and ask, “Why do you stay at that shithole?” Martin had his reasons. First, he worked long hours whenever he was on site, usually at least 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and he had no interest in spending an additional two hours on the road. In the mornings, he could grab breakfast and a coffee and be out on one of the courses in a matter of minutes. In the evenings, it was just plain fun. All his Thai workers were there, and they often barbecued and cooked Thai food and sat outside, drinking beers, smoking cigars and catching up.

  But Martin also had another, more business-minded, reason for staying on site. “I wanted to gain respect from other workers. I didn’t want them to think I was a cocky bastard who had to go stay at a five-star hotel. That wasn’t my style.”

  He also knew he needed to give some of his new hires a lesson in how things worked in China, and how their new bosses operated. Several of his coveted shapers were trying to dissect their contracts and make changes. “You’re wasting your time,” Martin told them. “What are you going to do? Take them to Chinese court?”

  ‌6

  ‌The Mountain Is High

  Zhou Xunshu had all the physical tools. His swing looked homemade, but according to the American pro golfer Jim Johnson, one of the China Tour’s official coaches in 2007, it was “pretty solid, pretty simple. It works. It may look a little funny, but it is technically okay. He’s got a short backswing, but he’s really strong. His calves, they are like iron.” When he hooked Zhou up to his testing equipment, Johnson rated him to be the longest hitter on the China Tour.

  After Qingdao, Zhou rattled off a string of solid showings, including an eighth place finish at Dragon Lake. But things really started to click for him in Kunming. It was August, and he was two-thirds of the way through the season. He was ranked fourteenth on the China Tour order of merit and sixteenth on
the China Golf Association money list for the year. He needed to break into the top twelve for the year, or finish in the top three of a single tournament, to earn his professional player certification. The top twelve seemed within reach, but only if Zhou could keep up the momentum and rattle off a series of impressive performances leading up to the tour’s October finale in Beijing.

  Zhou apparently didn’t want to wait that long. He seemed intent on doing things the quick way. At the Nick Faldo-designed Lakeview Golf Club near Kunming, he fired off his best ever opening round, holing four birdies en route to a 3-under 69. He entered the clubhouse with a share of the lead, and for the first time in three years on tour, he saw his name displayed in big characters on the leaderboard. At the end of the day, he was in a five-way tie for fourth place.

  The round led to Zhou’s first ever in-tournament media interview, as well.

  “Is not having sponsors difficult for you?” the female reporter asked.

  “Yes, it is very hard. Some other golfers, after each tournament, they will have a rest and not leave until the next day,” he told her. “I need to go back to Chongqing the night the tournament finishes because I need to teach the next day. If I do not teach, I cannot make money.”

  “How often are you able to practice?”

  “Usually, I get up at 6:30 in the morning and go running as a way to maintain my fitness level. Then I eat breakfast at 7:30 and go to the driving range to practice until the noon. Then I start to teach in the afternoon, and sometimes I don’t stop until midnight.”

  “Wow. So busy!”

  “There is really not enough time in the day for me. Sometimes in the morning people will call me and ask for a lesson. And I can’t refuse or else people will judge me. And if I give a lesson in the morning, the whole order of my day is disturbed.”

  “Have you thought about what you’d do with the prize money if you were to win the tournament?”

  “I would definitely put it toward buying an apartment in Chongqing. But there are three days left – I can’t really think about this until the tournament is finished.”

  And fortunes change fast in golf. One day you’re feared, the next day you’re forgotten. “Golf is the only sport I know of where a player pays for every mistake,” 1946 US Open winner Lloyd Mangrum once said. “In golf, every swing counts against you.” Sometimes, so do the trees. Friday started well for Zhou – he had carded three birdies on the front nine and was sitting in second place at 5 under par. Then a nightmare ninth hole took Zhou’s name off the leaderboard. He hooked his tee shot, which ran dogleg left, and his ball was nowhere to be found. After a long, frantic search, it was concluded that Zhou’s ball must have been lodged inside a knot of branches in one of the tall trees to the left of the fairway. So Zhou had to take a penalty stroke and tee off again. His following shot from the fairway landed in the sand trap before the green. He managed to chip a beautiful bunker shot, which landed three-and-a-half feet from the pin. But his putt lipped out and Zhou walked off the green with a 3-over 7. He slammed his putter into the grass, and then the pavement, repeatedly. He was out of the top ten. And then it started to rain.

  That triple bogey stayed in his head throughout the back nine. He struggled with his driver, missing fairway after fairway. He found himself focusing on saving pars, and when he did give himself birdie chances, they barely missed. After six straight pars, he bogeyed the sixteenth hole after his tee shot sliced into the water. The rain really started to come down when he got to the seventeenth tee. He missed a fourteen-foot birdie putt on that hole, and on the eighteenth, Zhou put himself in an excellent position to enter the clubhouse at 1 over for the day, 2 under for the tournament. But play was halted before he could take a one-foot birdie putt. Thirty minutes later, Zhou’s “gimme” putt spun out. He let out a shout, tapped in for par and, frustrated, launched his ball into the water nearby. The day, which had begun with such promise, ended with him tied for sixteenth place overall, nine strokes behind the leader.

  The best golfers are the ones who are good at forgetting, the ones who realize the only thing they can control is their attitude toward the next swing. Zhou lets things linger and stew. “Sometimes my mind is a mess out on the course,” he said. “I can get impatient and sometimes I just think too much. I let too many things into my mind. If I make a mistake, it’s hard for me to let it go. I keep thinking about it, and then I make more mistakes, and then I get angry about them.”

  Zhou said golf was different than other sports, like basketball or football. To do well in golf, he believed, you first need to “conquer yourself.” That had proved difficult for him – his head could put up quite a fight. But he managed to rebound from his rough Friday outing and finished the tournament in a five-way tie for ninth. It was his second top-ten finish of the year and earned him 12,860 yuan before taxes. On the Omega China Tour Order of Merit, he inched up to the thirteenth spot.

  He was looking more like a certified pro golfer with each match.

  *

  Golf legend Bobby Jones said, “You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.” With that golf truth in mind, it’s no surprise Zhou wasn’t swinging his best at the close of the 2007 season – his head was overflowing.

  “We’re going to have an Olympic baby,” Zhou announced over dinner on the eve of the opening round of the tour’s late-September stop in Xiamen, a picturesque port city on China’s southeastern coast. Liu Yan was two months pregnant, due in April 2008. It was auspicious – but the news required some changes in their situation. “Also, we’re getting married. Probably in November, before she gets too big,” he said.

  Zhou had cobbled together enough money – through their own savings, and loans from friends and relatives – to buy an apartment in a Chongqing high-rise. So they were moving, too. Liu Yan’s parents had only slowly warmed to Zhou, and a house was a prerequisite for getting married.

  “He is too old,” Liu Yan’s father had said once he met his daughter’s boyfriend for the first time, when Zhou had traveled to her village in Hunan for Spring Festival in 2005. In China, an age difference of three or five years was acceptable. The twelve years that separated Liu Yan and Zhou was too much. Zhou was very nervous on that visit. He was afraid Liu Yan’s father wouldn’t approve of the relationship and would kick him out. So Zhou behaved himself. He washed the food, and he washed the dishes. He worked very hard to win over her family. Yet Liu Yan’s father didn’t talk to him during the visit. Not a word. “Why bother talking to him?” Liu Yan’s father told her. “I don’t like him.”

  Her father was more opposed to the relationship than her mother. Her mother’s greatest fear, according to Liu Yan, was that if Zhou’s finances didn’t improve, they might not visit Hunan very often, especially after they had a child. And Liu Yan knew her parents wouldn’t want to move to Chongqing. Hunan was their home.

  One day, Liu Yan called her father in tears, knowing he still didn’t approve of the relationship. He responded with an ultimatum for Zhou. “If you want to marry my daughter, you need to buy a house first. And you can’t move back to your hometown,” he said. Her father was especially suspicious of the fact that Zhou came from Guizhou. He had traveled through the province during the 1970s, and said he never wanted his daughter to live there. “I know that place,” he said. “Not good!” Her father said until Zhou bought a house he would withhold the family hukou, or household registration certificate, a document necessary to get married in China. And so Zhou scrimped and saved and borrowed so he and Liu Yan could get married.

  After that, Liu Yan’s parents started to change their minds. Liu Yan’s brother, Liu Jun, had a lot to do with it, she said. Zhou was “honest and nice,” he insisted. It was yuan fen for Liu Yan and Zhou to be together. Zhou was “not the kind of guy who would play tricks,” he told them. Eventually, her parents decided to just let it go. However, Zhou still had to buy a house for their daughter.

  So, as play began in Xiamen, Zhou’s focus was e
lsewhere. If the profanity spewing from Zhou’s mouth wasn’t sign enough, his body language declared he was a man ready for the season to be over. After one of his seven second-round bogeys, he kicked an empty water bottle angrily down the cart path. It was only Friday, but he went ahead and booked his return flight for Sunday, the last day of play, choosing an early departure time on the assumption that he wouldn’t be among those in the late groups battling for the title.

  “What if you end up winning the championship?” another golfer asked Zhou.

  “If I win the championship, I wouldn’t care about the money I wasted on the ticket,” he replied. Then Zhou turned his golf cap to the side and added, “But look at me. Do I look like a champion?”

  Zhou didn’t feel like a champion, and that is what mattered. Later, on his way back to the hotel in a taxi, he sighed and said, “I need to figure some things out.”

  Zhou didn’t need to worry about rescheduling his flight. He finished tied for twenty-ninth, his worst China Tour finish since the season opener in Nanjing. At the airport, Zhou was antsy. He couldn’t sit still. He stood in front of a glass fire extinguisher case on the wall and practiced his swing in the reflection. “I really hate waiting for flights,” Zhou said. “I’m too impatient.”

  So, too, it seemed, were all of his fellow passengers. Before any rows were called for boarding, and despite the fact that all seats were pre-assigned, everyone rushed the gate and an anxious mob formed around the ticket taker. Zhou, now a seasoned traveler, remained seated and looked on disapprovingly.

  “Nongmin,” he said shaking his head at the crowd. “Peasants.”

  *

  The 2007 season finale, the Omega Championship, took place in Beijing just a few weeks before Zhou and Liu Yan’s wedding. It was cold and windy, with gusts reaching more than thirty miles per hour. Yellow and brown leaves fluttered across the tournament fairway; the seasons were changing, and Zhou’s golf season, for all intents and purposes, was already over. Zhou shot an 83 and an 82 and missed the cut for the first time all year. Mentally, he had checked out.