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2011-June-7

Honk Honk! China on the Move

Honk Honk! China on the Move

By staff reporter SUE DUNCAN

 

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

Author: Peter Hessler

Hardcover: 448 pages

Publisher: Harper

US $27.99

EXPATRIATES in Beijing may grin in wry recognition at Peter Hessler's description of one major intersection in the capital, where "some genius urban planner had located the left-turn lane on the far-right side of the road, which meant that anybody heading in that direction had to cut across five lanes of traffic." China's roads and driving norms provide a deep seam to mine for insights into today's China and Peter Hessler has extracted gold, producing a humane, humorous book that delivers much more than traveler's tales.

Country Driving is the story of a nation on the move, where roads are transforming lives; long-distance buses convey millions of rural migrants to city jobs, emptying the countryside to the elderly; in a partial reversal of the process, upwardly mobile urbanites are buying weekend retreats in vacated villages; millions of new cars and drivers hit the roads (and each other) every year; development zones mushroom at the exits from new highways, magnets for industrial enterprises and migrant labor.

The book is in three sections: Hessler's initial driving experiences in Beijing and his travels paralleling the course of the Great Wall; his life in a village outside Beijing transformed by improved access to the capital; and the trials and tribulations of new entrepreneurs and migrant workforce in the east coast province of Zhejiang. Hessler, former China correspondent for the New Yorker and fluent in Mandarin, takes us below the surface of the humungous statistics that populate every account of Chinese economic development. His odyssey brings us in contact with memorable individuals, illustrating in human terms the impact of China's unprecedented mobility. He shows us the realities of how things get done; and for good measure explains the semiotics of car models, shoes and cigarette brands!

In the 1920s serious consideration was given to converting the Great Wall into a highway. The terrain proved too formidable an obstacle but Hessler likes the idea of following its east-west course and, in 2001, having passed a not overly demanding test, acquires a license and sets off in his hired jeep, courtesy of the rental company's cheery Mr Wang, ever imperturbable in the face of dents, missing parts and driving misdemeanors. On the Shanxi-Hebei border Hessler encounters a married couple who specialize in performing traditional Shanxi opera at funeral services and here we get an early example of how the writer deftly weaves social information into his road-trip fabric. There are no abrupt swerves, we are hardly aware of the detour. Picking his way through former garrison towns built centuries ago to protect the heartland from marauding tribal incursions, he picks up hitchhikers returning on duty visits to the arid countryside they have fled.

Chapter II takes us to Sancha, northeast of Beijing, where in 2002 Hessler rents a rundown house in a near-abandoned village without cars, cell phones, restaurants, shops, schools or – with one exception – kids. Its population of under 150 eke a hardscrabble living, but this is about to change. In 2003, China's passenger-car sales leaped by 80 percent and in Beijing alone 339,344 new automobiles hit the road; newly completed infrastructure brought previously remote villages within weekend-visitor reach. By 2007 Sancha's per capita income rose to around US $800 from its 2001 level of US $250. Wei Ziqi, Hessler's friend, is at the forefront of this revival, first cooking for visitors at home then opening a restaurant and guesthouse, branching out into other businesses, contemplating a run for Party secretary, cultivating connections, becoming a car owner and driver himself. Tracking the process, Hessler looks at abuses of power, the vexed question of land rights, and – in a life-and-death dash to a downtown kids' hospital – the routine contempt that city folk mete out to country people.

Chapter III takes us from the parched north to the lush and increasingly flush Zhejiang Province. It is 2005, and the Jinliwen Expressway is soon to open, running inland from Wenzhou for 233 kilometers, connecting the cities of Lishui and Jinhua and about to spool in pioneering factory owners, workers and services providers. Lishui is creating a development zone that involves blasting 180 hills and mountains (no "Yugong moving the mountain" for Lishui) and its population is anticipated to rise from 160,000 to half a million. Wenzhou entrepreneurs Gao and Wang are soon hiring for their bra-ring factory: we meet engineer Master Luo from Hubei, poached from a Guangdong competitor, and the redoubtable 15-year-old Tao Yufeng of Anhui, who blags her way in on a false ID, a bridgehead for many more Taos who often comprise one-third of the factory's labor force. In his periodic visits we follow the trials of entrepreneurship Zhejiang style, relationships with local cadres, itinerant entertainers serving migrant workers, and insights into how cities fund new development from land-use rights transfer from rural to urban regions.

Country Driving is an exhilarating ride, a compelling account of ambition at personal and governmental level, of individual resilience and flexibility. It is the story of a nation with its foot glued to the gas pedal. Brakes? What brakes?