The nongmin don’t have iPods. The migrants from the countryside are easy to spot: tanned, burned faces; bulging nylon net bags with faded stripes; patched cast-off clothes; strange, stiff shoes. But it’s the look on their faces that really gives them away. They are so lost. I fit in better here than they do.
Sometimes I want to say to these kids, what are you doing here? You’re going to end up living in a shantytown in a refrigerator box, and for what? So you can pick through junked computer parts for gold and copper wire? Do “foot massage” at some chicken girl joint? Really, you’re better off staying home.
Like I’m one to talk. I didn’t stay home either.
When I’m about fifteen minutes away from Mati, I try to call Lao Zhang, thinking, maybe I’ll see if we can meet at the jiaozi place, because I haven’t had anything to eat today but a leftover slice of bad Mr. Pizza for breakfast.
Instead of a dial tone, I get that stupid China Mobile jingle and the message that I’m out of minutes.
Oh, well. It’s not that hard to find Lao Zhang in Mati Village.
First I stop at the jiaozi place. It’s Lao Zhang’s favorite restaurant in Mati. Mine too. The dumplings are excellent, it’s cheap as hell, and I’ve never gotten sick after eating there.
By now it’s after six P.M., and the restaurant is packed. I don’t even know what it’s called, this jiaozi place. It’s pretty typicaclass="underline" a cement block faced with white tile. For some reason, China went through a couple of decades when just about every small public building was covered in white tile, like it’s all a giant bathroom.
The restaurant is a small square room with plastic tables and chairs. There’s a fly-specked Beijing Olympics poster on one wall and a little shrine against another-red paper with gold characters stuck on the wall, a gilded Buddha, some incense sticks, and a couple pieces of dusty plastic fruit on a little table. The place reeks of fried dough, boiled meat, and garlic.
Seeing how this is Mati Village, most of the customers are artists, though you also get a few farmers and some of the local business-owners, like the couple who run the gas station. But mostly it’s people like “Sloppy” Song. Sloppy is a tall woman who looks like she’s constructed out of wires, with thick black hair that trails down her back in a braid with plaits the size of king snakes. Who knows why she’s called “Sloppy”? Sometimes Chinese people pick the weirdest English names for themselves. I met this one guy who went by “Motor.” It said something about his essential nature, he told me.
Sloppy’s here tonight, sitting at a table, slurping the juice out of her dumpling and waving her Zhonghua cigarette at the woman sitting across from her. I don’t know this woman. She looks a little rich for this place-sleek hair and makeup, nice clothes. Must be a collector. Sloppy does assemblage sculpture and collage pieces, and they sell pretty well, even with the economy sucking as much as it does.
“Yili, ni hao,” Sloppy calls out, seeing me enter. “You eating here?”
“No, just looking for Lao Zhang.”
“Haven’t seen him. This is Lucy Wu.”
“Ni hao, pleased to meet you,” I say, trying to be polite.
Lucy Wu regards me coolly. She’s one of these Prada babes-all done up in designer gear, perfectly polished.
“Likewise,” she says. “You speak Chinese?”
I shrug. “A little.”
This is halfway between a lie and the truth. After two years, I’m not exactly fluent, but I get around. “You speak Mandarin like some Beijing street kid,” Lao Zhang told me once, maybe because I’ve got that Beijing accent, where you stick Rs on the end of everything like a pirate.
“Your Chinese sounds very nice,” she says with that smug, phony courtesy.
She has a southern accent; her consonants are soft, slightly sibilant. Dainty, almost.
“You’re too polite.”
“Lucy speaks good English,” Sloppy informs me. “Not like me.”
“Now you’re too polite,” says Lucy Wu. “My English is very poor.”
I kind of doubt that.
“Are you an art collector?” I ask in English.
“Art dealer.” She smiles mischievously. “Collecting is for wealthier people than I.”
Her English is excellent.
“She has Shanghai gallery,” Sloppy adds.
“Wow, cool,” I say. “Hey, I’d better go. If you see Lao Zhang, can you tell him I’m looking for him? My phone’s dead.”
Lucy Wu sits up a little straighter, then reclines in a perfect, posed angle. “Lao Zhang? Is that Zhang Jianli?”
Sloppy nods. “Right.”
Lucy smiles at me, revealing tiny white teeth as perfect as a doll’s. “Jianli and I are old friends.”
“Really?” I say.
“Yes.” She looks me up and down, and I can feel myself blushing, because I know how I must look. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. I was hoping to catch up with him while I’m here. I’ve heard wonderful things about his recent work. You know, Jianli hasn’t gotten nearly enough recognition as an artist.”
“Maybe that’s not so important to Lao Zhang,” Sloppy mutters.
Lucy giggles. “Impossible! All Chinese artists want fame. Otherwise, how can they get rich?”
She reaches into her tiny beaded bag, pulls out a lacquer card case, and hands me a card in polite fashion, holding it out with both hands. “When you see him, perhaps you could give him this.”
“Sure.”
What a bitch, I think. Then I tell myself that’s not fair. Just because she’s tiny, pretty, and perfectly put together, it doesn’t mean she’s a bitch.
It just means I hate her on principle.
I order some takeout and head to Lao Zhang’s place.
Lao Zhang’s probably working, I figure, walking down Xingfu Lu, one of the two main streets in Mati Village. When he gets into it, he paints for hours, all day, fueled by countless espressos-he’s got his own machine. He forgets to eat sometimes, and I’m kind of proud of myself for thinking of bringing dinner, for doing something nice for him, like a normal person would do. It’s been hard for me the last few years, remembering to do stuff like that.
Maybe I’m finally getting better.
As I’m thinking this, I stumble on a pothole in the rutted road. Pain shoots up my leg.
“Fuck!”
I can barely see, it’s so dark.
There aren’t exactly streetlights in Mati Village, only electric lanterns here and there that swing in any good wind and only work about half the time, strung up on storefronts and power poles. Right now they dim and flicker. There’s problems with electricity sometimes. Not so much in central Beijing or Shanghai, but in those “little” cities you’ve never heard of, places with a few million people out in the provinces somewhere. And in villages like this, on the fringes of the grid.
But the little market on the corner of Lao Zhang’s alley is decorated with tiny Christmas lights.
I buy a couple cold bottles of Yanjing beer (my favorite) and Wahaha water (the label features this year’s perky winner of the Mongolian Cow Yogurt Happy Girl contest) and turn down the alley.
Lao Zhang lives in one of the old commune buildings, red brick, covered in some places with red wash, surrounded by a red wall. The entrance to Lao Zhang’s compound has two sculptures on either side, so there’s no mistaking it. One is a giant fish painted in Day-Glo colors. The other is a big empty Mao jacket. No Mao, just the jacket.