Country Driving [165]
THE APPEARANCE OF WOMEN in this part of Lishui represented a new stage for the development zone. Every time I visited and drove through the future factory district, there was something new that caught my eye, some indication that progress had lurched another step forward. The bra ring factory was located on Suisong Road, and when I first drove there, in the summer of 2005, it was nothing but a dirt track. For some reason bus stop signs had already been planted—lonely metal markers with lists of destinations, most of which didn’t yet exist, and none of which would be served by public transport for another year. On that initial journey virtually everybody on Suisong Road was male. Most were construction workers, but there was also an early vanguard of entrepreneurs. These pioneers settled the west side of the street, facing the half-built factories, and most of their shops were made of cheap cinder blocks. They sold construction materials, and they stocked noodles, flour, vegetables, pork: simple food that catered to low-wage laborers. The only real stores—the ones with professional signs and recognizable brands—belonged to China Mobile and China Unicom. In new factory towns, cell phone shops usually appear early, because everybody is a migrant who needs to call home.
By the time I returned in October all the bus stop markers had been stolen. Workers were laying drainage pipe beneath Suisong Road, and the western strip of shops and restaurants had grown. There was now a printing store—the first business to sell something other than food, phone cards, and construction materials. The print shop specialized in company signs and employee ID tags, and its presence was an omen that machines were about to come to life. A few factories had already posted signs in front: American Geley Professional Electrical Engineering, New Year Glass Company, Prosperous and Safe Stainless Steel Company. In January, workers finally paved Suisong Road. Dozens of men moved down the street, smoothing the surface, but they left the manholes gaping. In new factory towns, manhole covers tend to be installed late, because people steal the metal plates and sell them for scrap, like the bus stop signs.
In February I saw a woman drive the front left wheel of her Honda into an open manhole. The car was undamaged; men ran out from nearby shops and lifted the vehicle out of the hole. By the next month the covers had finally been installed. They weren’t metal: a Shanghai-based company called Chunyi had created a new type of lid made of composite plastic, to foil thieves. For the first time, I could drive down Suisong Road without fear of ruining a tire, and it was also on this journey that I noticed women outnumbering men. It had happened all at once: most construction crews had moved on, and now the factory bosses hired predominately girls for the assembly lines. In the evenings, after most shifts were over, workers wandered the street in packs, many of them still dressed in their uniforms. Soon the shopping options changed: two shoe stores appeared, along with a big clothes shop whose year-round sign promised “Half Price!” There was also a medical clinic and a supermarket. A half dozen beauty parlors appeared on Suisong Road, and some of them had the red-tinged lights that suggest prostitution.
In the span of nine months the place had changed so profoundly that I could sense it with my eyes closed. At night came sounds of leisure, young people laughing and talking, and the daytime noises also took on a new character. For half a year the development zone had roared with construction: bulldozers, jackhammers, drills. This racket was fitful and erratic; a drill would whine for half a minute, and then a jackhammer would rumble, and then for a brief moment there would be silence. But the uneven syncopation ended with the factories. They had rhythm—their assembly lines hummed and sang with the regularity of a chorus.