Authors: Alexandre Trudeau
Our contact, a company man, is to meet us outside the bus station. I pray that he's late or that we are early, so that we can stretch our legs for a moment and have a bite and a sip of tea. But when we descend from the bus, I see him keenly waiting for us beside a company minivan. Mr. Xu, a junior public relations officer, is in his early forties and is of medium build. He wears dark slacks and the company golf shirt. We dutifully exchange business cards. He then vaguely offers help for food and lodging, but Viv politely urges him on.
“Sir, we are grateful but shall not abuse your precious time and would very much like to visit your company's factories,” she courteously tells him. Viv knows that if we want to see the manufacturing processes in action, we should go now, not later in the afternoon, when things might be winding down. She also guesses that it might be awkward for our host to drive us to a hotel or a restaurant where he has no budget to help with the bill.
So Xu invites us to board the minivan. We meet a second man,
the driver, who also functions as an assistant. The men offer us bottled water and packaged sweet tea that they have chilled in a cooler.
In the vehicle, there's an air of happiness. The men enjoy their job. They are proud of their company. Hosting curious foreigners seems pleasant to them. We engage in light banter and cover the basics of the corporation. I learn that JAC is not a recently established enterprise. The factories have been producing tractors and trucks since the Maoist era. But over the past decade, the company has undergone a transformation. It still makes tractors and trucks but has significantly upgraded its models. It has also shifted part of the labour force to new factories where automobiles are assembled. This new development is a natural step for a company that manufactures service vehicles. JAC makes tools: vehicles meant to do a jobâfrom tractors to big trucks, little trucks, and now minivans.
We leave the city core and enter a sprawling area of new construction. We ride along a ten-lane boulevard. It's so new that it still shows patches of sand and gravel, and its margins, not yet landscaped, are coarse and bare. The road is flanked by super-malls and residential high-rise developments. Everything is in the final stages of construction and an early stage of operation. In fact, cranes line the corridor as far as the eye can see.
After about ten minutes, we veer right onto another broad boulevard. This one is somewhat older and quieter. It's lined with technology outfits and government offices. To the left, a fence and wall mark the edge of a huge industrial territory. Beyond the fence is an immense compound, like an airport or some kind of base. Numerous giant buildings can be seen in the distance. We ride along the perimeter for five minutes, then turn left to follow the fence south along a rough, unfinished boulevard. We turn left
once more and enter the compound through huge gates. We are surrounded by immense, brightly coloured hangars: the new factory at JAC.
We are led to a single, nondescript door. As we enter, Xu tells us that it's forbidden to take photos of the manufacturing process. We then find ourselves in a vast open chamber. Shaped plates of metal are piled high along aisles. Massive presses are being operated by uniformed workers. They carry sheets of metal into the jaws, then move to control stations to close the presses. They wear royal-blue jumpsuits and hard hats, and are mostly men in their twenties, some with long hair. They're amused to see us watching them. When the piles of pressed aluminum and steel get big, forklifts move them to another chamber.
We exit this building and drive to anotherâthe minivan assembly line. We commence the journey not on the line itself but on an offshoot somewhere near the beginning of assembly. We enter a gymnasium-sized hall with huge, high windows that catch the afternoon sun; the chamber basks in warm light. It's also filled with chunky metal parts in neatly arranged piles, all destined for an area at the edge of this chamber where the assembly line passes. The sunlight gives an unusual feel to this room. The workers here are men and women in their early twenties. Their job seems to be to get all of these parts from the piles to the assembly line.
The shift is about to end. Of the dozen or so young workers in the room, only three or four appear to be doing much of anything. Although they're sorting and rearranging piles of parts, they're doing it at half-speed, partaking in the joking and flirting that has got a hold of the rest of the group. They all seem healthy and happy young people. Some of the young men even have their coveralls rakishly unbuttoned from collar to belly.
Through careful prodding, Viv learns that these workers earn 1,600 yuan per month, which is roughly equivalent to $230. Not much from our perspective, but nothing to be balked at in Anhui Province at the time.
The production line is in a long, brightly lit chamber, but it's more intimate than the first room, since the assembly mostly happens beneath an elaborate track from which the skeletal car hangs. Technicians are building up the car piece by piece. It's moving along a series of stations worked by teams of people. At one station, two men weld a component to the build. At another, a team with compression ratchets speedily bolt widgets.
As we walk alongside the stations, we engage the workers with smiles and nods. Some never lift their heads, but many are more sociable. The workers seem to enjoy and take pride in their work. There also seems to be camaraderie among them. As they work, they joke around and provide each other assistance. At some stations, we observe dedicated transportation systems: tracks to sling parts up and carry them through the air to the car, where they're fixed; pneumatic trolleys and carts that slide along the floor; and even a robot platform that carries the motor to the build and delicately lifts it into the engine cavity without being controlled. It is a source of amazement for its new masters and their visitors alike.
As we pause in wonder, I ask questions about the car's engine. It's manufactured elsewhere, perhaps assembled somewhere on the premisesâor maybe the whole thing is purchased from another company. It's a Chinese motor manufactured according to a Korean technology licence. Our hosts also admit that many of the more sophisticated instruments and devices are manufactured outside China, in Japan, Korea and Germany. But this will decrease in time, I'm told.
With more and more of the shell complete, the minivan becomes visible. Windows and interior elements are now fitted into the vehicle. It's then painted and given some rubber on which to roll off the line. The asking price is between five thousand and ten thousand dollars, a competitive price when one considers the heavy use the minivan is meant to endure, but a price well beyond the means of any of these workers, who make but a fraction of that in a year.
The product is fresh to the market and thus has not really been put to the test yet, but JAC planners and consumers alike are banking on the idea that the maker of service vehicles, of tractors and trucks that haul and endure, can probably offer a reliable minivan, ready for active service. The vehicle is likely underpowered and not terrifically comfortable, especially after heavy use and tough conditions wear down its suspension. But the minivan will endure long hours, overstuffing of both goods and passengers, and will be easy and cheap to repair and service.
This particular minivan is emerging at a time when the Chinese consumer class is rapidly expanding. But something tells me that the buyers of the JAC minivan will not soon be found packing the vehicle with children, pets, clothes and groceries for a weekend at the cottage. For now, JAC's aims are much more modest.
When we exit the factory, we see that another shift is ending. The workers in their identical colourful uniforms assemble at collection points to be picked up by minibuses. I'm told that many of these young workers live in factory housing in the compound. The young workers have a playful air to them, as if this experience were a kind of summer camp, highly rigid perhaps, but a life less oppressive than that with their families in the villages. Here, they have a clearly identified job that they're expected to accomplish
with crystalline precision, but as they wait for transportation after a shift or when they retire to their dormitories at night, they can be without worries. They can indulge in laughter and flirtation, while in their villages, the expectations and concerns weighing upon their shoulders are incessant.
Our tour is over and a driver is designated to take us where we please in Hefei. We had chosen online a new hotel with stunningly low prices, but its location is something of a mystery to our driver. It's in a new part of town. We venture out of the gates in a different direction from that from which we came.
Hefei is truly surprising. Coming into town on the old Nanjing road, it seemed a dusty, post-industrial wasteland, a Chinese Detroit. Then it revealed itself as a business-oriented place with glass-clad skyscrapers, and, on the way to the factory, it morphed into vast housing and shopping complexes. Now as we leave the industrial area of the factory, apartment buildings and malls-in-the-making again spread out around us, lined up along the boulevard. But behind the rows of buildings, I can only make out empty space. After a few kilometres, we come upon something of a new city centre replete with ultra-modern buildings fitted with posh outdoor lighting. But it too is all core. To complete the picture, rush-hour traffic is heavy at this single great intersection. This afternoon, the city is also cloaked in a sooty fog that makes the empty spaces behind everything seem laden with unearthly mystery.
We turn onto another main thoroughfare and after a few blocks and some searching find the street where the hotel is located. It has been erected among a bunch of new multi-storey textile buildings. This again is typical of the way the new China works: with largesse. Surplus capacity is built into everything. A shopping mall will be topped with the hull of an office tower. A series of textile fac
tories will be built in one go. Some will be used at once, others will remain empty for some time. While the factories are being built, the planners might also decide to throw a hotel into the construction mix.
Government entities make for strange industrialists in China. As anywhere else, they control zoning and therefore land use. As they let the market in, they continue to have broad and sometimes obscure priorities. They exert significant control over the procurement of labour and can extract and redirect resources and capital in all sorts of creative and discretionary ways. It seems that government planners at various levels were convinced that a small textile industry was called for in the new part of Hefei, and to market the product, a hotel to host buyers was bankrolled. Still, the planners hope for the free market to take hold. They wish to lure to these rooms hordes of foreign wholesalers intent on buying product from Hefei. If not, they expect corporate buyers and planners from elsewhere in China. And even if the hotel is empty, as it is when Viv and I arrive, it's not there to turn a profit but to serve other needs. Its operations will continue as long as its owning entity says it will.
The lobby is grandiose, its ceiling some seven and a half metres high. A huge granite-topped reception desk lines the back of the lobby under the massive glittering fresco of a dragon. The place is full of attendants, fresh and eager youngsters in crisp and fanciful uniforms. Our rooms are on the top floor of the garden wing. Extravagantly dressed porters carry our scuffed-up rucksacks with delicate application. My room is clean, spartan and spacious. It gazes out over a green space between more buildings.
Viv and I convene in the lobby to go find an interesting place to eat. We walk back toward the core. On our way to the hotel, I'd
noticed a fancy-looking place in its own artful two-storey building. Food in China is so cheap that I don't hesitate to walk into the most ridiculously showy establishments. In the West, I usually do the oppositeâI search for the most down and dirty, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, where the food's full of soul.
But in Chinese cities, what you want is a restaurant that attracts throngs of people, that has a wide selection and fresh ingredients. A place that has done itself up. These restaurants will have elaborate picture menus, an absolute must for food explorers. In these restaurants, which are all over China, you can often treat a group of friends to a spectacular banquet including drinks for a hundred dollars.
This one is a little different, though. It's understated; there's a muted and earthy character to its decor, with nice gardens out front, a staccato roofline, an elegant, polished, coarse timber entrance and a flowing floor plan creating private alcoves. Although still bright, the lighting is also more discreetly handled than usual. The place is full of respectable diners. They see few foreigners here, and we are seated at the front window looking out on a small garden and the parking lot beyond.
Viv and I explore the menu items with curiosity. I'm always looking for new dishes, though I definitely have my limits: no hair, no feathers, no veins, no raw blood, no gastrointestinal-tract contents. No legged insects except ants and grasshoppers. And no bottom-feeding freshwater fish.
Reading the menu, Viv suddenly yelps in her high-pitched girlish manner, “Oh! Stinky tofu!”
After witnessing such emotion for something stinky, I insist on ordering the dish. She warns me that it is like a very strong old cheese, and many people find it overpowering. When it arrives, it
proves nothing like cheese in either flavour or texture, having the sponginess of a scouring pad and a bitter and burnt flavour, with hints of metal. Not soon a contender for my good books.
I also have my favourites. At this moment: spiced pig kidneys, mouth-water chicken and garlic-sautéed dragon beans. When I get Viv to ask the nice, young waitress if they have any of these, she points us to similar dishes and tells us they are even better.
“You are always eating dishes that fire us up,” Viv grumbles.
“Yes, I want to bring my fire higher and higher,” I joke.