Country Driving [131]
While waiting for Wei Ziqi’s contact to arrive, we wandered around the Beijing Old Car Transaction Market. It’s located on the city’s southern outskirts, where dusty lots sprawl amid cheap apartment blocks. This is Beijing’s biggest used-car exchange—on any given day, as many as twenty thousand vehicles are offered for sale. Some permanent dealerships stock high-end models, but most sellers are individuals who pay twenty-five cents an hour for the right to park their cars in the dirt lot. They scrawl makeshift ads on strips of cardboard: “2003 model, one owner. All registrations legal.” Paperwork is a prominent selling point—often that’s the first thing people mention, because buyers worry about passing inspection. Owners give the age of a car in months, the way people do with babies. “December, 1998,” one woman with a red Xiali said to Wei Ziqi. “That’s basically the same as a 1999!” To the Chinese, usage matters more than model, which is why they track the months.
On the day we visited, it was hot and dusty, and apparently nobody had thought of washing their cars. Virtually every vehicle was caked with dirt, and there seemed to be a competition for the most hideous seat covers. Owners had to stay near their cars, in case customers walked by, and people dealt with the boredom by playing cards and Chinese chess. Sometimes an owner was sprawled in the backseat, sleeping. Almost nobody openly named a price; if you asked, they invariably responded, “How much do you want to pay?” A major selling point was the inclusion of a spare and a tire jack. Another common sales pitch was san xiang: “Three compartments.” Owners called it out proudly—“Three compartments! Three compartments!”—and I asked Wei Ziqi about the meaning. “It means the car has front doors, back doors, and a trunk,” he explained.
“But that’s obvious. Why do they have to say it?”
At last it dawned on me that nobody in the market had the faintest idea what he was doing. How many people in China had experience buying or selling a car? They were all flying blind, and Wei Ziqi did his best to go with the flow. He looked at a few Xialis, but he was too intimidated to ask the price. When we passed a Citroën, he brightened and said, “Wastes gas!” He looked immensely relieved when his contact finally arrived.
The man’s name was Yuan Shaochun, and he wore a white tank top, khaki shorts, leather loafers, and black socks pulled up to his kneecaps. He carried a fake leather money bag in one hand and a dirty white towel in the other. He gasped in the midsummer heat—he had a fat belly and short bowlegs that seemed on the verge of collapse. He used the towel to mop sweat off his neck. The moment the man arrived, Wei Ziqi whipped out his Red Plum Blossoms—red pack, city use only—and offered Mr. Yuan a smoke. The man shook his head disdainfully, wiped his neck, and took out a pack of Zhongnanhai Lights. He didn’t offer one to Wei Ziqi. When he saw me standing there, he cocked his thumb: “Who’s the foreigner?”
Mr. Yuan became more friendly when he learned that I had written books. He told me he had guanxi with a publishing company, and perhaps all of us could get together and work something out. “Maybe they can