Country Driving [134]
I drove the Xiali back to the city. We had to stop at the gas station down the street, because the owner had made sure the car’s tank was dry as a bone when it left his hands. I asked Wei Ziqi why the dealer had been so reluctant to sign the contract.
“I don’t know,” Wei Ziqi said. “It seemed a little strange.”
“What will you do if there’s a problem?”
“I’ll talk to Mr. Yuan,” he said.
Another friend helped him drive from Beijing back to Sancha. Later that afternoon I rented a Jetta and headed out to the village. When I arrived, Wei Ziqi was in the village lot, wiping down the Xiali. He had parked beneath the only shade tree, and the pockmarked hood was so clean it almost shone. Wei Ziqi was beaming, too—it was the happiest he’d looked in a long time. When I saw Cao Chunmei, I asked her what she thought of the Xiali. She shook her head and said, “What a terrible car!”
FROM THE BEGINNING CAO Chunmei had opposed the purchase. She said they didn’t need a car, and it was too expensive; the family still had loans at the bank and with relatives. But the real reason for Cao Chunmei’s opposition was that an automobile represented freedom. “He already does whatever he wants,” she told me. “He goes into Huairou, he goes drinking with his friends. If he has a car, then it’ll be even easier for him to do that.” She reacted in a similar way to the village rumors that Wei Ziqi should run for Party Secretary. “I don’t want him to become Party Secretary,” Cao Chunmei told me bluntly. “I think it’ll turn into a big hassle. I see how busy the current Party Secretary is. If Wei Ziqi gets busier dealing with the village affairs, then he won’t have time to take care of things around here.”
Despite Cao Chunmei’s distaste for local politics, she had decided that she wanted to join the Party herself. In some ways it was surprising—her Buddhist beliefs seemed incompatible with the Communists, who had always scorned religion. But Cao Chunmei’s interests in the Party weren’t philosophical, or even political: she simply wanted to be part of a group, and she wanted to go places. “They get to take a good trip every summer,” she said. “They get gifts and things like that. It just seems like it would be interesting to join.” For Cao Chunmei, success had become profoundly isolating; she was responsible for much of the business’s drudge work, and even the solace of Buddhism was something she experienced alone. It was the opposite of Wei Ziqi, whose every step led to more guanxi, more power within the village, more contact with the outside world.
He also demanded more authority in the family. When Cao Chunmei began to talk about joining the Party, Wei Ziqi flatly refused. “There’s no need,” he told her, and left it at that. He rarely felt the urge to explain his decisions to his wife, and he kept his plans to himself. Whenever I asked Cao Chunmei about the village’s political rumors, she claimed that she didn’t know any more than I did. “Wei Ziqi won’t tell me anything,” she said. “He’ll do what he wants. I don’t control him.” That was her typical response to conflicts: Wo bu guan. I don’t control it. Her dream of Party membership, like the plan to start her own business, was abandoned quietly.
LATER THAT YEAR, AFTER Wei Ziqi had become more comfortable with the car, he drove to Huairou and acquired a new name for his son. Like virtually all of Wei Ziqi’s projects, it wasn’t mentioned until it was finished. One Friday afternoon he picked up Wei Jia from school and informed the boy that from now on he would be known as Wei Xiaosong.
In China it isn’t unusual for a name to be changed, especially if the person is a child or a young adult. Wei Ziqi had done this himself: originally he had been called Wei Zongguo. It’s the kind of patriotic name that was common in the countryside for babies born during the Cultural Revolution—guo means “nation.” In 1993, when Wei Ziqi was living in the city, he changed the name as part of his early attempt to become