Country Driving [143]
In the southeast, one of the new routes was the Jinliwen Expressway. The road would begin in Wenzhou, not far from the coast, and it would run west and north for 145 miles, connecting the cities of Lishui and Jinhua. Much of the route paralleled the outdated National Highway 330, and on my first trip I drove the Santana along the old two-lane road, past miles of construction. Some parts of the new expressway were mostly finished; other sections were still in the early stages, with rows of cement pylons running along the banks of the Ou River. There were workers everywhere—total investment was over 1.5 billion dollars, and it was a priority project, which in China means that construction continues day and night. Driving along the old road, looking out the window, I saw workers hauling rebar, and mixing cement, and scurrying nimbly across webbed scaffolding. Sometimes a half dozen men knelt in a line, using hand tools to smooth a stretch of fresh-laid roadway. They worked patiently, moving backward step by step, and their steady progress represented the first traffic of the Jinliwen Expressway. At night the glow of welding torches could be seen from miles away, an intimation of the headlights that would someday sweep across this road.
I had come to southern Zhejiang Province in search of a city. Years ago, my first long driving trip had followed relics of the past, the stretches of the Great Wall that went through dying villages; and I had found a home in Sancha because I wanted some link to the countryside of today. But here in Zhejiang I was thinking about the future. In southern China, nothing changes the landscape faster than a new expressway: farmland disappears, and factories sprout up, and entrepreneurs and migrants pour into town. I was curious about this early rush—I wanted to know what life is like for the pioneering factory owners and workers. But first I had to find a city, and the Jinliwen Expressway would be my guide. The new highway was scheduled to open by the end of 2005, and after that these places would boom.
There had already been several generations of road building along this route. It’s rugged countryside, following the banks of the Ou River, where most hillsides are too steep for crop terracing. Much of this region was inaccessible until the original version of Highway 330 was completed in 1934, during China’s first wave of modern road construction. Back then they had also looked to the example of the United States, and American engineers oversaw much of the early work across the country. Those packed-dirt roads were typically suited for speeds of only thirty miles per hour, and many of them were damaged or destroyed during the war. In southern Zhejiang, Highway 330 was finally paved in the late 1970s, and it wasn’t improved significantly until 1987.
Even then, when the Reform period was still in the early stages, the new road had an immediate effect. It transformed villages along its path, especially in the regions close to Wenzhou, where people traditionally raised rice and fish. With access to the new Highway 330, they left farming behind, and over time they came to make the most unexpected things. Driving northwest from Wenzhou, I sometimes could see the products from the road. In Xiaxie, a village ten miles outside of the city, I passed endless rows of playground equipment. It was stored in bulk everywhere beside the street: piles of swing sets, big stacks of red plastic slides, long lines of blue and yellow monkey bars. There wasn’t a child in sight, and most buildings had the industrial squareness of factories. I pulled over to chat with locals, who told me that making playground equipment had become the local specialty. Xiaxie was part of Qiaoxia Township,