The driver had a permanent smile on his face, seemingly thrilled at the idea of setting off on a cross-country adventure with two crazy Americans. He hadn’t even asked for time to go home to pack a change of clothes. All he had, aside from what he wore, was a large thermos full of hot water for his tea. His car was some type of Volkswagen that looked like a stretched version of a late 90s Jetta. The back seat was roomy and comfortable, and the driver was clearly skilled—darting between narrow lanes to avoid traffic, taking advantage of every gap. It made Severin happy. He had a huge appreciation for professional driving that went back to his days as a police patrolman.
Before they’d gone far, Severin had the cab driver circle one of the less crowded blocks in the neighborhood, double back, then proceed for several blocks down an empty alley—all while Severin watched out the back window. Satisfied that they weren’t being followed, he told Zhang to give the driver the go-ahead to take them to Yinzhen.
They flew across town, heading north. As they reached the edge of the city and merged onto a modern expressway, Severin found the transition abrupt. One moment, they were zipping along new streets flanked by gleaming, newly-constructed high-rise buildings of steel and glass, the next they were passing between farm fields. There was no gradual change, as one might see in the U.S., from urban to suburban to rural areas. They seemed to go from 40-story condos to soybean fields in a stretch of 20 yards.
The other thing that struck Severin was the obvious difference in standard of living. Shanghai was a rich city by anyone’s measure. It was an economic engine. A center of investment, development, and great wealth. Its breakneck growth, towering new skyscrapers, fancy cars, stores, restaurants, museums, and parks were a testament to this. But as they crossed the first farm fields on the edge of town and approached a farmers’ village, the difference was stark. Houses in the village were extremely humble. Small. Unadorned. Some had no front door—just an empty door frame. Severin couldn’t help wondering whether the farm families who lived there grew at all jealous, bitter, or angry as they looked across the fields to the incredible wealth of Shanghai. He imagined it would be the sort of anger that eventually led to rebellion. To revolution. If the government wasn’t careful here, if it didn’t address the obvious income disparity in a big way, Severin figured history might very well repeat itself—with armies of pissed off farmers rolling into the cities to reset the balance, spilling a lot of blood in the process.
*****
Soon they were out of sight of the city, amidst fields that had probably been tended for thousands of years. Severin was watching the cab driver pour himself a third cup from his thermos while keeping the steering wheel steady with his knee. “Everybody drinks tea here.”
“You’re a gifted detective, Lars. When did you first notice?”
“Hardly anybody seems to drink coffee.”
“Tea is the second most popular drink on Earth, after water. And it originated here. China is the top producer in the world.”
Severin saw that the driver had a box full of loose leaf tea sitting on the front passenger seat. Yet he hadn’t seen the man change out the tea leaves. The same tea leaves sat in his cup which he had now refilled a third time. “I should learn more about tea,” Severin said. “Coffee makes my stomach hurt sometimes.”
“Sure,” Zhang said, sounding uninterested as he gazed out the window.
“Can you ask the driver if that’s a good kind?” he said, gesturing to the fancy box, adorned with an orange and white foil wrapper and a ribbon seal.
Zhang did. “He says it’s a good pu-ehr tea.”
“Pu-ehr?”
“It’s an aged, fermented tea that they make in the Six Great Mountains region of Yunnan Province, along the Mekong River, down by the borders with Myanmar and Laos. He says he will get a cup when we stop to get gas so that you can try some.”
The driver was still talking. “What’s he saying now?”
“He’s complaining that his tea has gotten much more expensive the past few years. He has been drinking this brand since he was a child. He says it used to come in a simple, orange cardboard box. Now it comes in a fancy box decorated with foil, and the price has gone way up. But the tea inside is still just the same.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s reusing the same tea leaves over and over. Sounds like things in China are just like they are in the U.S. Fancier packaging, higher prices, same old mayonnaise.”
*****
Zhang elbowed Severin awake as the car was ascending a long, high bridge. “Behold, Lars. The mighty Yangtze River. One of the cradles of ancient human civilization. Longest river in all of Asia.”
“You’re like an encyclopedia. A walking, talking, annoying encyclopedia.”
“Born in the high Himalayas, flowing all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Home of the Three Gorges Dam—largest hydro-electric power station in the world.”
“Impressive.”
“Nanjing is just up river from here. Or Nanking, as it’s known more notoriously.”
“Isn’t that where that massacre thing went down?”
“That ‘massacre thing’? Yes, Lars. How awe-inspiring, your knowledge of Chinese history.”
“Oh now, Wallace. You can’t fool me. That was a fake compliment.” Zhang sat silent. “What? What’s your problem?”
“It’s a pet peeve of mine.”
“What is?”
“Americans don’t know shit about Chinese history. The country with the largest population and second-largest national economy on Earth. The U.S.‘s second-largest trading partner, after Canada.”
“I just told you Nanking was the massacre place.”
“Is that the extent of your knowledge of it?”
“I—well, I mean, I don’t know the details.”
“Let me ask you something. What’s the most memorable event of your life?”
“Probably the first time I saw a full-frontal, naked—”
“No, jackass. Excluding all of that.”
“9/11, I guess.”
“Of course. And do you know how many people died on 9/11?”
“Three thousand or so.”
“That’s right. And do you know how many were murdered by invading Japanese troops in the Nanking massacres?”
“More than that.”
“More than 300,000. Three hundred thousand, Lars! Most of them civilians, including women and children. The rest were surrendered and unarmed Chinese soldiers. And yet I doubt more than 1 in 50 Americans has a clue about that.”
“You have a point.”
“What do you know about the Boxer Rebellion?”
“Was Muhammad Ali involved?”
“A massive uprising against all those occupation imperialist forces the interpreter mentioned. Even the U.S. About 140,000 Chinese killed in that one, from 1899 to 1901.”
“I’m pulling your leg. I have heard of it.”
“Right. Because the U.S. was involved, it gets three or four sentences in our high school history books. But it was a drop in the bucket compared to the Taiping Rebellion. Don’t know about that one, do you? The Chinese civil war that raged from 1850 to 1864, started by a millenarian Christian who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus. Twenty million people died in that one. No wonder the Communist Party isn’t a big fan of religions, right? Twenty million. That’s almost twice as many as were killed in the Holocaust. Thirty-two times as many as were killed in the American Civil War. And nobody in the U.S. has ever heard of it.”
“Come on, Wallace. We have 700-plus cable channels in the U.S. Between television and internet porn, who has time to learn about Chinese history?”
“That’s in bad taste.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. But you’re ranting.” Severin turned and looked at Zhang. “So tell me about some of the good things.”
“Good things?”
“Not just the genocidal, homicidal massacres. Good things I should know about Chinese history. It’s contributions to civilizati
on, for example.”
“How about the invention of rockets, suspension bridges, gunpowder, magnetic compasses, paper, fireworks, parachutes, noodles? How about the world’s first planetarium? How about the first utilization of natural gas as fuel? In the 10th century, the Song Dynastic capital of Bianjing was arguably the most modern city in the world. For hundreds and hundreds of years, China outpaced the rest of the world in the sciences, in invention, in the arts, in philosophy, in civilization. And now look. China is in the midst of the fastest and largest scale period of economic growth of any country in the history of the planet. How about that for good things?”
“Except for the bigger carbon footprint, yes. Very good. And in all seriousness, I think this is an incredible country.”
“And in all seriousness, you’re a typical arrogant, ethnocentric American to think you have any right to judge China or any another country.”
“Oh, Wallace. Honestly. You need to lighten up.”
They drove on, passing innumerable soybean fields and villages where farm families probably lived much as they had for many centuries. There seemed to be a village every five miles—each consisting of a cluster of old houses and one or two larger brick buildings with tall smokestacks invariably emitting curling columns of yellowish smoke that seemed to hang in the heavy, humid air. Some of the buildings could have been tiny, coal-fired power plants. But most were probably small, low-tech factories, cranking out agricultural byproducts, iron rebar, industrial chemicals, plastic thingamabobs, or something along those lines. Eventually, the crops began to vary. But most of it appeared to be low-lying leafy green vegetables or beans of some sort.
Severin took a long drink of cold green tea from a liter-sized plastic bottle he’d purchased at a small grocery attached to the hotel. Looking for a way to kill time on the long drive ahead, he put on his headphones, stretched his legs out as much as he could in the back seat, leaned back, and played his Sonata Pathétique. As the music played, his mind wandered back to Zhang’s mention of the Nanking massacres. World history was full of similar horrors. But in Severin’s mind, the thing that always stuck out about Nanking in particular was the bizarre contrast, the seeming disconnect, between the culture of the Japanese perpetrators and their horrific actions. It was beyond dispute that Japanese soldiers—and not just a handful of deranged maniacs, but thousands of regular soldiers—had committed unspeakable atrocities against the city’s unarmed men, women, and children. Yet these soldiers had come from a country of exceeding politeness, perfect little bonsai gardens, cute tea ceremonies, beautiful watercolor paintings, and graceful calligraphy. From a culture that encouraged keeping one’s opinions to one’s self in accordance with the traditional honne–tatemae, private mind-public mind divide. How could the bloodthirsty homicidal monsters of Nanking have come from a culture of tea parties and dainty bonsai trees? It made no sense to him. Was it that they were emotionally repressed? Did they so need to vent that when they finally had a chance to do so in Nanking, their expression conflagrated into an orgy of war crimes? Even more perplexing was the fact that it took the Japanese government until 1995 to apologize and accept responsibility for what happened there, and that even in the 21st century, more than 70 years later, a considerable number of the more lunatic nationalist Japanese politicians still refused to acknowledge that it had happened at all. The Far East’s version of Holocaust deniers. Perhaps the world hadn’t grown up after all.
TWENTY-ONE
Several hours later, having passed hundreds of farms, dozens of villages, small factories, and smokestacks, they were at last approaching the town of Yinzhen. Emerging from an area of small coastal mountains and out onto a floodplain, they exited the main highway and drove a two-lane country road between wide, tilled fields, across numerous drainage or irrigation canals. Twice they had to pass slower vehicles: in one instance, a very slow truck overloaded with timber, and in the other, an honest to goodness ox cart.
The road narrowed as they reached Yinzhen proper, and farm fields gave way to blocks of dusty, indistinguishable, single-story houses with reddish terracotta tile roofs, all built of a seemingly ubiquitous cream-colored brick. Severin guessed there was a little brick factory on the edge of town that had supplied building materials to everyone for countless generations. As they continued down the street, Severin kept seeing men in white tank tops standing in open doorways, leaning against the frames, some of them with their elbows propped high and armpits exposed, many of them smoking, all of them watching the vehicles that drove down the road. Traffic increased dramatically, with small motorcycles and scooters overloaded with multiple passengers—many of them holding onto the bike or driver with one hand while holding bulging shopping bags or holding down a hat with the other—zig-zagging between cars, in and out of side streets and alleyways. And though the main road they came in on was paved, a good number of the intersecting streets were dirt.
As they neared the city center, such as it was, they began to see small businesses of all sorts. But overall, there didn’t appear to be much to Yinzhen. In its entirety, it was maybe 500 smallish blocks of houses, small fluorescent-lit shops, light industrial buildings, and warehouses. If it weren’t for the fact that the shops each seemed to have a colorful, modern rectangular sign of the style common to stores in American strip malls, and that people were driving cars instead of riding bicycles, Severin would have thought he’d taken a time machine back several decades. The main street and its flanking buildings probably hadn’t changed appreciably in many years. And judging by the number of enormous potholes, it hadn’t been repaved in the current century.
They pulled up at a gas station, and the driver and Zhang asked the attendant about suitable lodging. Minutes later, they were unloading their bags at a three-star state-run hotel fronted by a compound of concrete slabs in which several elderly people were doing tai chi. The driver assured them the hotel had Wi-Fi. Severin thought the air quality was a lot better out here in the countryside. But there was still something slightly metallic in the way it smelled.
Despite the hotel’s dated appearance, it was very clean and well-appointed. A restaurant adjoined the lobby. Of its 20 tables, only one was occupied—by a lone businessman. Regardless, three servers, dressed in white, stood at different points along the wall, waiting to meet the sole customer’s needs. A buffet of rice, vegetables, and various steamed buns sat in a rack of eight warming trays, and the air smelled of steaming tea. The front desk was staffed by two smartly dressed young women who got them checked in after an improbably long discussion with Zhang and their taxi driver. Severin once again scanned both of their rooms for cameras and bugs—Zhang’s was directly across the hall from Severin’s. Not finding anything, he nevertheless reminded Zhang, via hand-written note, that their detection capabilities were limited, and that not finding anything didn’t necessarily guarantee the rooms were free of surveillance equipment. He told Zhang to meet him in the lobby in an hour, then went to his room to shower and rest.
Entering his room, Severin discovered that the air was uncomfortably warm—probably in the mid-80s. But he was pleased to see that it was clean and bright. And to his absolute delight, he found a dock for attaching his smart-phone to a small stereo system that was housed in a wall-mounted shelf between the two twin beds. He turned down the thermostat, showered, plugged his phone into the dock, and dozed off on top of his extremely firm bed to the soothing and welcome notes of another Beethoven sonata.
*****
An hour later, as Severin was once again setting his door wedge surveillance detection trap, Zhang opened his own door across the hall. His shoes were shined, his clothes looked clean and pressed, and his hair was once again glossy and perfect.
“You’re looking pretty again, Man Pretty,” Severin said. “What’s your secret?”
“I took a shower.”
“Do you use a moisture-balancing, volumizing conditioner with plant-based emollients?” Zhang ignored him. “How’s your room?” Severin as
ked. “Mine is really clean.”
“Do you realize how ethnocentric and basically racist you sound?”
“What?”
“The underlying message is that you’re surprised your room is clean.”
“No, I was … . Well, alright. I see your point.”
They descended to the lobby where Zhang asked the front desk for directions to YSP. He hadn’t yet been able to find a street address for YSP in the multitude of Commerce case file documents that was any more specific than “edge part of Yinzhen.” But the girl had never heard of it. She shouted through the open doorway of an office to ask her coworker, and then, when her coworker didn’t know, called her manager on the phone. No luck.
“How could nobody have heard of it?” Zhang said. “This town is the size of a postage stamp.”
“Screw it,” Severin said. “Let’s drive around. How hard could it be to find a factory? By the way, is your room hot?”
“Temperature wise? No. Why?”
“Mine’s a damned oven. I turned down the thermostat, but I don’t know if it made a difference.”
“You’ll live.”
They had their Shanghai cab driver drive them back and forth around the periphery of the town, up one street, down another, sometimes on unpaved alleys. Not seeing any signs for YSP, nor anything that was obviously a sorghum factory, they began stopping at random shops and gas stations to inquire. Still, nobody had ever heard of YSP nor any of the YSP officers, owners, or managers named in YSP’s response to the Commerce Department’s investigative questionnaires. After two unfruitful hours, at Zhang’s suggestion, they widened the radius of their search, reasoning that a factory that processed an agricultural product would probably be located a bit farther outside of town, near the crops. They drove and drove, covering every country road they could find. But still, they had no luck. Finally, after more than six hours of fruitless searching, having inquired with dozens of locals, and driven every muddy and potholed excuse for a road they could find, they called it a day.
Chasing the Monkey King Page 20