LUNCH. APRIL, 2008.
So, these two guys, 45 minutes into the conversation about the hazard of cigarettes, the electoral college (how someday China will be the same with Tibet and Taiwan casting their votes for president, I say as I float my idea for a commonwealth) about cars (one proudly reports he owns a Buick) and about family (one has a two year-old daughter, the other’s daughter is 18), and about lots and lots, more than I would have expected — and Zhang Laoshi and me are at lunch, at 570. And they’re not pretty, and a lot doesn’t make sense, but it never does here, so that, at least, I’ve learned to accept. After 45 minutes of small talk I ask a general question.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a policeman.”
“Oh, really?”
So is the other one. The one with the 2 year-old, the Buick and the not-so-good English. He’s excited, though, when I tell him I can put him in touch with 16 million people. So he writes his cell phone number on my card. Everyone knows everyone, which is nice in such a small city of 18-20 million and 50,000 Americans. They know Director Wu, and, wouldn’t you know it, so do I. I pantomime how he put a gun to my head and how I promised to do anything he wanted.
They’re from the the police department’s euphemistically-named “public relations” department, which doesn’t mean PR at all, but, rather, they explain, community relations. They are in charge of liaisoning or outreaching to the American and European communities. How nice. I never knew we had our own representatives in Shanghai’s government, much less its police department.
And, they promise me, they’ll never ask me to do anything I wouldn’t want to do. Horse heads in your bed anyone? Perhaps a fish in the mail?
They don’t like 570 or French food or foreign food for that matter. Next time we dine it’ll be Cantonese, which is nice since I like garlic and shrimp too, and if I throw up in the bathroom, I’d prefer it to be seafood.
“Have we met?” I ask, wondering if either one of them, was, perhaps, the nice young man at the Maglev protest who asked me who I was taping for?
They’re concerned about terrorists. Isn’t everyone? I inquire. But I keep that thought to myself. I look under the table, though, just to make sure there aren’t any there and they seem to find that amusing too. I tell them about my friend who covered the attack on New York City and the day the World Trade Center fell down. Then I share with them an idea: that they be frank and blunt with their population so that when all hell breaks loose, people are somewhat prepared. American style color-coded anxiety.
But, just like our democracy that seems to be teetering on the brink of authoritarianism, they’re not too interested in what I have to sell. Seems this was just intended to be a get together so they could tell me what’s on their mind and see whether I was the sort of chap who might provide them with a wider social network than the cigarette-smoking cocktail crowd they are used to.
“Our cops eat donuts.” I inform them, gleefully. They still don’t like the French food. Too bad, since I get a discount. I hand Zhang Laoshi my VIP card that comes with a free espresso,
We men repose to the rest room, which is where boys over 40 go after two and a half hours of water and coffee drinking. I wave over one my new buddies, the fellow who speaks English better and had listened patiently to my explanation of why Nebraska and New Jersey would be awarding their electors inconsistent with the rest of the nation. I want him to see the picture on the wall with the 20 or 30 penises that the proprietor of the restaurant had shown me. I asked him the same question the proprietor asked me “which one are you?” We are now, after all, good friends, and I’m doing my darned best to warm up to my new sources.
“You know the difference between off the record, background, and deep background?” I ask. He does. Which is convenient. “And, the things that are your opinion, you want to go on tape with that?” He’d rather not, since it’s just his.
Zhang Laoshi reports as we walk away down Changle Lu that the nice young men in pedestrian clothing had insisted, while I was out of view, that they pay the discounted meal for the four of us that they didn’t like.
“Of course,” I said, this is business. “They also wanted to make sure you didn’t lose face.” I add. I explain what the woman from the LA Times had told me. Her aide, co-opted by the police in another city, had, in fact, told it to her – that you get coffee if they think you have a little to offer; a meal if they think you’re really valuable.
“I wanted you to meet them last year, before you went home.” Zhang says as we navigate the watch and DVD peddlers on Shanxi Nan Lu. Then she apologizes. She had been pressured, repeatedly, by her friend.
Three or four blocks later I ask her if her friend is a party member. Skull and Bones. So, she says maybe.
“City Committee or Yangpu.”
“Yangpu,” says Zhang Laoshi.
“They are scared,” I say. “You can see it in the press. Paranoid and scared.”
No, this is just how they rule.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” she says.
Long, long ago, Zhang made her peace and her pact with the Devil. There was no way out. Like the Mafia, once you join the Communist Party, you are in it for life. You have to attend every meeting.
I had been to one a couple years back. Didn’t understand a bloody thing, except for what I was able to observe. I do understand form, and, in China, that is often more important than substance. After six years, I realized more about the reality of the world in which she lived. It was like needing to go to church every once in a while, because you used to, or temple to say kaddish, because it was tradition. The party was a shadowy vague cloak over everything that did or didn’t happen. Like any true power, it didn’t need to show its face. And, when it did, it was subtle, and unapologetic. It bought lunch it didn’t like to eat, for people it thought it ought to meet, and talked about things it was trained to know, for periods of time that lasted, until it was ready to go.
I understood this. I had seen real power show its face, in private. I had seen it in the anger of a theatrical director when I was in college, in the political bosses of the Albany ward, and in the halls of the New York legislature where the lawyers spoke in clear tones. You needed to know the ways things were done. You didn’t need to know substance. That wasn’t important. You needed, as in any faith, to believe in things you knew were untrue. That people had done and said things that they would lie about if called to be accountable for them. That it was necessary for preservation of system. That individuals who believed they were upholding order rose through generational ranks to inherit it. To whom responsibility and accountability was never asked for, but granted.
Real power attracted attention. It didn’t petition for it. Unlike what Mao said, it didn’t come from the barrel of a gun either. By the time you have to tell people to trust you, if you are a banker, you have totally lost their trust. By the time you shoot, if you are a cop, the criminal has already taken over.
There was nothing to apologize for. I understood.