Hour of the Rat

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GUIYU IS ABOUT AN hour and a half’s drive from where I’m staying. After I have a late breakfast, I decide to hire a taxi to take me there. There are buses, but I don’t know the territory, and from what I can find out on the Web, it looks confusing and complicated. Guiyu is a collection of villages that just sort of grew together, and though I have an address for New Century Seed Company, it doesn’t say which village.

“I need to go to this place,” I tell the first taxi driver who stops for me, showing him the paper.

He looks at the paper and shakes his head, waves his hand. “Don’t know it,” he tells me.

I recognize these gestures. He knows, but he doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.

“Do you know where this is?” I ask the next taxi driver.

He looks at my paper. “Sure,” he finally says, in heavily accented Mandarin. He looks at the paper another moment, and then he looks at me. “Why you want to go there?”

I get why he asks. I did a little research on Guiyu last night, after I met with Daisy.

“Business,” I say.

My answer must be good enough. He nods, and we negotiate a price.

Guiyu is pretty notorious. It’s the largest e-waste site in the world, apparently-where old computers go to die and get recycled, scavenged for their valuable components. Copper. Microchips and RAM. Workers, mostly poor migrants, dismantle the units by hand, sort the parts into huge plastic bags of the same rough weave you see in flour sacks and peasants’ tote bags, burn the circuit boards to extract metal. There’s a 60 Minutes segment on Guiyu, but I couldn’t access it, even with my proxy. Just a few articles here and there, from Greenpeace mostly.

So what’s a seed company doing in Guiyu?

And why does Jason care about it?

I searched all three of the names, first using the pinyin. I only got one hit, on Modern Scientific Seed Company. They specialize in “maize seed, rice seed, wheat seed, and cotton seed,” along with “spraying tomato powder.” According to Modern Scientific’s Web site, the company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange; was named “one of the top fifty in Chinese seed industry;” and “it was awarded as High-tech Enterprise and it is the enterprise which abide contract and has high credit level awarded by the State Administration for Industry & Commerce.”

“We have established and maintained stable and long-term business relationship with many customers at home and abroad on the basis of mutual benefit,” the About Us page concludes. “We warmly welcome friends of the same trade from abroad and home to collaborate with us. Let’s sow the seed of good wish and harvest the bright future!”

Right.

The other two companies, I could only find hits in Chinese. I don’t read Chinese well enough to make much sense of it, but Google Translate helps me figure out they sell seeds. In the case of Bright Future Seed Company, rice wheat, corn, millet. The one I’m going to, New Century Seeds, has the least information of all. Just the same address I already had and a phone number, which I wrote down. When I called it, I got voice mail. I didn’t leave a message.

“YOU A REPORTER?” THE taxi driver asks me. Like a lot of the people here in Shantou, he speaks Mandarin with an accent-it’s not his first language. As much as the government’s tried to make Mandarin the “national language,” you still find plenty of Chinese who don’t speak it well. But in cities like this, where there are lots of people from other parts of China, businessmen and migrants and factory workers, most people get by.

He’s a young guy, short and slight, the most prominent things about him his teeth and his hair, cut in that shaved-sides, long-top style that resembles a mushroom.

“No.”

He nods. “I didn’t think so. You don’t look like reporter.”

We drive awhile in silence. He fiddles with his radio, finding a station playing Cantonese pop. I stare out the window. It’s pretty at first. We head out on a busy road that runs beside a broad river. A delta, I guess you’d call it. Onto a long bridge over the water, to a highway on the other side. Across a smaller river. Through farmland and trees.

“So… an environmentalist?” he asks.

It takes me a minute to figure that one out-the term he uses translates to “environment protector.”

“No.”

“Really? Almost all Westerners who go to Guiyu are reporters or environmentalists. You just missed film crew from a foreign news show. The bosses threw them out after a few days.”

By now we’ve been on the road over an hour. The air is getting really bad, a yellow-grey haze, and I can smell it: Burning wire. Melting plastic.

“A lot of pollution,” I say.

“Guiyu is famous for its pollution.” He grins. “The world’s second-most-polluted place.”

“Second-most?”

“First is somewhere in Russia.” He shrugs. “I don’t remember the name.”

We’ve reached Guiyu proper, I guess. Another anonymous Chinese city with chunky buildings, most of them under six stories, made of cinder block, concrete, and white tile. There are tall plastic signs advertising something about electronics, but I can’t read the rest of the characters fast enough to get what.

We continue driving, out of the main commercial district. There are bicycle and donkey carts piled high with woven plastic bags, filled with things I can’t see.

I unroll the window so I can see better.

This cart has computer casings. Just empty computer casings. Stacks of cracked beige plastic. The next one, the one hauled by a donkey, has monitors piled five high, barely held in place by black plastic ropes.

Along the street are little workshops. I can’t really see what goes on in them. But out in front more piles of electronic junk. Here’s a random mound of tangled, twisted wire. Farther along, a hill of telephone handsets. Next, a mountain of keyboards.

I can’t take it all in.

People cluster on the sidewalks, like in any other Chinese town. Buy their snacks, walk arm in arm, scold their kids, do their business.

“The place you want to go, what’s the address again?”

I tell him.

“Ah, okay.”

We drive out of this center-whatever it is-down a road lined with fringes: dilapidated storefronts, more piles of junk. Now we’ve reached a canal, or a stream. The water is black. There’s trash floating on the oily sludge. A couple of teenagers hang out on a little arched bridge over it, leaning against the faux-marble rail. We pass weed-choked fields, remains of rice paddies. Smoke from random fires forms low-hanging clouds. The air is so thick with chemicals that my nose and throat feel like I’ve been snorting chili powder.

None of this is helping my bad mood.

“I think it’s up here,” the cab driver says.

Another cluster of buildings, more solidly built, like it’s the town center in another village. A broad dirt street. There are huge mounds of… I don’t know, electronic crap, everywhere. Plastic. Cathode tubes. Metal scraps, partly covered by a ripped blue tarp.

“Here,” the cabbie says. He points across the street, to a two-story building, grimy white tile with pink accents.

“You’re sure?”

He shrugs. “It’s the address.”

“I’ll go ask.”

I sling my daypack over my shoulders and get out. The front of the building is open, except there are thick, round iron bars, like a prison, that run from from top to bottom into the surrounding structure. Workers sit in a row facing the street, six of them, four women and two men. I can see their heads and torsos above the low wall that frames the opening. Smoke billows from inside, blown out by a couple of industrial fans embedded in the wall.

As I approach, I can see that they’re sitting on squat wooden chairs, cheap bamboo folding ones, like you’d take to the beach. The smoke is coming from little iron barrels. They’ve got circuit boards on top of them that they’re holding in place with tongs, and I have this weird flash of this church camping trip I went on once, when we toasted marshmallows over a fire pit.

The double doors are open, all the better to let the smoke out, I guess. I step over the threshold.

“Ni hao,” I say loudly, so they’ll hear me over the fans.

A couple of the women look up. One is middle-aged, her face wrinkled and weathered, from sun or-who knows?-maybe exposure to toxic chemicals. She wears a nice striped blouse and tailored slacks, like she’s dressing for an office job. The other is young, with a long, thick ponytail held in place by a scrunchie and two sequined barrettes, wearing a fashion hoodie that has KITTEN! stenciled across the chest, and an appliqué of an anime cat holding a ray gun.

“Sorry, I don’t want to trouble you,” I say in my best polite Mandarin. “But I’m looking for this company. I thought it was this address.”

I have the piece of paper that Daisy gave me, and I hold that out in my hand.

Kitten Girl stands up, as does Office Woman. The two of them study the paper.

I glance around. Past the first row of circuit-board campfires are other workstations, if you can call them that, thin wallboard stretched across plastic milk crates, covered by plastic bowls, surrounded by plastic bins, small ones like you’d buy to organize your office supplies, large ones like you’d use to do your laundry. Each one holds different pieces of plastic or metal or wire: transistors, capacitors, relays, microchips.

“This is the address,” Kitten Girl says. “But no seeds here.” She giggles, like it’s a really funny notion.

Office Woman frowns. “Shi. But… I think sometimes…” Then she shakes her head. “Buqingchu.” Not clear.

“Weishenme buqingchu?” I ask. Why isn’t it clear?

“I’ve seen boxes with that name come here,” she says. “I think maybe is a mistake.”

“Do you think anyone here might know?”

“Maybe. Xiao deng,” she says. Wait a moment.

I hear a honk from outside. The cabdriver has rolled down the passenger window. “Hey!” he calls out.

I hobble over to the cab.

“I need to get back to Shantou,” he says.

“Weishenme? I thought we had an agreement.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Family problem. If you want, I can take you back with me.”

I hesitate. I’m thinking what are the odds anyone here is going to tell me anything useful? Plus, my chest hurts, my throat hurts, and my head’s pounding, just from trying to breathe.

“How hard is it to find a cab back to Shantou?” I ask.

“Not hard. You go to downtown, plenty of cabs there. You can take local bus to downtown. Easy.”

I guess I must look pretty pissed off, because then he says, “Okay, when I drive through Guiyu, I send a cab back for you.” He catches my look again. “Really! I promise!”

I shrug. “Okay. Whatever.” And I pay him.

A waste of time, I’m pretty sure. But I’ve come all this way. I might as well see it through.

I hang around outside the workshop, upwind of the exhaust fans, though I’m not at all sure that the air is any better out here than it is in there. Thinking, if I wanted to get something to eat, would that be a good idea? Could you trust any food prepared in this place? Probably I’d be better off buying nuts or chips, something packaged. Maybe a beer, as long as it’s not local.

It feels like I’m there a long time, but it’s probably only ten or fifteen minutes before a man comes out of the workshop. He’s short and squat and bald, and I don’t like the pig-eyed look he gives me.

He stands there, his fists clenched like stones.

“You looking for New Century Seeds?” he asks.

Is this a trick question?

“I am,” I finally say. Thinking, okay, nothing’s going to happen to me here, right? On a street, in broad daylight, with a couple people on the sidewalk, going into another workshop, stopping at a snack stand to buy Cokes.

“Not here,” he spits out. “Old address. They moved.”

I can’t place his accent. I’m not that good. Not proper Mandarin, but I don’t think he’s local either.

“Oh,” I say. “Do you know where…?”

“No.”

I can’t say it’s unusual for a business to come and go so quickly. Happens in China all the time. And who knows how old Jason’s information was?

“Okay. Thank you.”

I start to turn, to walk away, to think about where that bus might be, so I can get back to Shantou. Back to my life. Such as it is.

I stop. It’s like I can’t help it.

“I’m looking for a foreigner,” I say. “An American. His name is David. Have you seen him?”

The guy’s piggy eyes narrow to slits. “You his friend?”

My heart pounds hard in my chest. I should have kept my mouth shut, I can tell. I swallow, and my throat’s raw and swollen, like there’s rocks in it.

“No. I’m his family’s friend.”

He says nothing. Then he gives a little shrug. “Don’t know him. Not here.”

I manage a smile. “Thank you,” I say again. “Sorry to bother you.”

We stare at each other a moment longer. Then I turn and take a few stumbling steps down the street, the muscles between my shoulders clenched, waiting for a blow.

But nothing happens. I keep on walking.

Okay, I think, okay. That was dumb. There’s something going on here, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure that I’m lucky to be getting out of here in one piece. I’ll tell Dog what I know, and he can do whatever, report it to the American embassy or hire someone professional. Someone else can figure it out. I’ve done my duty, I’ve been a good buddy, no one’s gonna argue that. I’m just going to get my fool ass back to Beijing, see what kind of life I’ve got left, and take it from there.

I’ve been walking without really looking where I’m going. Now I take a moment to see where I am.

Ahead of me the buildings thin out, looking more derelict, less permanent. I hesitate. I’m trying to remember how we got here, and I can’t be sure, but I don’t think this is the way back to beautiful downtown Guiyu.

On the other hand, if I go back the way I came, I’ll run into Mr. Piggy, and I know I don’t want to do that.

So I keep walking. I think I see a sign for a local bus up ahead. Maybe that will take me back where I need to go.

Or maybe another taxi will magically appear to whisk me back to Shantou.

I’ll just keep walking, I tell myself. Long enough for Mr. Piggy to think I’m out of his business. Walk to the next town if I have to. This is China, and it’s not like I’m walking into wilderness here. There’s always another town down the road.

Just keep walking and it’ll all be fine.

My leg’s throbbing. My mouth’s beyond dry. Next snack stand I come to, I’ll buy a Coke or something. And take a Percocet.

But I’m not seeing snack stands. Instead I’m walking out into the country. Into polluted, brackish rice paddies. Pungent smoke rises on either side of me, from burning trash, I guess. There aren’t any solid buildings anymore. Now there are shanties with roofs made out of tarp, walls of the same wobbly blue tin fencing that surrounds every construction site in China. The most solid things are the piles of electronic scrap flanking the road, mountains of computer casings, of monitors, of circuit boards.

Mud, and ash, and plastic.

Workers sit on plastic stools in the shanties, burning circuit boards, stripping wire, sorting transistors. A few of them glance up as I pass, some curious, some wary. A motorcycle rumbles by, then a battered truck, its bed loaded high with electronic scrap. No magic taxi.

The sky’s the color of lead. I don’t know if that means rain or if it’s just from the crap in the air.

Fuck, I think. How long am I going to have to walk to get out of this?

Another car, some beater VW or Chinese Chery, hurtles down the road. Unlike the last couple of cars, it pulls off to the shoulder, screeches to a halt.

Three guys clamber out. Two of them have metal rods about a yard long and two inches thick. And they’re all heading toward me.

I want to run, but I don’t. I can’t run that fast. But mainly it’s like I’m frozen in place, a scared little rabbit about to be some tiger’s lunch.

Flight or fight. I do neither.

“What are you doing here?” one of them shouts, the one without a rod.

“I’m just leaving,” I manage.

“This is forbidden area! You’re not allowed!”

By now they’ve closed the gap. They form a semicircle around me. To my back is a wall of junked monitors.

“I didn’t know,” I say, lifting up my hands. “I just want to find a bus to Shantou.”

“Give me your backpack,” he says, but before I can even decide what to do, one of the other guys swings his rod and smashes it into my bad leg, right above my knee.

A bolt of white shoots across my eyes, and I crumple. I can’t even scream, it hurts so bad. I land against the wall of monitors, throw my hands up to ward off another blow. The first guy shouts something, I can’t understand what, and another one of them starts yanking at my backpack, and I lash out with my fists, trying to connect, and he wrenches the backpack off, pulling one of my arms so far back that I think it’s come out of its socket, and then I scream because I can’t help it, and one of the guys with the rods hits me again, in the ribs this time. I curl into myself because there’s nothing I can do, no way to fight back, and I’m just waiting for the next blow.

Instead I hear the zip of my pack being opened.

I open my eyes, and the first guy has my laptop out.

Then something truly weird happens.

“What are you doing?” I hear a man shout-at least I think that’s what he says. His accent’s so thick I can barely understand him. “You can’t do that!”

“Mind your own business! You should get out of here, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Cao ni ma de bi! You think you can just do what you want, treat people like dogs? You think you own the earth and sky?”

This guy, whoever he is, his voice is shaking with rage.

“You think you can tell me what to do?” says Thug #1, sounding like he’s on the verge of laughing.

I can make out Thug #1, standing there with his back to me, his fists clenched, looking like he’s going to beat the shit out of this new guy.

Except it’s not just one guy. Behind him are others. I can’t see them clearly, but there are about a half dozen men and women clustered around him, some hesitant, some furious, ready to take up metal bars of their own and kick some ass.

“Haode,” Thug #1 finally says. I see his shoulders bunch in a shrug. “Chou tu,” he adds under his breath. Filthy peasant.

Then he takes my laptop and hurls it into the pile.

I slowly sit up as the three of them get in their car, reverse it in a grinding of gears, and head back the way they came.

I try to focus on the crowd that stands a few yards away, in a ragged semicircle of their own. I can’t really see their faces. “Thank you,” I manage. Several of them shift back and forth, mutter words I can’t make out, and suddenly I’m not sure if I’m any better off than I was before.

Then a man steps forward. His arm is still raised, and he’s holding something in his hand-a brick.

I scuttle back against the monitors.

“You all right?” he asks. “Are you hurt?”

It’s the guy who yelled at the thugs, I’m pretty sure. I think he’s in his forties, but it’s hard to tell-he’s average height, with a shaved head, sharp cheekbones, and the kind of no-nonsense wiry build that comes from a life of hard work.

“Hai keyi,” I say. Meaning I could be better, but I could be worse.

I try to stand. Not going to happen. The pain from my bad leg leaves me gasping against the pile of monitors.

The man takes another step toward me, hesitates, then turns his head and yells out something I can’t understand. A woman steps forward. “She can help you,” the man says to me.

She’s about the same age as the guy, angular, blunt-cut hair streaked with grey, deep crow’s feet and brow lines etched on her face.

“Give me your hand,” she says.

I reach out with my right, or try to, but my shoulder hurts like a motherfucker, and I have to lean there a moment longer and catch my breath until my head clears.

So I give her my left, same side as my fucked-up leg, and somehow get to my feet. The woman has me drape my arm over her shoulder.

“You can walk?”

“I can.” I laugh a little. “Maybe.” It’s more like I can hop.

We take a few steps this way, my good arm over her shoulder, her arm circled around my back, me not able to put much weight on my bad leg. She shouts something that I can’t understand to the man.

“Hao le,” he says, and trots off.

The woman points toward one of the stalls across the street from the monitor mountain. “You can wait there a little.” Wait for what? “You need doctor?” she asks. I nod, because I guess I probably do.

Then I remember my laptop. “Wo… wode xiao diannao.” My little computer. I can’t exactly remember the Chinese for “laptop.”

“Where is it?” she asks.

I take a look around me, at the endless piles of electronic scrap, and I laugh.

Another person in the crowd, a kid, scrambles over to the pile. Roots around in the junk. “This one?” he shouts, holding up a laptop.

Who the fuck knows?

I nod anyway.