Barbarian Lost

by Alexandre Trudeau

At dawn, the sun rises by climbing the mulberry tree.

  —The Classic of Mountains and Seas, fourth century BC

  In 1990, I visited Suzhou, one of the great cities of central China, famed for luxurious gardens, a sign of refinement and prosperity. My father, brother and I toured at least half a dozen of them. They are maintained as public parks, but all were originally privately owned. Some were immense walled grounds, the former domains of mandarins and generals. Others occupied little alcoves and courtyards in merchant homes on canals.

  The genius of these gardens was their management of space. They were heavily partitioned and organized in such a way that as one walked through them one’s gaze was controlled so as to always fall on a perfect picture of beauty. This was achieved by a play of contrasts expressed through wood, water and stone: the small was made big; the near, far; the young, old.

  Suzhou also holds for me my first memory of bombast in China. We were in the company of a man who must have been the city’s mayor or the local Communist Party leader. Whatever he was, he made it clear to us that he was the decision maker in Suzhou. He was in his early forties, tall, thin and well dressed in tailored dark blue twill. We met him for lunch at the city’s newest and most luxurious hotel, which he treated as his private domain. The lunch was exquisite, and he asked us if we had yet tasted such refined food in China. As he gestured, I could see flashes of a fancy watch under his suit sleeve. He laid out his plans for the city as we toured a few important sites. Beauty would be restored to the city beyond the gardens, he promised. Careful action, he boasted through a pedantic translator, would enhance the intense real estate development that he was encouraging in the central core.

  He also brought us to the outskirts of the old city and had us look out over a barren and muddy plain pockmarked with shacks and crude utility buildings. Something big was going to be built there. Although it was still an empty canvas, our host was already clearly proud of it and gazed at it with eyes filled with visions. I understand now what he saw: industry. He had visions of Suzhou making stuff for the whole world to consume.

  We also visited a factory not far from Suzhou, nothing too modern: a silk factory inhabiting what looked like a 1950s workers’ commune in a series of brick apartment buildings. The factory building was virtually indistinguishable from the residential buildings around it. The place had been slapped with some kind of official label—The People’s Silk Institute, or some such. We were told that silk’s many uses were being studied there, though the only proof of that was a silk-based hand cream that we were given as a parting gift.

  I will never forget walking into one of the production rooms where the silk filament was unwound from the cocoons. The vast hall was brightly lit with fluorescent lighting. Despite the high ceilings, the room was hot and humid. There was also an unforgettable odour—sour and nutty. The process of extracting the filament involves cooking the cocoon and the worm within. At each of the fifty or so workstations, a uniformed woman sat in front of a metal basin of boiling water. In each vat, a dozen or so thumb-sized white cocoons were dancing in the rolling water. Once poached, the gluey mucus that holds the strands together is softened. The women plucked out the cocoons with bamboo tongs and examined them under powerful light until they located the filament end. With tweezers, they each carefully unrolled the single thread of silk that formed the cocoon until all that was left was the miserable and stinky worm within, boiled and bloated, to be discarded.

  As is so often the case, the manufacturing experience is very different from our experience of the final product. An elegant silk garment leaves no trace of the heat and funk and energy that went into its manufacture. One scarcely remembers the little slug that dreamt of flying. Perhaps these veiled and difficult origins help give silk its tremendous value. There was early incentive to manufacture silk on a large scale: It offers many of the best qualities of wool, linen and cotton. It’s light and supple, yet strong and warm. It is also marvellously pleasing to the touch.

  Silk manufacturing is complex and delicate, combining elements of horticulture, husbandry, cooking and precision work. The old historians of China write that it was discovered alongside writing, agriculture and the domestication of animals by the Xia emperors. Agriculture appeared independently in many places. Earlier than the Chinese, the Sumerians and ancient Egyptians kept careful written records. Civilization, history, and property rights were established the world over. But the early silk industry was uniquely Chinese and remained mysterious to outsiders through long centuries.

  The silkworms feed selectively on the leaves of certain trees, chief among them the white mulberry. Plantations of these trees need to be kept to size by pruning. Then the trees must be attacked by a specific pest, Bombyx mori. The population of these creatures is kept stable while a great percentage of their offspring is harvested in cocoon form. Then, as I witnessed in that smelly factory so long ago, the cocoons are cooked and unwound before being spun into thread that is then woven together. The pruning, the collecting and the processing take much time, much organization, much energy and many able hands.

  Wearing silk was long a sign of status and sophistication. When lords met, the one in silk looked down on the others. For cold, silk; for heat, silk. If one wants to learn to move like the tiger or the snake, it should be done in silk. Beneath one’s layers of felt, leather and metal armour, silk is also preferable. And if one must spend one’s days like kings or high priests, studying and divining, or making love, try silk.

  Much of what we wear and eat has been thoroughly processed. Some processes, such as grinding grain into hot meal, are as old as history. Others are much newer, such as using hydrocarbons to make small explosions in metal pistons, or fashioning silicon microresistors to transport and encode electrical impulses. Manufacture remains a defining feature of the human experience, and it ranges deep in time.

  In the strictest sense, manufacture is handicraft, things made with the hands. In the beginning, it involved simple chains of processes, often conducted by the same person. For the manufacture of bread: growing the seed; cutting, thrashing and drying the wheat in the sun; grinding the grain; and cooking the flour. For silk: growing the white mulberry tree and waiting for the moth to lay its eggs; allowing the larva to emerge from its egg, eat to its satisfaction and spin itself a chamber to begin its metamorphosis; plucking the cocoons from the tree; poaching them; unwinding and drying the filament; and weaving it into cloth.

  One can imagine the spinning of silk to be the work of cooperative communities, as so many have done since and before Marx—free and happy families of farmers who together generate a bounty for all, teenage maidens spinning silk beneath flowery pergolas, knowledge being taught to them in song as they worked.

  More likely, silk followed the model of other elite industries in ancient China. Each was the exclusive prize of great landlords or imperial power. Ceramics and military smithwork, for instance, were tightly controlled industries and cornerstones of wealth and power. Silk might even exemplify the sophistications of such ancient hierarchies. We can imagine it as a kind of currency, available to those who could press others into service. A lord might wall off a compound and plant it with mulberry trees, then levy the village girls to spin silk with which he might cloak his court. He might pay tribute in silk to those more powerful than him, to win their patronage and protection.

  Compared with working the mud or manning the front line in battle, there was value in rising to the ranks of elite industrial labourer. Silk was often a court industry; close and worthy families would provide a lord with the service of their sons and daughters. The junior courtiers would be foremen and officers. The best of them might become family members and might receive the blessings of court, titles and education.

  Courtiers might themselves rise to wield considerable power as generals or masters of coin. As concubines, they might entangle themselves in the master lineage. The classic tales are full of stories of silk-spinning maidens who accede to power th
rough the master’s bed and close control of their own royal offspring.

  Confucian ethics might even be deemed silk-era ethics, aimed at restoring honour to decayed and corrupt courts. This was not done by doing away with servitude but by deepening it among sons and fathers, wives and husbands, and subjects and sovereigns. Servitude, the great sage argued, is noble when it is conducted in a society as it occurs within a healthy family; respect, the only way to harmony.

  Twenty-five hundred years ago, Confucius was already looking back upon an era five hundred years previous to his own and longing for the harmony he imagined there. As if he had concluded that the world was already changing for the worse.

  Perhaps the sage was reacting to a gradual evolution of the workforce toward ever more alienation from the sacred intimacies of feudal obedience and the very tangible and personal bonds of court life. As a population grows, the relationship between foreman and worker, lord and subject, loses its intimate qualities. The bonds grow more abstract and oppressive as they take on the form of taxes and conscript labour.

  The irony of all this is that the erosion of this ancient work ethic that caused Master Kong to wax nostalgic two and a half thousand years ago had only just begun in his age and would grow far more extreme in the many years that followed. All production eventually leaves court and family. Perhaps Master Kong would gaze disparagingly upon the present world, where our relationship with production, whether agricultural or industrial, grows ever more impersonal. We really have no idea who has toiled for our benefit. Our labours are more abstract and without spiritual value. Our loyalties ever more fickle if not altogether absent. The observance of portents is subsiding, the meaning of things muted.

  The new world sits on many older worlds, still filled with ancient servitudes and superstitions. But the trend is toward a depersonalized world of individual solitudes, bound together by a globalized economy of industrial production. Perhaps the decay of the complex and subtle morality praised by Confucius is simply a consequence of increased production capacity. Modern humans are lords of their own small but comfortable domains, where starvation, injustice and servitude are mostly unthinkable.

  The new humans Master Kong might encounter in the new China or elsewhere in the world are nothing like the gentlefolk of the ancient dukedom of Zhou, for which he had so much praise. Lacking perhaps in high moral qualities, modern humans live longer, eat better, own more and are less likely to be embroiled in mortal combat. More importantly, we are legion, unlike the precious few gentlemen and dowagers of old.

  Mass industrialization has put great distance between our societies and the ancient ones. Scarcely two hundred years separate the modern world from the vastly different material, demographic, cultural and spiritual conditions of the preindustrial age. In China, the explosion of industry is even more recent but has occurred at record-breaking speed.

  Of all the myriad products from China that are now invading the world’s homes and workplaces—electronics, appliances, tools, clothing and furniture—there is one supremely important manufactured product that we don’t yet associate with China: the automobile. The personal automobile is arguably the most economically significant industrial product. For the consumer, the car is a transformative tool. And in many ways, automobile possession is the true benchmark of the middle class.

  Cars are significant for the producers as well. Wherever they are put, automobile plants are like small kingdoms. The employment they provide to thousands of people has a huge impact on the stability and health of local economies. They also require large resource inputs, a developed transportation infrastructure and a sophisticated collection of intellectual property. And even in free-market economies, the automobile industry is always deeply entangled with government and political structures.

  In Beijing, I’d asked a family friend long established in China to help connect me with automobile factories in central China. Through his contacts, he’d arranged for me to visit a couple of plants: JAC in Hefei and Chery Automobile in Wuhu. To make it a trifecta, Viv talked us into a corporate tour of the swanky new General Motors factory down the river in Shanghai.

  The JAC automobile and tractor factory is in Hefei, the capital city of Anhui Province. Viv and I take a bus there from Nanjing. As we leave the Yangtze shores and head inland, the countryside and villages become poorer. The whole area looks as if it is subject to soil erosion. In the past, Anhui was notorious for its hardships. Even now, the windswept plains, uneven roads and battered brick and earth structures conjure a return to rougher times.

  The approach to Hefei is long and slow. The landscape becomes progressively more industrial, but these factories and warehouses are either terribly moribund or, more frequently, long deceased. The picture is one of decay, of a world slowly succumbing to the wastes.

  Then more and more tallish residential buildings clutter the highway, which slowly morphs into a boulevard, and a city finally emerges. But it too is battered and dusty. The buildings are of worn red brick. Shops line the boulevard, but there are no bright lights or showy windows. Big metal doors open onto the street and wares spill out: tools, piping, bags of cement mix, rubber gadgets and plastic junk. The city dwellers, in the heavy canvases or crude synthetics of earlier times, seem a hardened lot.

  As we advance, however, the road surface becomes cleaner and smoother. Parks and trees appear. The bricks are replaced by concrete, steel and aluminum. And above us, the skyline increasingly draws the contours of a wide and modern cityscape. Anhui Province may yet be on the move.

  Our contact, a company man, is to meet us outside the bus station. I pray that he’s late or that we are early, so that we can stretch our legs for a moment and have a bite and a sip of tea. But when we descend from the bus, I see him keenly waiting for us beside a company minivan. Mr. Xu, a junior public relations officer, is in his early forties and is of medium build. He wears dark slacks and the company golf shirt. We dutifully exchange business cards. He then vaguely offers help for food and lodging, but Viv politely urges him on.

  “Sir, we are grateful but shall not abuse your precious time and would very much like to visit your company’s factories,” she courteously tells him. Viv knows that if we want to see the manufacturing processes in action, we should go now, not later in the afternoon, when things might be winding down. She also guesses that it might be awkward for our host to drive us to a hotel or a restaurant where he has no budget to help with the bill.

  So Xu invites us to board the minivan. We meet a second man, the driver, who also functions as an assistant. The men offer us bottled water and packaged sweet tea that they have chilled in a cooler.

  In the vehicle, there’s an air of happiness. The men enjoy their job. They are proud of their company. Hosting curious foreigners seems pleasant to them. We engage in light banter and cover the basics of the corporation. I learn that JAC is not a recently established enterprise. The factories have been producing tractors and trucks since the Maoist era. But over the past decade, the company has undergone a transformation. It still makes tractors and trucks but has significantly upgraded its models. It has also shifted part of the labour force to new factories where automobiles are assembled. This new development is a natural step for a company that manufactures service vehicles. JAC makes tools: vehicles meant to do a job—from tractors to big trucks, little trucks, and now minivans.

  We leave the city core and enter a sprawling area of new construction. We ride along a ten-lane boulevard. It’s so new that it still shows patches of sand and gravel, and its margins, not yet landscaped, are coarse and bare. The road is flanked by super-malls and residential high-rise developments. Everything is in the final stages of construction and an early stage of operation. In fact, cranes line the corridor as far as the eye can see.

  After about ten minutes, we veer right onto another broad boulevard. This one is somewhat older and quieter. It’s lined with technology outfits and government offices. To the left, a fence and wall mark the edge of
a huge industrial territory. Beyond the fence is an immense compound, like an airport or some kind of base. Numerous giant buildings can be seen in the distance. We ride along the perimeter for five minutes, then turn left to follow the fence south along a rough, unfinished boulevard. We turn left once more and enter the compound through huge gates. We are surrounded by immense, brightly coloured hangars: the new factory at JAC.

  We are led to a single, nondescript door. As we enter, Xu tells us that it’s forbidden to take photos of the manufacturing process. We then find ourselves in a vast open chamber. Shaped plates of metal are piled high along aisles. Massive presses are being operated by uniformed workers. They carry sheets of metal into the jaws, then move to control stations to close the presses. They wear royal-blue jumpsuits and hard hats, and are mostly men in their twenties, some with long hair. They’re amused to see us watching them. When the piles of pressed aluminum and steel get big, forklifts move them to another chamber.

  We exit this building and drive to another—the minivan assembly line. We commence the journey not on the line itself but on an offshoot somewhere near the beginning of assembly. We enter a gymnasium-sized hall with huge, high windows that catch the afternoon sun; the chamber basks in warm light. It’s also filled with chunky metal parts in neatly arranged piles, all destined for an area at the edge of this chamber where the assembly line passes. The sunlight gives an unusual feel to this room. The workers here are men and women in their early twenties. Their job seems to be to get all of these parts from the piles to the assembly line.

  The shift is about to end. Of the dozen or so young workers in the room, only three or four appear to be doing much of anything. Although they’re sorting and rearranging piles of parts, they’re doing it at half-speed, partaking in the joking and flirting that has got a hold of the rest of the group. They all seem healthy and happy young people. Some of the young men even have their coveralls rakishly unbuttoned from collar to belly.