Country Driving [132]
At the moment he had nothing to sell. He was there to help Wei Ziqi find a car, and he led us around the lot, brandishing his sweat rag and complaining about the budget. “You’re not going to find anything for fifteen thousand,” he said. “If you want something from the year 2000 or later, it’s going to be twenty thousand at least.” Periodically he stopped to criticize a parked car. “That one was definitely in an accident,” he said, after inspecting a green Xiali. “The owner’s lying about that.”
Wei Ziqi paused at a white Xiali sedan. It was a decommissioned cab; the taxi sign was still stuck to the roof. According to Beijing law, any Xiali that had been used as a taxi could stay on the road for only six years. The city instituted these rules for reasons of safety and pollution, but they were also a boon to the auto industry.
The man with the white Xiali told Wei Ziqi that the cab was five years old. “You can drive it for one more year in Beijing,” he said. “After that you can still use it in the suburbs.”
“Has this car ever had an accident?” Wei Ziqi asked. He had picked up on that question from watching Mr. Yuan.
“It’s a taxi!” the salesman retorted. “If you want a car that’s never had an accident, don’t look at taxis!” He shook his head and continued. “Almost all the Xiali cabs are red,” he said. “There are so few white ones that they don’t get checked as much. Cops are always pulling over the red Xialis and checking the papers. You won’t get noticed in a car like this.”
But Mr. Yuan advised against the Invisible Xiali. He had a better option: a friend in the suburbs who specialized in vehicles from bankrupt work units. If a work unit registers an automobile, it can remain in use for fifteen years, regardless of how bad the condition happens to be. The trick is to find a car that’s outlived its company; fortunately, countless state-owned firms have gone belly-up during the Reform years. Later that week we embarked on a mission to find the Bankrupt Xiali.
THE FIRST SIGN OF an imminent deal was when Mr. Yuan began accepting Wei Ziqi’s cigarettes. At the auto market he hadn’t touched a Red Plum Blossom; now he took them graciously. That was also a pretty good indication that he had some stake in the sale. His shop—the Magnificent Cigarette and Liquor Emporium—was located directly across the street from the car dealer, who ran a repair garage. We were fifteen miles southwest of downtown Beijing, in a place called Fangshan. It’s home to one of the capital’s largest cement plants, and white dust covered everything in the neighborhood, as fine and light as a cold-snap snow.
The dealer had parked the car in front of his garage. The red Xiali dated to October of 1998; the plates were fully legal. Technically the vehicle still belonged to a tourism firm called the Beijing Shanqili Guest Services Company, but that organization had gone bankrupt and now existed only in paperwork that fit neatly inside the glove compartment. The car was unwashed. Like everything else, it was sprinkled with cement dust; the dealer used a dirty rag to wipe off the windshield. The first thing he showed Wei Ziqi was the trunk: a spare and a jack, no extra charge! “It’s never had an accident,” the dealer said. But there was a scar across the hood and dimpled dents covered the lower body like smallpox. The dealer said we could do a test-drive, and