Country Driving [140]
Finally the township cadre called on Wei Ziqi. Wei Ziqi stood up and spoke one sentence. “Gande bucuo,” he said. “She’s done a fine job.” And then he sat back down again.
AFTER THAT THERE WERE no surprises. Three days later, they held the vote, with every member listing his top candidates, and the Party Secretary’s name appeared on fifteen ballots. Wei Ziqi received ten nominations. Standard protocol called for voting to go to a second round, with choices limited to the top five names, and Wei Ziqi came in fourth. The Party Secretary won, and the Vice Party Secretary took second, which meant that both positions were retained. Third place became the village’s Party Committee Member. Wei Ziqi was left with nothing—he failed to pick up even a low-ranking office.
He learned that one of his supposed adherents, a farmer who lived in the lower village and claimed to admire Wei Ziqi, had in fact served as a spy in the campaign. The farmer had pretended to back Wei Ziqi, attending all the dinners and late-night meetings; and meanwhile at every step he secretly briefed the Party Secretary. With this knowledge the woman was able to track the campaign, finding ways to convince key voters. As for how she managed to convince them, nobody could say for certain. Wei Ziqi refused to speculate—he was tired of the politics.
He had realized it was hopeless the moment the township cadre gave his speech. “Mei banfa,” Wei Ziqi said. “There was nothing I could do.” In his opinion the man’s words represented the turning point, even more so than the actions of the spy. And the speech was the reason that Wei Ziqi said so little when asked to comment about the Party Secretary’s performance. That was his final calculation of the campaign—at the last moment, after all the secrecy and planning, he hedged his bets.
FOR A SPELL WEI Ziqi drank heavily. He claimed the loss didn’t matter, and he often said that he had campaigned only because he had been recruited to do so; but in truth the defeat left him depressed. He often remembered the fortune-teller’s warning: Avoid politics at all costs. But Wei Ziqi hadn’t listened, and now he paid for his pride; he swore that never again would he challenge local authority. The only way he would run for office was if the Party Secretary retired and approved Wei Ziqi as her successor. “If she supports me, then I’ll do it,” he said. “If she doesn’t, then I don’t have a chance.”
Their relations were strained on a personal level, but Wei Ziqi believed she wouldn’t seek revenge. He said she still feared his abilities, and she remembered what had happened when Wei Ziqi dropped off the Idiot at the township government. In Wei Ziqi’s opinion, the memory of that action was critical to his security in the village. “If somebody goes to a higher authority like that, it causes a problem for her,” he said. “Others don’t do this because they don’t really understand the policies and the law. I understand because I studied the law.”
In 2007, the Communist Party started a national campaign called “Develop Modern Agriculture.” They hoped to introduce new technology and management strategies to the countryside, and they also wanted to give rural cadres a glimpse of city life. In Sancha, that year’s annual Party junket took the members to Dalian, a major city on the northeastern coast near the Korean peninsula. For Wei Ziqi, and nearly everybody else in the delegation, it was the first time they had ever flown in an airplane. The Air China flight was delayed by five hours and it was after midnight when they finally departed.
For half a week the Sancha Party members toured Dalian. Every night they ate seafood, the local specialty, and during the days they were taken to see various tourist sites and examples of modern infrastructure. Dalian is one of the most prosperous places in northern China, and it’s also one of the best planned, with elevated highways that ease congestion.