Portrait of an LBX

**This is by far the longest post I’ve written, and considering that everybody complains about my long posts, I don’t expect anybody to read it. Basically we left Mt. Tai, toured a baijiu factory, spent 2 days at a state owned coal mine getting hammered all the time, and have now arrived in Qufu, birthplace of Confucius, from which place we hope to spring to Henan tomorrow at long last. If you are up for a long read, however, I think there’s some quality stuff below. More pictures coming as soon as we can get to it.**

Having spent a decent rest day in Tai’an under the shadow of Mt. Tai, China’s most sacred mountain, and having consumed the majority of our meals in the old Hui (Chinese Muslim) quarter as usual, we struck out south with two destinations: a Chinese sorghum liquor company and 40 km further down the road the family of my friend and our lodging for the night. Leaving from the old mosque after lunch and watching some really disgusting lamb entrail washing, we arrived at the Taishan Shengliyuan sorghum liquor (baijiu) company just south of town. We asked a group of about 30 unemployed men waiting on the side of the street for work how to get there, and they responded, “just down there” with the smell of baijiu on their breaths that we immediately smelled also emanating from within the baijiu compound. After a little while of talking to people in the sales department, I finally got to a manager who agreed to let us tour the production facility down the street.

Mr. Bian, the nervous international sales manager, arranged a car to take us down the street to see where the magic happens. Once we arrived at the facility, we were introduced to Shift Manager Wu, who guided the actual tour. I like shift manager Wu immediately. His twitchy sales counterpart had worked at the company for 17 years but didn’t know anything about the product. Wu, a young Shandong native who had graduated with a degree in fermentation (probably translates better as alcohol production), on the other hand was completely open with us and talked in a no-BS kind of way. Once I told him that I make beer, and displayed knowledge of the process, he excitedly showed us around the production facility. Now when I say this place was huge, I want you to imagine a warehouse that could probably hold ten goodyear blimps. Once we walked in, the smell of alcohol and sorghum was prescient in the air. Since I love the smell of boiled grain and alcohol production, it was an angelic smell for me. Andy was slightly nauseated. In the center, where we walked in, was an endless row of vats full of sorghum being steamed, some with a cap collecting the steam and some without. On the sides were stacks and stacks of sorghum bags, apparently all purchased from Hebei (who knew they made anything of value?). Workers were bustling between the vats with big metal containers that two men needed to carry full of alcohol that had just been distilled. The two side wings of the facility seemed about half a mile long each, and with thousands of concrete pits in the ground, or “fermentation pools” (发酵池). Some were empty, but most were covered over with mud. Yes, mud. I was about to go crazy trying to figure out why in the hell they would steam whole grain sorghum to get alcohol and why the mud covered pits were full of grain, not sugar water. You see, when we Occidentals make booze, we usually run the sugar water out of the grain first and then ferment it. Not so here, shift manager Wu finally enlightened me. Producers of baijiu first steam the grain to break down its sugars, throw the grain in the pits, sprinkle some yeast on it, and cover it with mud (which doesn’t allow outside air in but allows CO2 to escape – genius). After 40 days, they crack open the mud and steam the alcohol-full whole grain again, this time collecting the distillate, which is 60+% pure sorghum alcohol. We asked if we could try some of the fresh stuff, and with a bright glow in his eyes, shift manager Wu agreed to take us into the baijiu cellar under the facility. Once the door was opened, the smell of baijiu was overpowering. We walked in and saw the vast underground steel containers that at any given time can hold up to 150 tons of baijiu. After explaining that the baijiu is aged for 60 days to take off the edge before being sorted for quality and bottled, he grabbed a beaker and dipped it into one of the vats for us to taste. The stuff burned alright, but I have to say it was the best baijiu experience I’ve ever had. It was very strong, but the taste of sorghum was crisp and clear, especially apparent to me having just smelled tons of it being steamed outside. Afterward we thanked everybody, bought a bottle as a present for our hosts that night, and parted.

The trip to the baijiu factory was one of my personal highlights of the trip, and not just because I got to drink some of the fresh stuff. There were absolutely no party signs anywhere around the place, just your standard safety reminders. Shift manager Wu and I got along talking about making alcohol like two old generals discussing war tactics. The more he explained, the more I wanted to know, and there wasn’t a hint of BS in anything he said. Moreover, it was clear this guy was excited about what he does and about making a damn good product. He told me about the history of Taishan baijiu and how the art of making it has gone relatively unchanged for hundreds of years, even how they continued producing throughout the cultural revolution (because when the times are good and when the times are bad, you’re always going to need booze). Despite not being as famous as several other baijiu brands, like Maotai or Wuliangye, Shandong baijiu, he told us, is distinctive in its own way, and he hopes in years to come people will appreciate it as much as the big guys. He even explained that they had tried adding rice into the grist to cut expenses, but the quality team decided that the taste wasn’t right at all and canned the idea (mind you, almost every commercially available beer giant in the world uses about 30 % rice in their grist to keep prices down – and that’s why they’re all so terrible). In a country full of BS propaganda and ass-kissers who don’t care about quality, meeting somebody who takes his craft seriously was a breath of fresh air. I hope we meet more people like shift manager Wu.

Heading south again slightly buzzed, after getting lost next to a bizarre plastic palm tree lined beach on a deserted reservoir, we found our road through the farms again and pushed on. On the road, a giant statue of Mao attracted our attention, and we were compelled to stop to figure out what was going on. Immediately we realized that the propaganda department of the village was absolutely on crack – there were walls and walls crackerjack full top to bottom of planned birth policies and slogans, including a very vivid and terrifying Q/A series describing why it’s good to stop having children and what the government, the ultimate source of wisdom and justice, will do to you if you F up. We headed over the the statue of Mao, which was in a large fenced-in facility being guarded by two old men smoking cigs. Very excited to see foreigners, they jumped at the opportunity to explain that this had formerly been a school, but recently has become a retiree activities center. Naturally assuming that the  30 ft. tall Mao statue was a relic of yore, I commented that they kept it looking very new, and how long had it been around? “Oh we put it up about 2 months ago.” I really wanted to meet the propaganda man in this place and shake his hand for a job well done. (pictures coming soon hopefully)

Finally after a mad dash through some big empty plowed over fields (as fast as corn madness descended upon us, it has left us, and new crops now await their turn in the annual rotation), we arrived in Huafeng after dark to meet the family of my friend, our hosts for the night. For background, I met my friend a long time ago in Beijing and became friends with him in the US, where he’s getting a phd in one of America’s most prestigious universities. I had known that his father was a big deal of sorts, but I never had a hint in what capacity until I received the address to the family’s house, which included the word “coal mine.” After finding us in town with an old Chinese van and driver, Mr. Huang, my friend’s father, led us to the family apartment, where we stored our bikes and such in the garage. After formal introductions, a brief tour of the immaculately clean apartment, and a promise that we’d drink some “good booze,” we all jumped in the van toward dinner. On the way, we picked up the entire Huang family, about 10 people in all squeezed into the tiny van, including granny. We pulled into a huge company’s grounds, and were surprised to find that one of the giant gray buildings contained a fancy restaurant. Once in the luxurious and massive private room that Chinese bigwigs are so fond of entertaining in, I asked Mr. Huang’s younger brother if in the Shandong fashion we’d have to sit according to our societal rank around the table (I had had been to Shandong several times before for work and knew the drill). “Oh no, we don’t care about that anymore.” Mr. Huang came in from ordering food about 30 seconds later and promptly lined us up around him according to our age. He was the first host, and his brother the second. Our ranks went Alexis, Andy, and me, according to age. This is how we were to sit for the rest of our stay in Huafeng. It was also the beginning of our royal treatment, which the Chinese describe as 上宾之礼 (the rites accorded to most esteemed guests), as we were treated to a royal feast with enough food for about 40 people and two bottles of high proof Maotai, the Dom Perignon of baijiu. Having originally expected to leave the following day, we were entreated to stay until at least lunch the following day so we could meet Mr. Huang’s superior, the Party Secretary, who had been invited that night but couldn’t come.

Once we were good and soused, Mr. Huang dropped his wife and family off at their houses and took us with the driver to “take a shower.” To this end, we drove down the street and passed through a giant rainbow arch and into a courtyard with some huge neon signs that read, “Huafeng Coal Mine; unswervingly and wholeheartedly fight to improve.” We were led into the shower facility, given towels, and told to strip. Oh boy, here we go. We took off our nasty bike shorts, which we had still been wearing, and walked with the naked Chinese men into a nice little shower room to watch each other soap up and then sit in the hot tub. 30 minutes later, leaving the shower room, we passed a huge changing facility full to the breem with coal miners’ suits and boots. As we left, a shift of about a hundred Chinese men walking in file passed us walking into the shower facility, which we were then informed was on top of the entrance to the mine, convenient for sooty faced miners. Finally we were deposited at the coal mine hotel, where we drunkenly passed out, grimly aware that we would likely not be biking to Henan the following day.

Around 10 the next morning we were awakened in the hotel, a little hungover, by one Mr. Liu. In his 40’s and wearing the same outfit all the management in the whole place wore – black pants, black shoes, and a white, slightly oversized collared shirt – he was thin haired, a little pudgy, and extremely twitchy in the eyes. It was immediately apparent that he took great precaution to always say the right thing. He led us to the dining facility, where he surveyed our enormously excessive breakfast. “So you’re friends of VP Huang’s son, are you?” Yes, we are, but VP Huang, you say? “Yes, he’s one of the most important people at the mine.” Who knew? During the breakfast Mr. Liu drilled us with questions about the US, and said his son wanted to go there to get away from China’s education system. “China is different from the US, you know?” We had premonitions. Amid the flurry of questions we asked him about the mine, I mentioned his “party cadre” name tag, which he said was de rigeur for his position (more on this in a bit). Breakfast over, we were escorted to the main office building – somewhat ornate on the outside but dingy, bare wall concrete, gray, and soul chilling the way only CCP architects are capable of producing – and taken up the stairs to the third floor into a room marked “organization” and sat down among stacks and stacks of documents, most of which stamped with Communist Party insignia. So what happens in the old organization department? “Oh, well, you know China is different from the US, right? Here we have one party and are mostly concerned with harmony. The US is concerned with harmony too, right?” I suppose most Americans are, but it’s not a national policy, I said biting my tongue to keep from laughing to myself about Obama’s peace prize. He continued, “I’m in charge of distributing information to party members at the mine and organizing educational events to increase the moral fiber (素质) of our workers. Most of these workers are just laobaixing, with a very low moral fiber, so we are responsible for reinforcing values.” Otherwise, Mr. Liu mostly talked to us in slogans and party lines he had clearly become used to repeating. “The pollution here is bad, but now that our country is concerned with the environment, we’re making efforts to improve.” “China is poor, not strong like your USA or France. We need to work harder,” etc. At one point unexpectedly and completely unprompted he recited to us in heavily Chinese accented English, “Karl Marx was born in Germany. He was forced to leave his homeland at a young age due to political reasons.” Where am I, I started to wonder. Needing to drop a deuce, I excused myself to the bathroom, which was right across the hall from the “propaganda” department and – frustrating in the way only communist buildings can be – contained only urinals. Then Mr. Liu brought in Teacher Wang, about 50, formerly a physics teacher and possessor of some of the yellowest teeth I’ve ever seen to shoot the shit with us. Through thick Shandong accent he told us, “just a month or so ago, we had a party education seminar discussing lust. We were told that it’s natural to be moved by beautiful women, but it’s absolutely improper to act on those impulses.” I began to imagine a room full of middle aged men – all fathers themselves – being lectured to about the dangers of sexual desire – and how that might go over in the US. Teacher Wang had a reason to be loyal to the party, though, as he had been allowed in ‘78, the year the college entrance exam system (gaokao) was reinstated, to attend university in Shanghai to study physics. Throughout the time in the office, Mr. Liu received several calls from his leaders, during which his mannerisms couldn’t have been more subservient than if he was saying, “yassah massah, ain’t no problem if massah wants it done, sorry for botherin massah.” On the flip side, he ordered his young assistant around as if he had just bought him off the boat, finally ordering him to take us on a tour of the mine.

Little Li, the assistant, was 23 and well travelled. He had been loving life working in a Suzhou (southern city close to Shanghai) hotel, but he had returned due to his Shandongese filial requirements to his parents. “In Shandong we’re very attuned to Confucian values, since this is where Confucius was born.” I guess that made sense, since only in Shandong are they so ritually observant in my experience. Having only been at the coal mine for a month, Li knew nothing about anything but walked next to us for propriety’s sake. Are you in the party yourself? “No, but we’re processing that right now. It’ll make things easier in the organization department.” How long do you think you’ll stay here? “Who knows. Maybe a while, or maybe I’ll go crazy and run back south to work in a hotel.”

At this point I should mention a thing or two about this place. You’ve never seen more insane propaganda in a workplace before, not anywhere. This place proved the axiom fact is stranger than fiction. Right in the middle of the plaza was a huge phallic tower imprinted with “Love the country. Love the corporation. Love the family.” A huge statue of Mao was surrounded by some of the funnier slogans we’ve seen yet. Everywhere you could feel big brother screaming at you from the walls. (We have tons of pictures of these slogans which will hopefully get posted soon). The people walking around seemed very subdued. There were everywhere we looked women lazily sweeping piles of 10 or so leaves around in circles. Later in the day one such young leaf-sweeper woman would speak to me in startlingly good English, telling me how much she liked her job cleaning the area and that English is her hobby – bizarre stuff. Behind the main building there was a pile taller than Magic Mountain of waste rock brought up from the mine. Every so often a railcar would emerge from the earth and roll up tracks to the top of the mountain to unload some more waste rock before descending again into the depths. Through those rainbow gates, we had clearly entered the twilight zone.

Little Li then led us out the gates into the dusty, dank city, telling us, “the air here is no good. Coal mines make a lot of pollution.” You don’t say. About 1500 feet away from the gates, the Magic Mountain sized pile of waste rock had disappeared behind haze. Outside of the coal mine area was a long strip of Hui (Chinese muslim) restaurants with Arabic signs everywhere. They really get around. Since Alexis has recently taken to directly referring to himself as a Chinese Muslim, thus skipping the long necessary explanation of why Jews don’t eat pork, our hosts treated us to a Hui lunch. Immediately after the arrival of VP Huang and our seating at the table according to rank came the 2 bottles of baijiu and 2 cases of beer. “We can’t drink much now since it’s lunch, and you all still have to drink at dinner with the Party Secretary.” Oh my. Our hangovers had only barely passed. In addition to everyone we knew from the organization department, we were joined by station manager Wang, in charge of the Huafeng coal mine tv station. Now if I could only describe one person from the mine to you, it would be station manager Wang. He was middle aged, badly balding with a truly despicable combover, glasses-donning, and with poor skin to boot – just an image of poor health. Throughout lunch he incessantly and unabashedly sucked up to VP Huang. “You’ve been such a great leader for so many years, you certainly deserve a good retirement in the US.” Mr. Liu was funny with the slogans, but station manager Wang could barely open his mouth without going into propaganda mode. “This is a hundred year history mine” he repeated over and over in a voice I don’t usually hear outside of television ads for baijiu or phony Chinese medicine. At one point during lunch when we were discussing linguistic differences around the country, Mr. Liu said, “it’s so different in Tibet and Xinjiang that when we go there, it’s just like going to another country!” Bingo! VP Huang, our host, was the only Chinese in the room who exhibited intelligence on his own. He was also sincerely gracious to us and wanted to show us a good time. Subsequently it was suggested that station manager Wang take us around the mine with a camera for the local tv. Sounded good enough to us – maybe we could learn a thing or two.

Without giving us enough time to recover from the first or second rounds of baijiu, station manager Wang showed up with his cameraman Little Cun fifteen minutes early. We were whisked off first to the shower facility to see the mine entrance. On the way we were informed by station manager Wang that the mine was 1200 meters deep and pretty much just a giant open room underground. At any given time about 4 to 5000 people could be down there at all times of the day and night. We started wondering how stable the earth below us really was. First he took us with the camera into the po’ man’s shower facility, where if we hadn’t gotten our fill of naked Chinese men the day before, we would have nothing to complain about now. There were just hundreds of naked miners milling around or changing, probably wondering what 3 foreigners and a film crew were doing in their shower. Then we went to the entrance itself. I guess the propaganda department’s theory was “if we didn’t get them with the hundreds of signs outside, we’d better make sure to blast them one last time with intense patriotism on the way in and out of the mine.” All the same, it was very tidy and businesslike, clean faced men scuffling toward the door, picking up safety equipment and lights at various windows staffed by young girls, and dirty faced men doing the process in reverse. The shaft was traversed on a giant, terribly loud slanted people-conveyor belt, where the people going down sat on the bottom belt, and the up-comers on the top.

The rest of the tour was technical and too boring for mention here, but we got the idea that the coal was being sent mostly to Shanghai for steel production. “Coal is one of the basic elements of our nation’s development,” Little Cun told us, referring directly to steel and electricity. He does have a point, given how crazily reliant on coal China is. Also apparently the mountain of waste rock had previously been 2.5 times its current size but had been slowly built into bricks since, “the country now cares about the environment.” I tried to imagine how he would excuse it if the country didn’t care about the environment. Afterward we were shown to the living area, which was composed of dull yellow, monostyled 6 floor elevator-less apartment buildings that more closely resembled a correction facility than a living community – by US standards, of course. Every 5 meters or so were signs about planned birth. Then we were taken to “Harmony Square”, a recently built little section of concrete with some sloganed statues randomly dispersed. Apparently there had been a mass marriage of 22 couples on the day of the National Holiday. All the couples were employees of the coal mine, and they had picked the auspicious date of the nation’s founding to be married to show unity and save on resources – not to mention that the leaders were in attendance and gave gifts to the newlyweds. I could think of nothing more romantic. Behind was the retiree quarter, actually very pleasant and full of trees, where old Chinese people with not much to do hung around a pond and played cards or looked at the odd statues.

Little Cun, the cameraman, was himself a piece of work. Only 12 days older than myself, he had been working for the Shandong Mine Corporation for 6 years and was already married. Extremely enthusiastic and never without a slogan to recite to us, he had found his slice of heaven right there in Huafeng, where he had been reallocated from his hometown a year earlier. “What do you Americans think of the Japanese?” he asked out of nowhere. Oh, not too much, I suppose. “We hate them. They’re the people we hate the most. Americans fought them too, you should hate them as much as we do.” Uh, I guess we got over that a while ago. “You can never forget the past!” I wanted to ask him if he still harbored a grudge against the Mongols or Manchus, but there was no getting through. “Later, when you’re talking to Party Secretary Yu, you really need to pay attention to what you say.” Or else what, I wondered.

We were then led to the tv station hq, in a room on the 5th floor of a building above the birth control distribution center. It was technically slightly more sophisticated than my college radio station. The girls in the studio were ordered to surrender their seats to us so we could watch a movie about the hundred year history mine. There was no way of knowing it, but we were in for a treat. It started with a scene of girls dancing in front of the mine and a song that went, “a hundred years of dreams, a hundred years of love, extracting brightness and glory, Huafeng coal mine!” It then went on for thirty minutes of interviews of various leaders spewing great things about the illustrious and fabled mine and how wonderful it was for the community and the development goals of the central government. It was so whoopingly unrestrained ridiculously over the top I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing, and the whole time we sat watching the movie, we ourselves were being filmed! After the movie, station manager Wang told us how hard it had been to make the piece, how they had collaborated with film crews in Beijing and spent countless hours on it (it was clear that they had spent a lot of time and money to produce it), but that it had very much pleased Party Secretary Yu. He then told us, “the Party Secretary is not like other people. When you talk to him, you’ll understand how smart he is. By the way, when you’re talking to him tonight, please mention the video and say how much you liked it.” I was getting the impression more and more that we were going to meet the wizard.

Finally after another quick rest we were summoned to meet his excellency at the mine restaurant. Formalities out of the way, Alexis having already praised the hundred year history mine video, and seated according to rank with the Party Secretary at the head and VP Huang at second host position, we began our final feast and baijiu imbibement at the mine. The Party Secretary, a middle aged man also balding and in the same black/white garb as everybody else, was a man accustomed to holding the floor. He weaved together intricate, stylistically patterned discourse as though he were lecturing in the great hall of the people, while the 3 underlings he had summoned to dinner with us kept their mouths shut. Actually, station manager Wang had been right; the secretary clearly had something going on upstairs. After regaling us with local history and stories about his own life and the mine, he told us about his travels in Paris and Washington. “I saw the Arc de Triomphe, and it was very nice, but it wasn’t as magnificent as our Tian’anmen square,” he said with a mighty air. Later, “I saw your White House and Capitol Hill, and they too were very impressive, but again nothing like our Tian’anmen square in Beijing.” I thought to myself, we can appreciate your cute little great wall, but nothing tells the power of mass labor mobilization like the US freeway system. Then he started lauding us for being adventuresome and taking initiative to do something like our trip on our own. “I wish my son were like you, free-thinking and independent,” he said as his underlings nodded their heads in unison. “I am going to call him and say, ‘going out on your own and exploring your country like these foreigners – are you up to the task?‘” Um, are you really telling me that you, the Party Secretary and controller of all wisdom at the mine, are encouraging free and independent thought, I wanted to ask. Eventually from curiosity I ventured, so what does the Party Secretary do, and how is he different from the Mine Superintendent? “Well, first you must understand that our China is different from your America.” Yeah, we’re getting that idea. “The superintendent is in charge of day-to-day operations and technical issues. I’m in charge of managing the corporate culture and direction. I guess in America you wouldn’t have a position like this, but it’s very important in China.” No, we still haven’t gotten around to establishing a completely separate department full of extremely politically sensitive middle aged men who task themselves with imposing contradictory values handed down from above on every aspect of life and work in every major company in our country. All that rigmarole aside, he was actually very charming and pleasant to talk to – extremely knowledgeable on a variety of subjects. I guess that’s how he got so far. Anyway, they eventually fulfilled their duties as good hosts got us hammered as all hell. I, of course, couldn’t resist telling them I could sing a song about coal miners, and tried to sing it, but being so drunk I forgot all the words. Andy and I sang the US national anthem instead, followed by Alexis and me doing La Marseillaise, followed of course, by all 3 of us doing the Chinese anthem. At the end Alexis was cutting off the Party Secretary, at which point the dinner finally concluded.

All 3 of us lit like roman candles, we were led back to the hotel, where surprise of surprises Little Cun had been waiting with a camera. Station manager Wang had summoned him from the living quarters section during dinner and asked me to sing the coal mining song for the camera. While I went to fetch the computer to remind myself of the lyrics, Alexis had tackled Andy in the hallway and dumped a liter and a half of water on him in front of our hosts and then slammed his door to avoid retribution. I came back and drunkenly stumbled through the lyrics twice on camera, singing “you load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt…” Before he left, station manager Wang asked me to translate the lyrics so they could put it on tv. Woops – I just figured they wouldn’t ask for lyrics. That’ll be a funny surprise for the Huafeng coal community. After they left, we had the maid open the door to Alexis’s room and then covered his bed, the floor, and his person with water, before he locked Andy on the floor in a grip I had to save him from so we could escape to our own room. Yes, all this in the coal mine hotel. We are dumb when loaded.

This morning we were promptly woken at 8am, and despite fierce hangovers had to make one more appearance for a much-too-big breakfast. Finally at 9 we made our escape from crazy land and rode hungover 40 km to Qufu, the home of Confucius and Chinese tourism Mecca. It all seems like a bizarre dream as I write in the hostel we found here. We’ve agreed to avoid State Owned Enterprises at all costs in the future. Despite how the above may sound, however, I really am appreciative for the way they treated us. They honestly went out of their way to make us feel welcome in their home and accorded all courtesy and respect to us, as though we were actually worthy of such treatment. It’s just that it was supremely surreal, and every two minutes something nuts would fly in from left field.

Anyway, God willing, we will finally ride the 100+ km to Henan tomorrow and begin a new province full of adventures. Good night from Qufu.

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