by Reece Hirsch
“I’m Quan Shao,” he said in English, extending a hand. “We can’t stay here.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Beijing. I’ll explain everything when we’re back in the truck.”
Chris stood and for the first time got a sense of where he was. The landfill was a gray, blasted expanse that extended as far as the eye could see in rolling dunes of debris. He estimated it to be at least as big as twenty football fields.
The smell was assaultive.
Chris stepped up into the cabin of the truck, and they drove back out past the protesters, who hurled a few more shouts in their direction through the surgical masks they wore to minimize the stench.
“What’s going on here?” Chris asked.
“Trash has just recently become a real problem for us. China became urban and industrialized practically overnight, which meant that people started eating more packaged foods, using more cartons, bottles, and cans—so a lot more trash. Americans have been living like that for a long time, but it was new here and it happened fast. Our landfills couldn’t handle it all.”
“So what are the protests about?”
“Party officials make decisions like where the trash gets dumped. The locals here in Changping believe that the party bosses screwed them in favor of Yangfang, another town eight miles from here. Changping has to accept Yangfang’s garbage, and it’s spoiling life here. This landfill is drawing such a huge amount of insects that it’s affecting local fruit production.”
“I guess I see their point.”
The man parked the garbage truck in a lot on the outskirts of Beijing. They walked to a two-door Saab parked in the same lot, for which Shao had the keys. Shao then proceeded to drive him into the capital in the Saab.
They made their way on surface streets into Beijing, the commercial buildings growing steadily more dense and the streets more crowded.
“So where are you taking me?”
“My apartment. You’ll get a new passport, and we’ll tell you about the plan. Guiren Song will meet us there—if he makes it.”
They rode in silence as they entered the outskirts of Beijing, which announced itself as nothing more than a series of unidentifiable commercial buildings and apartment towers with a bit more space between them than you would see in most US cities. To Chris, it looked about as glamorous and exotic as the anonymous San Francisco suburb of Daly City.
Beijing was organized as a series of concentric rings, marked by perimeter freeways. Chris read the street signs as they passed the Sixth Ring Road, then the Fifth and the Fourth. These were all copies of the Second Ring Road, which had been built upon the ruins of a fortified brick wall that once encircled the city. The wall had been torn down by the communists in the 1950s and ’60s, who were seeking to eliminate all traces of the old order, but it still made its ancient presence felt in the rings of clogged traffic that encircled Beijing like fatty deposits around a stuttering heart.
Shao left the Saab in a parking structure, and they walked to an apartment building on a bustling street just inside the Fourth Ring Road. As they ascended the steps to the third-floor landing, Shao glanced up and down the stairwell to see if anyone was observing them.
“Do you think we’re being followed?”
“No, I don’t think so, but we can talk inside.”
The apartment bore all the trademarks of student lodgings. Thick textbooks filled with color anatomical drawings were open on the coffee table.
“You’re a student?”
Shao paused for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I’m studying medicine at the Peking University Health Science Center. I’m going to be an immunologist.”
“Is Song also a medical student?”
“It’s best that you not ask too many questions about us.”
“No, I understand.” Chris realized that they were afraid he might be captured by the PLA before he could escape the country, and tortured until he gave them up.
“If you’re a dissident, isn’t it possible that your apartment is under surveillance?”
“I’m not on any watch lists yet. Song is, though.”
“So you’re a newbie.”
“No, I’ve been at this for a while now, but I’m still under the radar,” Shao said with a note of defensiveness. “You don’t have to stand in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square to work for change. That’s been done, and it wasn’t all that successful.”
“What makes you and Song take risks like this?”
“We’re doing it because economic reform is not enough. If we stay on the course that the party has laid out for us, we’ll end up with all of the worst aspects of your country and none of the best. You can keep your Big Macs. We’ll take the New York Times and democratic elections.”
“I can see how you’d want to make that deal.”
“I want our nation to succeed and surpass your country, and I believe that we’ll do that some day soon. But I don’t think we need to do it by stealing your secrets. It suggests that we aren’t capable of winning a fair fight.”
Chris recognized Shao’s proud nationalism as perhaps the defining trait of the Chinese people, and it spanned all demographics and ideologies. Regardless of whether you were a party official or a dissident protester, it was very likely that you believed China was destined to dominate the next century.
While they waited for Song, Chris cleaned up in the shower, and then Shao bandaged his injured arm and ribs. Chris was glad that Shao happened to be a med student. When Shao finished, the pain remained but felt manageable.
Within a half hour a knock came at the door. It was Song, looking surprisingly cool for someone who had just evaded arrest by seconds and inches.
Shao clapped him on the shoulder. “Chris told me what happened. I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”
Song walked across the room and collapsed into a chair, the stress finally showing.
“Did you get away cleanly?” Shao asked.
“I think so. They never saw me with him, so there was no pursuit. It was very close, though.”
“You sure you didn’t pick up any tails on your way here?”
“No, and you know I wouldn’t be here if I had. I need a drink.”
Shao produced a bottle of Suntory Whisky, and they sat down with Song at a table in the small kitchen and drank in silence until their nerves had settled.
After a few minutes of respectful silence, Chris asked, “Okay, so how do you propose to get me out of the country?”
“We have a fake passport you can use if you’re stopped, but the idea is that you don’t go through any checkpoints,” Song said. “Every customs agent will probably have your photo, so it wouldn’t do any good.”
Song slid an authentic-looking blue Canadian passport with gold embossed lettering across the table. Chris flipped it open and saw that it contained an old photo of him with the name Henry Childs. The passport was stamped for entrance to China two weeks ago and also included a few other stamps for England and Spain. To his untrained eye, it looked very convincing.
“If I’m not going through customs, how am I getting out?”
Song drained his glass and poured another. “We know a captain of a container ship who’s friendly to our cause. You’re going to the port of Xiamen, and you’ll be put inside a container vessel there and taken to Taiwan.”
“How long will I be in there?”
“It takes about fourteen hours,” Song said. “Xiamen is the closest port. You’ll bring food and water. You’ll be okay.”
“What happens when I reach Taiwan?”
“We have someone there who will meet you and get you on a plane back to the US. You’ll be getting another fake passport. It’ll have an exit stamp from the PRC.”
“How am I getting to Xiamen?”
Song stood and began spooning udon noodles onto p
lates for the microwave. “A driver will be here tomorrow morning to take you to Xiamen. It’s probably not safe to be on the road at night because you’re more likely to stand out. You can sleep here tonight.”
Chris took a sip of whiskey. “Whether I make it out of here or not, I’m going to owe both of you a great debt.”
Song and Shao gave a collective shrug as they ate their noodles.
“When I’m back in the US, is there anything I can do for you, for your cause?”
Song stopped eating. “You can get your story out about the PLA and what they’re up to on Datong Road. This is our country, but sometimes the government needs to be embarrassed.”
“You think it will make a difference here?”
“By itself, no,” said Shao. “Not even close. But the first stroke of the ax never brings down the tree. That doesn’t mean that you don’t strike the blow.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Chris said.
15
Chris walked through one of the hútòng neighborhoods near Tiananmen Square at nine in the morning, looking for the place where Song and Shao had told him that he would meet the driver who would take him to the port of Xiamen. Gingerly, he shouldered his pack, filled with provisions for his journey in the container vessel, as he made his way through the mazelike streets. It was easy to get lost in the hútòngs, which were narrow alleyways formed by rows of traditional sìhéyuàn courtyard residences. The hútòngs reflected a traditional way of community life that was fast disappearing as Beijing remade itself.
Just as he was admitting to himself that he’d become hopelessly lost and would miss his rendezvous, Chris spotted a series of white arrows painted on the sides of buildings and on the street. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to locate the second-rate tourist attraction that was his destination.
Even when he was standing in front of the place, he nearly missed it. It was the entrance to a small shop, with a sign over the doorway that read “Beijing Under Ground City.” When he stepped inside into a tiny and nondescript room, his immediate reaction was to turn back. This couldn’t possibly be the place. It looked like one of those obscure, empty shops where foreigners never understood what was for sale.
Chris resisted that impulse, stepping through a low doorway in the back that opened into a much larger area, where a man in military camouflage gear was selling tickets. It made sense that the entrance was so inconspicuous, given the site’s original purpose. This was the entrance to Dixia Cheng, Beijing’s vast underground city, a crumbling monument to Cold War paranoia.
In the spring of 1969, tensions between China and the USSR flared into armed conflict, which centered around a tiny island in the Ussuri River along China’s eastern border. Eight hundred Chinese died in one battle in which the Soviets unleashed aircraft, tanks, and missiles. Mao Zedong took the Soviet threat so seriously that he began preparing an emergency evacuation plan in the event that the Soviets invaded Beijing. Sixty percent of Beijing’s population was to flee to the hills, but the remaining forty percent of the population was to hide out in a Dixia Cheng (underground city) in the event of invasion, air raid, or nuclear war.
Chairman Mao put armies of Beijing citizens to work excavating the massive shelter, enlisting both adults and schoolchildren, a communal movement in keeping with the massive public campaigns of the Cultural Revolution. From 1969 to 1979, the underground city was excavated largely by hand. When it was completed, it was capable of housing three hundred thousand people for about four months and consisted of a network of tunnels as deep as sixty feet beneath the city, stretching about eighteen miles in length and spreading over a fifty-two square-mile area. The entrances to the shelter were hidden in small houses and shops like the one Chris had just passed through.
When the USSR disintegrated and threats of a Soviet attack disappeared, the underground city lost its purpose and fell into disuse. Dixia Cheng eventually became a tourist attraction, but an obscure one, with most of its tunnels shut down.
What a strange place for a meeting.
Chris bought a ticket and descended into the hidden city, walking through echoing corridors to the appointed meeting place. Cold War paranoia seemed to seep through the arched concrete tunnel walls, which were damp with condensation. At this early hour there were only a handful of other tourists, mostly youngish Westerners with Lonely Planet guides. Chris passed a large dormitory-style room full of iron bunk beds with peeling Mao posters on the walls. There were rooms designed to house a roller-skating rink, barbershops, vaults where sunless crops like mushrooms could be grown.
Finally, Chris reached the spot where the driver was to meet him, the site of Dixia Cheng’s movie theater. There were a couple of tubes of red neon glowing over the entrance, but that did not make the place look any more inviting. He stood in front of the cinema for a half hour as directed and began to suspect he had either been abandoned or betrayed. There were no other tourists around, likely because it was early in the morning and their meeting place so remote.
At last he heard quick footsteps approaching. It was a man wearing a faded khaki work shirt and jeans with black stains on the legs where he had wiped oily hands. He had a flat, expressionless face, and eyes that were sunk deep behind puffy lids. He would have made a good poker player.
“Bruen?” he said in a croaking voice.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go. But follow me at a distance.”
Chris lifted his pack and followed the man through the tunnels. As they emerged back through the small shop that served as an entrance to the underground city, the camo-clad ticket taker took no notice of them. He was clearly not a real soldier. The outfit was probably some sort of nod to China’s revolutionary past and the Mao era.
Outside, the morning sun was beginning to penetrate the smoggy haze that lay over Beijing. Chris’s contact strode at a brisk pace for two blocks to a large fenced lot, where his truck was parked. Chris climbed up into the cabin of the vehicle, which appeared to be some sort of large moving van, and the driver got underway.
“How long will it take to get to Xiamen?” Chris asked.
“Depends on the traffic,” the driver said.
“Why did you choose to meet me there?”
“Because almost no one goes there. And there are no cameras down in the tunnels. Up here, you never know who might be watching.”
“I appreciate what you’re doing here.”
“No need to thank me,” he said without removing his eyes from the traffic ahead. “I’ve been paid.”
The truck crept through surface streets, which were congested by bicycles and the ever-present construction. Eventually, they reached a freeway heading east out of the city, cutting through the concentric circles of the ring roads.
Chris tried again to strike up a conversation. “Is the crew of the tanker ship in on this?”
“It’s best that you not ask questions,” the driver said.
“I just want to know if I should worry if someone sees me entering the container,” Chris said.
“I’d worry about everything if I were you.”
Chris was beginning to get an uneasy feeling about the driver, and it had nothing to do with that intentionally ominous remark. He didn’t like the way the driver refused to look at him or speak with him. It was a sign of someone who wanted to distance himself from what he was about to do.
Another hour passed in silence as they followed the road along the Jiulong Jiang River as it broadened to its mouth and emptied into the Pacific. Hulking gray container ships lined the docks and, in the distance, the Haicang Bridge stretched across the harbor, as slender and tensile as the filament of a spiderweb.
Chris felt a rising anxiety as the truck pulled into the port and neared the docks. He had the unmistakable sense that he was being set up, despite having no evidence to back it up. And what choice did he have but to
follow the plan? If he strayed from the carefully arranged path, he might never make it out of China.
He was going to have to decide in a matter of minutes whether what he was feeling was free-floating paranoia or an instinct that would save his life. What if the ship’s route was longer than they had represented, long enough for his food and water to run out? What if the container wouldn’t be opened for days instead of hours? If that was the case, then he would die of heat and dehydration inside that metal box like a dog left in a parked car.
Chris’s mind raced as he tried to decide what he was going to do, toggling back and forth between the two options.
The truck pulled up next to the CHSL Jupiter, a docked container ship that looked several city blocks long. At that moment the driver turned to him and, for the first time since they’d met in the underground city, he smiled.
And that was his tell.
“Don’t look so worried,” the driver said. “Everything has been taken care of.”
Chris merely nodded in response. He had only spent a few hours with the driver, but he knew without doubt that this man was not the type to offer reassurance. Rather, this was his way of closing the deal with someone he viewed as a clueless dupe.
The driver pointed to several steel containers the size of railway boxcars stacked beside the ship. “See the one on the bottom right there? It hasn’t been sealed yet. You get inside there, and in about fifteen minutes or so that crane is going to pick up the container and lower it onto the ship.”
“What do I do then?”
“You just sit there and wait. One of the crew will seal the container when it’s onboard. He will not open it. You will never speak with him.”
Chris figured that his only chance of escape would arrive when he was on board the ship. If he refused to enter the container, he had no doubt that the driver would turn a gun on him.
He felt exposed walking across the dock in the midday sun. Approaching the container, he saw that there was no padlock on the door. After glancing back at the driver to confirm that he was still watching, Chris opened the heavy steel door and stepped into the musty darkness. It took a while for his eyes to adjust, but slender strips of light filtered around the door’s seams. The container was entirely empty. He sat down on the dirty floor to wait.