Country Driving. Peter Hessler
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the walls were decorated with one poster of a Ferrari Mondial and another of a Harley Davidson motorcycle. There was also a map of China, two portraits of Genghis Khan, and a shrine dedicated to Mao Zedong. When I asked about the shrine, the man said, “Mao was a liberator, a great leader, and a good man.” He added that all true Mongols keep portraits of Genghis Khan. On another wall hung a framed government prize that the man had received for paying his taxes on March 20, 1997. In rural homes I often saw prizes like this—sometimes people got awards for keeping their houses clean.
In Wushenqi, though, it seemed that any benefits of willow planting would be short-lived. A Chinese-born geographer named Jiang Hong was conducting research in the region, and she told me that the groundwater was dropping. The desert simply couldn’t support any additional agriculture, not even the willow trees. But Jiang Hong had also noticed that locals remained supportive of the planting project, despite the fact that they knew about the dwindling groundwater. This was different from the past, when there had always been resistance to heavy-handed government campaigns. Back then, projects tended to be abstract and collective: Mao would declare that China’s productivity needed to surpass that of Great Britain or the United States, and a herdsman in a place like Wushenqi was reluctant to destroy his environment for such goals. But ever since Deng Xiaoping, the economy had been driven primarily by individual motivation, and rewards were suddenly tangible. And the new mobility meant that many people had caught a glimpse of a better life.
“They see more of the outside world now,” Jiang Hong said. “They can visit the cities, and they see things on television. They want to have more of the material benefits that they see.” In a sense, people had become more worldly, but this contact with the outside was disorienting. The frame of reference no longer consisted of the limited resources available in Wushenqi, but rather the infinite products available in the city. By learning more about other places, residents had lost touch with their immediate environment.
And decades of political instability had warped people’s mindsets. “When things change so quickly, people don’t have time to gain information about their environment,” Jiang Hong said. “If you look back at Chinese history from 1949, policies have changed so often. When the reforms took hold in the 1980s, people saw that as an opportunity—and you have to take the opportunity now because it won’t last. People tend to have a short-term view of development.”
For this generation, the economic landscape had become as unstable as the Ordos sands. Everything shifted: the rules, the business practices, the challenges of daily life. There was always some new situation to figure out, and it was hard for people to get their bearings. Often the ones who reacted quickly without thinking were the most successful. Sustainability was a luxury that few could afford to worry about, especially in places where young people were likely to leave anyway. Longterm planning made no sense: the goal was gain some profit today before you found yourself overwhelmed by the next wave of change.
AFTER LEAVING WUSHENQI , I returned across the Great Wall and headed south back to Yulin. I wasn’t sure how much longer I wanted to stay on the road; the nights were growing cold and I could feel a fatigue settling in. From the beginning I had planned to divide my journey into two parts, so I could see the countryside in both autumn and spring. In Yulin I intended to rest—I hoped to spend a couple of nights in a bed, eat good meals, and decide how much farther to chase the wall. But in the end the local government made the decision for me.
It was the first city I had seen in weeks. The population was about one hundred thousand, small by Chinese standards, and the town had a pleasant, sleepy air. An old city wall still surrounded the downtown, where streets were narrow; the auto boom hadn’t yet touched this place. I checked into the best hotel, took a shower, and lay down for a nap. Almost immediately the telephone rang. It was the hotel receptionist, and she told me that there was somebody in the lobby who wanted to see me.
“He’s from the government,” she said.
Of all the ways to get woken up, that was one of the worst. I dressed and went downstairs. The man was in his thirties, dressed in a dark suit, and his face wore a tight thin smile that said: Trouble.
“I understand that you’re a journalist,” he said.
He asked to see my passport, residence permit, and journalist accreditation, so I handed them over. He studied the documents in silence, jotting notes onto a pad of paper. At last he looked up. “You know, in China we have a law that requires a journalist to apply to a place before he does any reporting,” he said. “You’ve broken this law.”
“I’m just here to see the Great Wall,” I said. “I don’t need to talk to anybody in the government. I’m not planning to interview anybody here in Yulin.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t matter. You still need to apply.”
I apologized and told him that in the future I’d be sure to apply in advance. “I’ll leave tomorrow if you want,” I said.
The man’s smile tightened a little more. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now,” he said.
“Can I have lunch?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you have to go immediately.”
He waited in the lobby while I packed, and then he followed me all the way to the City Special. He was accompanied by a cop, to make sure I left town. From Yulin I drove south to Yan’an, six hours away; it was a cradle of the Chinese Communist Revolution, where Mao and other leaders had built their base in the late 1930s. Nowadays, Yan’an had become a tourist destination, and I hoped to check into a hotel without attracting attention. But this time the police appeared before I had even finished unpacking. They already knew where I had come from, and what kind of car I was driving; a warning must have been sent out across the province. The Yan’an cops told me to keep moving, and that was when I decided to abandon the Great Wall until spring.
I took the highway back to Beijing. A new toll expressway had just been built across Shanxi Province, and after weeks of rural roads it felt like flying. The surface was perfect; there was almost no traffic; I flashed past miles of harvested corn. At Capital Motors I returned the City Special with exactly one-eighth of a tank of gas, no new dents, and a backseat full of empty Coke bottles. In the office Mr. Wang was smoking a cigarette beneath the performance ratings sign:
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION RATING: 90%
EFFICIENCY RATING: 97%
APPROPRIATE SERVICEDICTION RATING: 98%
SERVICE ATTITUDE RATING: 99%
He studied my rental papers, checking off items and entering them into a computer. When he came to the mileage, he put the cigarette down.
“Look how far this is!” he said. “Where did you go?”
I could have claimed that all my driving had been within the Beijing city limits, but it would have been a shameless lie: the City Special had accumulated over 2,200 miles. At first I tried to be vague—I told Mr.
Wang that I had driven west.
“Where exactly?” he said.
“Hebei, Shanxi,” I said.
“That’s all?”
“Well, Shaanxi, too,” I said. “And Inner Mongolia. But not too far in Inner Mongolia. Mostly along the Shanxi border.”
“Waah!” Mr. Wang exclaimed. “Did you go by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that you’re not supposed to leave Beijing?”
“I thought it would be OK as long as I was careful.”
“Did you stay on paved roads?”
“Most of the time.”
“You’re not supposed to drive off the pavement,” Mr. Wang said.
“I