Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

When last I left off, we had just parted from the Daoist funeral and had to pass up the offer of some female Buddhist monks to stay in their temple due to its unaccommodating location atop a mountain. We rolled on again until around 4:30 to the town of Gaoqiao (高桥镇), where we realized there wasn’t enough sunlight left to continue. The only hotel in town, much to our dismay, had no vacancies, and we scrambled to ask locals where we could stay, half-way hoping one might invite us in. “If you have your own sleeping bags, you could sleep in the government center,” said one man selling raw pork in the central market. Well well well, a government center! That’s just ridiculous enough an idea to make for a good story, I thought. I was not to be disappointed.

Gaoqiao Town Government Center, our home for a night. Photo by Alexis

We proceeded to roll through the complex’s gate and in front of the five-story-tall government center — which possessed all the charms of a Soviet bomb shelter — we began incredulously asking if there was indeed room at the… inn. A Mr. Zhu, office director of the county government (镇政府办公室主任), looked with pity upon our plight and offered the center’s fourth floor spare room to us free of charge. To boot, once we had moved into the room with much fanfare from the other employees, Mr. Zhu, a terse, middle-aged man given to speaking in staccato bursts, took us to the employee cafeteria (员工食堂) for a bowl of rice with some cabbage, eggs, and pork strips — on the house. This world is just full of surprises! Afterward two dopey cops showed up to register us, and after telling us to “cooperate (你们配合一下),” Mr. Zhu left us with them for over 45 minutes as they clumsily took notes and filled in forms on nearly every detail of our lives, down to our religion (we were tempted to answer Communism but resisted) and our addresses in our home countries (were they going to send our moms letters if we misbehaved?). After they left, and just after I had climbed into my sleeping bag on top of one of the short bamboo planks in the free, broken-windowed room, an energetic man in his late 40s sporting a disheveled head of greasy hair, Mr. Wang (汪), burst into the room.

“I saw the article about you in the Sanming newspaper! You’re the three laowai making a tour of China from Beijing, aren’t you!” Drats, the reporter we had tried to avoid in a restaurant a few days earlier had actually published an article about us (even though we never met him again as he had requested, precisely because we’re trying to avoid too much official attention). We were all exhausted from the long day of riding punctuated in the middle by several bowls of rice wine at the funeral, but, as Alexis convinced us, “the whole point of this trip is to be with LBXes, and there’s nobody more LBX than a local government official.” So it was that Mr. Wang rounded up his young female subordinate Little Zhu (小朱), a 23-year-old recent graduate with very short hair and a monotone voice, and led the way to a restaurant in town.

On the walk over, we gathered that Mr. Wang was a vice party secretary of the town (镇委副书记), making him one of the four highest-ranking officials in the area of 16,500 people. Only one month prior he had been reassigned by the county organization department (县组织部) from his home to Gaoqiao. Every Friday he takes a two-hour bus ride to visit his wife and returns on the same bus Sunday night to his drab, single room on the fourth floor of the government complex. His current assignment is to last five years, after which he hopes to retire early from the system, “to let the next generation move up.” He let us know that he thought we were doing something quite respectable, and that he hoped to ride his bike from Chengdu to Lhasa when he retired. Maybe this guy isn’t such a schmuck after all, I thought.

Old Wang and me pounding red rice wine. Photo by Alexis

Once we arrived at the restaurant, things got silly in a hurry. Mr. Wang told us we should call him Old Wang (老汪, a term of endearment), and he started talking to us like old buddies. At the same time, almost as if to prove that he’s an important guy, he ordered around Little Zhu as though he owned her. “Go order food for our foreign friends, and make sure it’s good! (去给我们国外友人点菜，一定要点好点的!)” Then to the restaurant owner, “Bring our foreign friends some of your rice wine. You’ve seen foreigners before, right?” “Yes, Vice Secretary Wang, I saw many foreigners when I was in Guangzhou running my Shaxian snacks (explanation on this later) restaurant.” We tried to tell him we weren’t too hungry and that we didn’t need to drink too much since we were going to ride a long way the following day. “Don’t worry, it’s just a little!” he said. Oh yes, the standard “just a little” we’ve come to expect from such characters. Within minutes the table filled with enough food for ten hungry sumos, and a bit later we were knocking back glass after glass of home made red rice wine (红酒), which the proprietor brought to us heated in two-liter Pepsi and Minute Maid bottles strung from the neck with red ribbon. Then, between orders of “ganbei! (干杯, dry the glass!)” from Old Wang, we began to converse.

“My daughter is going to Italy!” he announced. It turned out that his nephew had been in Italy for years, and his 19-year old princess was going to work in a factory there, “since we Chinese do the jobs you foreigners don’t want to do.” Soon after the part of his brain devoted to defending China / putting down the West got fired up, and despite his daughter’s plans and his abundant admiration for us, he began to lecture us on all the deficiencies of our part of the world — a place he had never visited. Let me tell you, there were some gems. “I’ll tell you why China is better than waiguo (外国, foreign countries). When our soldiers went to Sichuan after the Wenchuan earthquake, they didn’t have to bring guns. But I see on the television that your waiguo armies are carrying guns to rescue people in Haiti. That’s our strength!” “Here in China we have freedom of speech! (我们中国讲舆论自由嘛!)” Old Wang got drunker and drunker, and as we went through one plastic bottle after another, Little Zhu was ordered to refill our glasses over and over, fetch new bottles, and anything else that came to his mind. Her absolute servility to the superior — even after-hours, and even having to chug copious amounts of red rice wine — was really mind-blowing.

After Old Wang switched us to the beer steins, things went downhill fast. Photo by Evan

Eventually the local specialty, a banya (板鸭, smoked duck) appeared on the table. “Here in Fujian we have a practice, head one, tail three, right five, and left six. Since the head is pointing at you,” indicating me, “you drink one, and little Zhu will drink three.” Andy and Alexis were fated for five and six shots respectively. We were already getting sloppy, but even so that sounded like a made-up tradition. We looked at Little Zhu for some sign that he was actually yanking our chain, but of course, she just smiled politely and drank her three glasses. “Little Zhu, fetch some big glasses. We need to drink more!” He had already forgotten about the duck and started toasting us with big gulps of the strong rice wine from beer steins. “Tomorrow, don’t leave,” he slurred. “We’re going to go into the mountains and have fun for a whole day!” Oh Lord have mercy, what the hell is going on, I thought… but Alexis immediately accepted, and suddenly lighting struck Old Wang: “We should stop drinking so we can wake up tomorrow at 7 and go into the mountains!” He had us pour the remainder of our steins back into the Pepsi bottles, which he gave to Little Zhu to carry back to the government complex. Andy said he was going to go buy a bottle of water, at which point Old Wang ran ahead of him and bought us a 24-bottle case of spring water. “Just remember to say that we Gaoqiao’ers are generous! (别忘了我们高桥人很好客!)” he repeated a refrain that had been a theme of the night, even though he had only been in Gaoqiao for a month.

On the plastered romp back to the government complex around 10:30, Old Wang put his arm around my shoulder, presumably to keep from falling down. “You know, we can go over there” — signaling a dark section of the town — “to… relax. The farm villages are becoming more and more open (农村越来越开放!)” Oh no, that’s perfectly alright, I said instantly grasping his meaning. “Massage! Yes, massage! We’re really very open here in the farm village! Let’s go relax (我们去放松放松吧).” He seemed oblivious to the fact that Little Zhu was five feet away. It took about ten times to convince him I wasn’t interested in exploring the town’s new found “openness.” Once we finally staggered back to our room, he ordered Little Zhu to bring us cups so we could on our own finish the three Pepsi bottles of wine we had brought back (no, we didn’t touch them). “I’m going to sleep, but let’s get breakfast at 7:30 and then get started on our day of activities!” After saying goodnight, he came back to the room about five times, blabbered incomprehensibly, and disappeared again. Alexis went to shower, during which time Old Wang burst into the stall and screamed, “Don’t worry, it’s just me! (没事没事，是我!)” That was enough to persuade me to just go to sleep dirty. About five minutes later we heard the sounds of some intense puking coming from just outside our room on the balcony. A few minutes later I slipped easily off to the land of Nod (轻轻升入梦境).

The next morning as promised, a knock came at the door at 7:30 sharp, and there stood a slightly paler Old Wang, still reeking of alcohol and a hell of a lot less chipper, standing at our door. “It’s breakfast time,” he said. We returned to the cafeteria and had a breakfast of congee (粥), sweet steamed buns (红糖馒头), and more cabbage. Thankfully Old Wang had either forgotten his promise to spend a day with us or had just been way too wasted (醉) to be making promises in the first place. Whew! Everybody got to work at 8 a.m., and Old Wang led us to have some tieguanyin tea with Town Chief Xia (夏镇长), who predictably was also from somewhere else in the county and assigned there by the organization department. We would have met the real leader of Gaoqiao, the party secretary, if he hadn’t been in the county seat (县城) for meetings. Then Old Wang took us to his own office for chats and his special stash of black tea from Mt. Wuyi (武夷山大红袍茶).

“I threw up last night, and my head really hurts (我昨天晚上吐了，现在头很痛),” he said half-ashamed, half-bragging, as if we hadn’t heard him heaving over the railing outside our room for five minutes. “You can really drink! (你们酒量真不错). However, last night wasn’t fair since I had already been drinking before we left.” Ok, man, your secret’s safe with us. Then the tone of the conversation changed. “What do you know about Italy?” he asked, and then through subtle comments revealed that he was happy and nervous about his young daughter’s imminent departure, since she could could “make more money” there but would be far from anything he ever knew. He had been drunkenly boasting about her globe-trotting plans the night before. Now that he was sober, and his defenses were down, he was imploring us, probably the only contact with Westerners he’d ever have, to ease his worries about that mysterious place out there called waiguo (外国) into which his daughter was about to plunge. I can understand why his mind would be so troubled, since his whole life it’s been drilled into his head why China (read: the CCP) is inherently superior to all other nations, but at the same time he had a feeling that his daughter would have chances for a better life in Europe. That’s the kind of conscience-shattering, fundamental contradiction that must drive people like him absolutely insane.

Us and Old Wang, all hungover

Do you like your job or this life, I asked. “Like it? Oh, I wouldn’t say that, but it’s a job, serving the people, you know. I began as a village chief in my twenties and have developed to this position now; so I suppose it’s not bad (谈不上喜欢，就是一份工作，为人民服务嘛。我二十几岁当上了村长，后来发展到这里算还可以吧。)” He told us his specific responsibilities as deputy party secretary include, “Planned Birth, road construction, and social stability (计划生育、修路和社会稳定),” which one can translate to “forced abortions, road construction, and ‘guiding’ public opinion.” When I said the area was beautiful and green, he gave the standard answer: “It’s undeveloped here, not good. Look at the road out there — it’s falling apart. We need to fix it before this town can develop,” he said as though the “backwardness” of the town were his scarlet letter (羞耻的红字) Before we left, he said something very unexpected, “We in government are all just peasants. We came from the farms and so we understand the villagers the best. (我们搞政治的都是农民！我们都是在农村出生的，所以就很了解农民问题.”

That was an epiphany for me: these are just regular country folks, like Little Zhu, who probably had the best of intentions when they signed up for government service. I couldn’t imagine in my wildest nightmares putting good-ole-boy Bubba from backwoods Louisiana in charge of regulating public opinion, construction, and birth control for a group of people to whom he has no inherent responsibility. I left feeling profoundly sad for the man — lonely, uninspired, and, in compliance with party needs, ashamed of natural beauty and responsible for “fixing” social problems without real understanding. More than that, I just couldn’t imagine giving my entire life — my entire heart, body, soul, everything — in service of some godawful party just to be rewarded by reassignment to a far-away backwater to while-away my twilight years.

Old Wang needed to go take care of some “planned-birth” business (which he had previously told us was “China’s contribution to the world (中国给世界的贡献”))  despite his mighty hangover, so we snapped some photos together and after prolonged goodbyes, finally departed south toward the county seat of Shaxian (literally Sand County, 沙县).

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