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.”