Another Day, Another Hotel

Another rock hard bed. Today started out in Baoding, but Uncle Bobo (S's old family friend) met us with his car and driver and we drove out to Gaodong, a small town about a half-hour outside Baoding, to meet the local officials and tour the environs. Best weather since I arrived in China. A stiff breeze blowing. Still warm but not quite as humid. Blue skies with wispy high clouds (white clouds!) -- the haze cleared away by the wind. Reminded me of Santa Anas back home.

In Gaodong, we were received at the restaurant of our hotel (perhaps, the hotel) by the mayor, his assistant, and a couple other officials, for lunch. The mayor was earnest young up-and-comer within the party -- in his late 30s, but looked ten years younger. During lunch, he reminisced about his youth and how the saying of Mao had inspired him during the coldest, darkest winter nights. The sort of claptrap that back home comes in the form of boyhood paper routes and seeing Kennedy (or Reagan) speak. His assistant was even younger, looked like he was about 18, and was referred to as Chairman. (I gather everyone in the party is a chairman. Then you are promoted to director.) The mayor's driver was 18 but looked 12.

At lunch, we were joined by the local senator, a big wall-eye old man with liver spots and hands all a-tremble. S told me was 70, but he looked at least 80. He wore a gold set of dentures in the bottom of his mouth which made him look a lot like a James Bond villain. He had 9 sons, each a successful monopolist in some local enterprise. Everyone was very deferential to him and throughout lunch various sons and sycophants peeked in to toast him, and perhaps steal a glance at the strange company he was entertaining. Happily, I couldn't understand a word they said.

Later in the afternoon, we were taken on a tour of some of the local factories. The first produced a beverage called Yam Dew. They gave me a promotional flyer in English. If it's at all characteristic of the genre, there's unlimited opportunities in English copy-editing in China. [Note: I was going to quote the brochure, but I've misplaced it since my return home. I think it's in a pocket of my other suitcase. Will try to locate later.]

The second factory, from what I could understand of the synopsis I was given, was a pharmaceutical company producing some kind of low-cost alternative to dialysis. We talked with a couple of the scientists, a young man and young woman, working there. They said most people in the US and Japan can afford dialysis, but it's too expensive for most Chinese.

The last factory we visited was immediately distinguished by two brick smoke stacks belching thick black smoke. The air was acrid and heaps of slag were deposited around the grounds. The company produced cloth dye. As with the other two factories, we were received in a large delapidated, dimly lit office. The company's president boasted that his plant was the second largest operation of its kind in China. Most of the production, he noted, used to be done in Russia and India, but had ceased due to the environmental regulations. Now China was the leading producer.

From there, we headed to a run down little shop further down the dusty road. This was a bank. Although it was now almost 6pm, the door was still open (shielded by the familiar hanging curtain of heavy plastic strips) and we were greeted by the bank's manager, a deferential but hard-working middle-aged man, and two pretty young clerks. The 6 or 7 of us in our party wee shown to a cramped room in back furnished with three cots lining the wall. We took a seat, the senator rolled up his pants legs (as was his habit) and described the operations of the bank. It turned out that it was his bank -- his own private branch. This was, needless for S to tell me, a rather unusual arrangement and one for which he had needed to obtain a special dispensation from the state. There were no computers, no security cameras, not even a printing adding machine. Rather, each clerk had an abacus on her desk. Honest to god, an abacus! Suffice it to say, I wasn't able to use my ATM card.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Senator's compound to pay our respects to his wife and slurp on melon. As we drove through the dusty streets of the neighborhood, the Senator pointed out the gas station he own, the theater he owned, the local school named after him, the park he had had built. Everything, with the exception perhaps of the local Communist assembly hall, looked worn and crumbling. At the school, a couple kids played basketball on a rocky field. S was impressed with the senator's generosity and influence. It struck me as the epitome of the Old China.

I thought we were done for the day, but I just learned that we have a ball to attend. I am sure it will be enchanting.