The Canton Connection (17 page)

Jake and Simon Wu were shivering violently when the UPS plane finally landed in China.

But when the cargo door opened, a flood of humid warmth washed over the cabin. Jake could hear the steady white noise of rain splashing against the airplane.

He peered around the canvas side of the container in which he and Wu stood. It was dark outside, just like when they had left Louisville. UPS was a real nighttime operation.

Voices carried up from the tarmac, and a K-loader rose with men onboard.

The first containers rolled off the airplane.

“How are we going to swing this?” Wu whispered.

“Let’s stay inside the container as long as possible. Maybe we can get past the ground crew.”

They squatted in the center of the container and tried to make themselves hard to see. Soon, a pair of handlers gripped the container and rolled it toward the cargo hatch.

Jake grabbed the side for balance.

Outside, a warm, greenhouse smell greeted him, much like he had experienced in Washington’s Botanic Garden. Not the desert room of the greenhouse, but the tropical jungle room.

The K-loader lowered them
smoothly to the ground, and they landed with a jarring thud. Wheels splashed as the container they were in was pulled away from the aircraft.

They waited in the rain for another ten minutes, before Jake heard a series of chains snapping taut, and they were towed on a brisk ride out of the rain.

The sounds changed from the whine of jet engines to the clatter of air conditioning units. The air smelled like cardboard boxes.

They were inside the UPS sorting facility.

Voices met the tractor that pulled the string of containers. The words were barked and not in English.

“Let’s get out,”
Jake said. He released the magnetic strip at the bottom of the canvas and raised the curtain.

The receiving area for parcels was semi-lit by widely spaced lights on a distant ceiling.

Jake and Wu stepped down to the cement floor and closed the container flap. Jake looked around for cover. Wet raincoats hung by the opening onto the airfield.

“Grab a coat,” he said.

The coat was damp inside. From the garlic smell, he decided that it was probably sweat. He pulled the hood over his head to hide his features, and looked around the facility.

Just as in Louisville, it was an enormous cargo hub.

There was a frenzy of activity under the row of airplanes as they were unloaded and then reloaded. A steady stream of containers exited the building for the planes. A brief glimpse at some of the boxes being pulled past revealed a commonality. Most were Apple products.

Wu had been listening to the Chinese conversation where the air cargo containers were entering the building. “Those are Customs inspectors,” Wu said. “They’re checking all the packages and pulling some aside for inspection.”

“Good thing we got out of the container,” Jake said. “How do you suggest we get out of this facility?”

“I’m sure pilots have to go through Immigration,” Wu said.

“I have my passport,” Jake said, feeling it in his back pocket. “But I certainly don’t have a visa.”

“I have a visa,” Wu said. “But I left my passport back in Virginia.”

“We’ll have to walk out with the ground crew,” Jake said, and looked for an exit.

Above the main floor, large windows faced down on the sorting facility. He could see office workers inside, none of them paying attention to the fast
-moving parcels and bags of envelopes that hurtled along the complex, multi-layered system of conveyor belts.

“I changed my mind,” Jake said. “Let’s leave through the office.”

“They won’t recognize us, so they’ll report us,” Wu protested.

“Who to?”

Wu shrugged and followed Jake toward the metal staircase that led up to the offices.

It was a new facility, built to last a few decades at least. The cargo handlers they passed weren’t young like the college students Jake had seen in Louisville. But they worked every bit as hard. It seemed like a Chinese man with a smaller frame could handle just as heavy a container as a beefy American guy.

The Customs officials wore uniforms and carried around handheld computers. They seemed overwhelmed by the deluge of parcels entering and leaving China, and only pulled out one in every hundred to put in a holding area. There, a colleague looked it over, scanned in the label, checked his computer, and let it re-enter the stream of packages.

Jake’s leather soles clanged on the stairs as he mounted up to the well-lit offices. At the top landing, he ditched his raincoat and hung it over the railing.

“Who are we supposed to be now?” Wu said.

Jake had already pulled out his wallet and pointed to his badge. “Department of Homeland Security.”

“But that’s an FBI badge,” Wu protested.

Jake took a second look at it. It looked official, but was kind of elaborate with small wording. “I doubt if anybody’ll read the fine print.”

Wu didn’t protest.

Jake pulled the door open and felt a rush of
cold air.

Nobody turned around from the computer monitors.

Jake led Wu in front of the windows and pointed out at the layers of conveyors.

The distribution center was highly mechanized and running smoothly, with delivery trucks backing up to one side of the building, and airplanes loading and unloading along the other side. While parcels zoomed to where they had to go, it took a watchful office staff to make sure that nothing went wrong.

“Good work,” Jake told Wu in a loud voice. “The packages meet Customs requirements.”

“Thank you, sir,” Wu said.

“You may proceed.”

Jake wasn’t sure if what they were saying made any sense, or if the Chinese office staff could
understand what they were saying, but nobody questioned their presence.

“Let’s get a coffee,” Jake said, once again loudly enough for everyone to hear.

And he and Wu moved out of the room.

Jake and Wu headed outside as soon as they could and
joined a group of workers getting off their shift.

They followed the workers out through a security gate and onto a crowded sidewalk where people waited for city buses.

The airport seemed slightly outside of town, and they needed to get somewhere more central.

“Follow me,” Wu said, and squeezed onto a city bus along with a horde of people.

Jake stood a foot taller than the other passengers, and bowed his head to hide his differentiating features. He had never seen so many Chinese all in one place. The air was a torrent of babbling voices, and all he saw was a sea of black hair.

Outside the window that was smeared with rain, he watched the UPS symbol blend into the headlights of traffic. The enormous facility disappeared behind another massive building with large, illuminated oriental characters.

How was he going to get anywhere in this country?

He felt dizzy. Maybe it was the long flight, or the lack of a comfortable place to sleep.

He looked around for Wu, who stood calmly latched to a vertical pole contemplating space. Jake edged closer to him and wouldn’t leave his side.

He took a deep breath and tried to relax.

Here he was in the middle of the night in a crowded city somewhere in China.

Repetition helped Jake get the feel of the place.

City blocks were evenly spaced. The bus stopped frequently to let people get on and off. Most people returning home from work disappeared into large apartment complexes.

By the time they reached downtown, Jake didn’t understand the country but at least felt more comfortable there.

As the buildings grew taller and more grandiose, with pillars, fountains and porticos, he began to consider his financial situation.

He leaned down and whispered in Wu’s ear. “How are we going to pay for all this?”

“With money. The Chinese currency is called the
renmenbi
.”

“I only have a few dollars,” Jake said. “How will we get more money?”

“Relax,” Wu said. “It’s called an ATM machine. You stick your VISA card into it.”

“Oh, right.”

Jake could do that.

“Where is this bus taking us?” he asked Wu.

Wu had been studying a route posted by the side door and comparing it with an updating sign near the driver. “This bus heads for the railway station. I thought we could get our bearings there.”

“Right.”

They got off at the train station, a well-lit building that seemed open all night.

The rain had stopped, but only added to the humidity.

They ambled across the neatly laid stonework, Jake’s legs weary from the long day. The young and the old pulled rolling suitcases in and out of the building, a measure of calm on their faces.

For a moment, Jake got the impression that the city ran like one giant UPS facility, with people constantly on the move and everyone knowing exactly where they were going.

Inside the train station, they found a departures board. Thankfully it was in English. None of the destinations sounded familiar: Guangzhou, Donguan, Foshan, Zhaoqing.

“So, what does this tell us?” Jake asked.

Wu was scratching his head.

That was troubling. How could such a large city have major train service to so many destinations that neither he nor Wu had ever heard of?

“At least tell me this,” Jake said. “Are we in the north, the south, the east, the west, or the center of China?”

Wu shook his head. “I don’t particularly understand the language people are speaking.”

“You mean this might not be China?” Jake looked around the station. “If these people aren’t Chinese, what are they?”

“I want to say they’re Cantonese,” Wu said. “But I don’t see Hong Kong on the board.”

Jake would have noticed that.

“So let’s ask someone,” he suggested.

Wu nodded with determination.

The first few people he tried to stop didn’t even break their stride. A sweeper didn’t understand what he was saying.

Jake remembered his only other trip abroad. London had been a disorienting experience for the first few days until he got hold of a map. Once he could find streets on a map, it all fell into place.

“Can we buy a map?” he suggested.

Wu looked dubious. “I don’t see any stores open.”

“Let’s at least
get some money out,” Jake said.

Wu agreed, and they went to the nearest ATM. There was an English option, among other languages. They made smooth withdrawals from their respective accounts.

“You know what this means?” Wu said.

“What?”

“Now the U.S. can trace us and so can the Chinese.”

Jake studied the machine. There was a camera behind glass. “You mean our faces?”

“Yup. That,” Wu said, “and our credit cards.”

Jake recalled his visit to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. His contact, Calvin Stickler, had told him that China was a black box. Internal transactions and communications were beyond the reach of the NSA.

“At least the Chinese know where we are,” Jake said.

H
e looked at the red bills in his hands. They all had Mao Tse-Tung’s picture on them.

The communist icon didn’t fit with the swank storefronts and modern skyscrapers, but it did prove that they were in China.

“Why can’t you understand what people are saying?”

Wu seemed to be growing impatient with Jake.

“In China,” Wu explained, “there is a common written language, but the characters are pronounced differently in different parts of the country.”

Jake nodded. “You mean the Mandarin
/Cantonese split?”

“There are far more dialects and languages than that,” Wu said. “You can barely count the number of ethnic groups.”

Jake stared at the expressionless people streaming past. He failed to see the diversity that Wu was describing. “They all look Chinese to me.”

“Then you speak to them.”

Jake let it drop. He was exhausted. “Let’s just find a place to crash for the night. We can regroup in the morning and make a plan.”

“That’s not so easy,” Wu said. “Hotels require passports and they check for visas. They photocopy everything and send it in. I don’t even have a passport.”

Jake stared enviously at an enormous hotel opposite the train station.

“We can’t be the only people in China without
passports.”

“They take identity cards, too,” Wu said.

As if that helped.

“So,” Jake said. “Essentially we’re undocumented immigrants.”

“That’s right. And in a ‘Papers, please’ society.”

“How about traveling?” Jake asked. “Do we need to show passports to get on a train?”

“They’ll check your papers on the train.”

Jake felt paralyzed.

“We’ve got some cash now,” Wu said. “How about some food?”

For the first time, Jake realized he was famished.