Mr. China Read online

  But Pat remained optimistic. The big picture still made sense to him and he was determined to find a way to invest. He was convinced that we were at the start of the next new investment wave and he wasn’t going to be put off. This was a unique opportunity and Pat, the perpetual optimist, even managed to turn the remote locations into a positive. ‘Just think,’ he said, ‘if we can get the money, we’ll transform these factories. Wages will go up and create demand for a whole range of new products. And we’ll be sitting there with a captive market. There’s thousands of people stuck up there with nothing to do. We can bring in restaurants, shopping malls, gaming halls, the lot. There’ll be a huge demand for entertainment and once the market reaches the right size, we can try for a McDonald’s franchise. If we’ve got twenty factories, that’s a huge market already, maybe fifty thousand people right on the doorstep with nowhere to go. So we can set up transportation companies to take them on trips down the valley, and they’ll need gas stations, repair shops, maybe even banks. The key’s to get exclusive rights before someone else muscles in. We can do that now because they need capital and we can get it. And people are going to want cable TV. We’ll be plugged in to the right officials when the licences come up so that we’ll be the ones to supply it. Kleaver made a fortune on cable TV in the States. And all this will affect the value of property. If we buy up some of the key sites in the factories now, who knows what they’ll be worth when we get the place really humming?’

  But the real difficulty with all of those factories was that we never actually felt we knew what was going on. Were they really making motorcycle parts or were they still involved in the old weapons programme? I thought that getting money to help these factories change from military to civilian products was something that was thoroughly worthwhile, and not just in financial terms. But could we be absolutely certain how the money would be used? My nagging doubts were removed on the third or fourth visit to the gearbox factory. The subject of the old weapons programme had come up again at lunch and the managers had been cheerfully evasive.

  An hour later, we were standing in the small square outside the office block, just about to get on to the bus. Suddenly there was a colossal explosion from behind a row of sheds at the back of the factory. There was no possiblity of having missed it, but the conversation continued uninterrupted as if nothing had happened. But I had seen the briefest lapse in Mr Che’s genial expression. As we drove off on the bus, Ai Jian looked at me and said, ‘You know, even Sunzi’s Art of War says that sometimes the best strategy is just to run away!’

  Failure in the hills, however, did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm. Although none of the individual factories we’d seen up in the mountains were viable for investment, the picture of the industry as a whole was encouraging. A consistent story of growth came out of the many discussions we had with the different factory directors. So we persisted and changed our emphasis towards the larger towns; we found that the factories there were more promising. The first real signs that we were on the right track came when Ai arranged a trip to Changchun in the north-east where China’s largest truck factory had just started a project to make passenger cars.

  First Auto Works had been set up jointly with the Russians in the mid-1950s up in Changchun in the north-east of China. The city grew with the factory and much of the architecture still retains a strong Stalinist influence, particularly the government buildings and the huge solid hotels, with their endless corridors, high ceilings, dusty chandeliers and heavy double doors that open in to enormous, draughty banqueting halls. I had taken a trip up to Changchun when I was at the university in Beijing, but that trip had been in the summer and there had been a gentle breeze in the park at the centre of town. The children splashing about on the boats in the middle of the lake had reminded me of Hyde Park years before. There had been a relaxed feel to the tree-lined streets, almost a holiday mood, with customers at the lively restaurants spilling out on to the pavements. But, when Pat, Ai and I went on that first trip northwards, it was still cold with temperatures twenty below and the familiar icy blast howling in from Mongolia.

  A couple of officials met us at the airport. They had been sent by the Changchun Government to escort us around the factories and they went through the itinerary as we drove into town.

  The first visit was to First Auto Works, which sits in a suburb some way out from the centre. Just like the factories in the hills, it was vast and spread over several square miles with dormitories, hospitals, kindergartens, even cinemas hiding behind the high walls that encircled the compound. The massive gates, with the guards standing to attention on little white platforms and the familiar vertical signs strung up on either side led onto a broad avenue. Inside the gates, we found a perfect image of the decaying rust-belt factory. On either side of the broad street there were rows of shattered warehouses, along with the familiar sight of smashed windows, heaps of coal, workers in oily blue overalls wandering about on bicycles, and pipework with torn lagging strung up over the roads. The skyline ahead was dominated by a huge square boiler house, with blackened brickwork. On top, four vast chimneys, covered with fins and wrought-iron ornamentation, periodically disgorged vast clouds of black smoke out of iron chimney pots that looked like fantastic spiky crowns at the top.

  At that time, the factory only had two products. They had both been designed in Russia in the 1930s and had been transferred into China before Mao had had his fight with Khrushchev. The first was an ancient truck with a bulbous nose, a split windscreen and great round wheel arches. It had been introduced into China shortly after the founding of the People’s Republic, so it was called the ‘Liberation Truck’. The other was a vast upright limo called the ‘Red Flag’, which was used to ferry around government officials who sat on lumpy back seats, hidden from public view by thick brown curtains draped in the windows at the back. The trucks were always dark green; the limos were always black.

  When we visited the assembly lines in the brick factory buildings we started to have a sense that we might be homing in on something big. In contrast to the factories up in the hills, with their scores of idle workers and offices crammed with people slurping tea out of big jam-jars behind well-thumbed copies of the People’s Daily, here all was activity. Workers in blue overalls climbed all over the half-finished trucks as they moved along the production line. Engines and gearboxes came down on chains through the ceilings and were bolted onto the chassis. Arc welders flashed as the cabs were attached to the front. At the end of the line, several hundred yards ahead, young girls with blue caps and pigtails drove the fully assembled trucks out of the factory for testing.

  But even this was nothing in comparison to the new car plant being built down the road together with the Germans. It was colossal; about a mile long. Although it was only half-built at the time, it was already impressive. The assembly lines were being set up; there were automatic welding machines and electronic sensors everywhere and, at the side, workers tore open huge wooden crates with more equipment shipped in from Germany. They were obviously gearing up to make thousands and thousands of passenger cars; the investment must have been enormous.

  That afternoon, we saw several components factories in the town. They made simple parts – electrical connectors, switches and the like – but the one that caught my interest was a factory that made ignition coils. It was run by a Madame Tan who was only in her late-thirties. She seemed knowledgeable about her business and she had just won the contract to supply ignition coils to the huge factory that we had seen in the morning. With demand about to go through the roof, she was looking for some money for expansion. As we left through the factory gates, I told her that I’d come back for another look.

  On the way back, the officials told us that we had been invited to dinner at six by the Mayor of Changchun. That was a good sign: Mayor Huang was the top official in the Municipal Government. With support from him, I felt sure that we’d soon be in business.

  We met the Mayor in the hotel that evening. Pat ga
ve a brief description of the day’s visits, sitting rather stiffly on the familiar old sofas in a drafty meeting room, and told Mayor Huang that he’d been impressed with the factories that we’d seen. The Mayor was pleased; he was one of the younger generation of leaders promoted after Deng’s Southern Tour. He seemed smart and came back with quick comments, speaking with animation about how he hoped to bring foreign investment into Changchun. He had only been in Changchun for six months or so, and the transfer from Yangzhou, at the mouth of the Yangtse in the gentler climate near Shanghai, must have been a shock. Nevertheless, the Mayor seemed to have found his feet quickly. He appeared to be firmly in charge and determined to improve the city.

  Mayor Huang was totally different from the plodding cadres we had been more used to in Beijing, and he had long abandoned the traditional Mao jacket for a snappy Western suit and tie. I liked him. He was alert, interested and supportive of what we were trying to do. He was in his early forties: a shortish man with neat features, thick hair, sparkling eyes and teeth whose whiteness was accentuated by the clean, slightly tanned look of the southern Chinese. As he listened intently to Pat’s explanation of the recent excitement about China in the financial markets, I sensed that he was wondering how he could get his hands on his share of the spoils.

  Soon it was time for dinner, so we trooped out of the meeting room, through cavernous hallways with thick dusty carpets and followed the Mayor into a private room. There was a huge circular dinner table with a glass turntable in the middle placed at the centre of the room under an enormous chandelier.

  ‘Qing zuo; said the Mayor, ‘Please sit,’ as he gestured towards his right.

  I looked at the expanse of white tablecloth in front of me, the perfectly aligned plates and the flowers and elaborately carved vegetables on the circular glass stand in the centre. I leaned back in my chair and breathed in slowly. ‘This’, I thought resignedly, ‘promises to be an epic’

  The food eaten in ordinary homes, factory canteens and local restaurants in China is tasty, diverse and healthy. Within reason, you can stuff as much down as you like without getting fat. It bears no resemblance at all to some of the glutinous, oily Chinese food served up in restaurants in Britain. But banquet food is quite another matter. The whole purpose is to impress. Chefs compete to create the most elaborate and obscure dishes. Excess, both in the amount and the nature of the food, is meant to flatter the guests. I thought back to the factories in the hills and hankered after some simple, spicy Sichuan dishes, but unfortunately my first guess had been right: the dinner we had that evening with the Mayor of Changchun was an absolute classic.

  It started off, as it always does, with a fight about the seating arrangements. At these events there is a strict hierarchical order to the places at the table and there is always a prolonged argument amongst the middle-ranking Chinese officials about where they should sit, with plenty of jostling and pushing, each person protesting loudly that the others should take the more senior places. Once everyone had settled, during the small talk little glass cups appeared beside each guest’s place and were silently filled with baijiu by waitresses who moved noiselessly through a concealed door in the panelling.

  Baijiu looks like gin but it tastes much stronger. It is distilled from grain and sorghum and there are many famous brands of the drink in China. Wuliang ye or ‘five-grain liquid’ comes from Yibin in Sichuan, and maotai, the most famous in China, comes from Guizhou, further south. At the lower end of the market, there is er guo tou or ‘the top of the second wok’, which is distilled in Beijing. A really good bottle of maotai can cost the equivalent of several months’ salary. Baijiu is always taken neat but, thankfully, in small doses. The idea is to knock it back in one go with a cry of ‘Gan bei’, ‘Dry the cup!’ The problem is that drinking baijiu at a Chinese banquet is compulsory; it is slightly viscous, has a smell like exhaust fumes mixed with a trace of chocolate and seems both fiery and sickly at the same time. It burns the inside of your mouth and throat and leaves you with a sensation rather than a taste. There is an immediate feeling of heat and tingling that creeps up the back of the neck and radiates out all over the scalp. I already knew that these formal banquets entailed elaborate drinking rituals designed to get the guests hopelessly drunk, so I braced myself for the deluge.

  Baijiu loosens tongues almost immediately although I’ve never met anybody, even at the heights of alcoholic derangement, prepared to admit that they actually liked the taste. After drinking it, most people screw up their faces in an involuntary expression of pain and some even yell out. But there were plenty of people who liked the sensation and the atmosphere that a couple of bottles of baijiu produced at a dinner. It created the best parties and the worst hangovers imaginable and the smell seemed to seep out through my pores the following day. A German friend once summed up the experience perfectly. She said, in her perfect Hochdeutsch, that when her husband had been out drinking with his Chinese colleagues and had hit the baijiu, it was as if she had ‘woken up the following morning next to an oily rag that had been soaked in diesel’.

  The Mayor was obviously pleased that we had had a good day. He was anxious for foreign investment in Changchun. Although I knew that bringing substantial foreign investment to Changchun would be good for his career, I still felt that he was genuine in his desire to see the city develop and improve the lives of the people there. So the baijiu flowed freely and the atmosphere relaxed. Nevertheless, as the waitresses started bringing in the plates, I eyed the food with deep suspicion.

  The starters were served cold. First, there was a dish of duck webs in a thick yellow sauce. It turned out to be the strongest mustard that I had ever tasted. It sent a searing pain up the back of my nose and brought tears to my eyes. Next came ‘husband and wife’ lung slices. Mayor Huang roared with laughter as it was translated and poured some more baijiu. He told us that it was a Sichuan speciality: cow’s lung soaked in chilli sauce. The lungs were followed by goose stomachs, a couple of dishes of pickled vegetables, a plate of steamed lotus root and a chicken that looked as if it had been attacked by a madman with a machete: its bones stuck out at all angles. Then onwards to the hot dishes.

  It seemed as if the cooks had entered a contest to serve up the strangest parts of animals in the weirdest combinations. The pile of stacked plates grew on the table in front of us: fish lips with celery, monkey-head mushrooms, goats’ feet tendons in wheat noodles, ox’s forehead, roasted razor-blade fish and finally a tortoise in a casserole. There was one dish that looked like a bowl of ribbon pasta served up plain and without the sauce, but it was crunchy and almost tasteless. It couldn’t be pasta, so I asked what it was. ‘A Shandong speciality,’ said the Mayor. ‘Steamed rabbits’ ears.’

  Halfway through the main dishes, the conversation, by then well-oiled with baijiu, was flowing freely. Mayor Huang was telling us about Changchun’s ambitions to be China’s Hollywood. There were several large film studios in the town and he wanted to set up an international film festival. The Mayor said that obviously they’d never be able to compete with Hollywood.

  ‘Your America is so much more developed than our China,’ he said. But Pat replied that, from everything he had seen, it looked like China was catching up fast.

  ‘You see, China’s exactly like the States was in the late 1800s,’ said Pat.

  This remark was greeted with a faint smile from the Mayor and a polite gesture with his chopsticks towards a plate of duck’s tongues.

  Pat went on. ‘Yeah, thanks. Y’see, China’s standing right on the verge of a huge expansion, just like the States in the late 1800s. Everything changed in the thirty years from about 1870 to 1900. The same’s gonna happen here,’ he enthused, ‘but this time it’ll be bigger ‘n’ quicker.’

  Once this had been translated, it was obvious that the Mayor was warming up. Pat now had his full attention. How could any Chinese official fail to be flattered and excited by this comparison with the world’s greatest economic superpower? The idea waxed in h
is mind. It was clearly time for another toast.

  ‘Y’see, it’s like this,’ Pat went on. ‘America and China are the only two countries in the world that are big enough to support big companies with just their own domestic market.’ Another gan bei. ‘That gives you economies of scale in your own market. No one else can match that. China’s the last market on earth that has that potential. A billion-plus people out there working their asses off for a better life. Just like the States a hundred years ago!’ With the slightest pause to gauge the reaction, Pat raised his glass and ended with a flourish, ‘So, you see, we’re really just the same!’

  Another round of toasts, howls of laughter and invitations to have more tortoise. By this time, the table seemed to be creaking under the weight of stacked-up plates and the waitress arrived with another clay pot.

  ‘Eels,’ said the Mayor.

  ‘Great!’ we all replied.

  ‘In the States, y’see, it all started with the railroads. But you know what, in China, it’s gonna be auto!’ he said, fixing the Mayor with a jubilant stare. ‘Trucks, buses, cars, limos, tractors, the lot, millions of ‘em – and that, Mr Mayor,’ he said, ‘is why we are here today.’

  I could see, through rapidly thickening clouds of cigarette smoke, that Mayor Huang was starting to enjoy himself. But I was struggling. I had been taken on by two of the officials from the Investment Bureau who were alternately toasting me at every opportunity. I was beginning to feel that familiar queasiness rising up in my stomach, but I was forced into trying another Chinese cigarette whilst Pat worked his magic with the Mayor. Protestations that I didn’t smoke were brushed aside as entirely irrelevant and another box of Red Pagoda Mountain, China’s best, arrived on the table.