Country Driving [172]
It was the first time I had ever seen a patrol car in the development zone. Two cops got out, and they climbed the ramp to the box office. One of them asked Liu if the troupe had registered.
“No,” Liu replied. “But we’re just a small troupe. We’ll only be here one night.”
The cops conferred for a few minutes, and then one of them turned to Liu. “OK,” he said. “But make sure you don’t do anything disorderly.”
After the cops were gone, Liu began his spiel: “W-o-r-k-e-rs and b-o-s-s-es!” Men in blue Sunenew factory jumpsuits gathered in front, staring at the marquee and its bikinis, and soon they began to buy tickets. The real women remained out of sight, as usual. Earlier in the day, I had asked Liu Changfu about the nudity. “It’s expected for variety shows to have something like this,” the skinny man explained. “Before people buy tickets, they’ll ask, ‘Is your performance of the more open kind?’ We have to be able to say yes. It’s really only a small thing, what she does at the end, but it’s enough for us to say, ‘Yes, our performance is open.’”
I asked if Liu’s wife ever performed the final strip. She was the short fat woman who, on the night I watched the show, had performed in a bra and panties, dancing out of rhythm and staring at the floor.
“No way!” Liu said, eyes wide. “I wouldn’t like that. My brother’s wives don’t do that either. It would be bad, you know, if a close relative had to do that. So the other woman does it every time.”
In the hierarchy of the Red Star Acrobatic and Artistic Troupe, that was the lowest position: the wife of the most distant cousin. Her name was Wang, and she was twenty-three years old. She was the only member of the troupe who was pretty, with dark eyes and a gentle expression; I never heard her say much. But during one of the tent-raisings she approached me shyly. “Do you have an American dollar?” she asked.
I had one in my wallet and I showed it to her.
“I’ve never seen one before,” she said. “How much is it worth?”
“About eight yuan.”
“If I give you ten, can I have it?”
It felt like a stripper’s tip—I handed over the bill and told her not to worry about it. She beamed and showed it off to the others, proud of the foreign souvenir. On the second evening, before they started the performance, I said good-bye and drove away. Liu Changfu was right: it’s the kind of show you don’t need to see twice. I had grown too fond of the troupe to sit through it again.
IN MARCH OF 2006, in the span of a week, the bra ring factory acquired an official logo, a Web site, business cards, and sample books. A Wenzhou designer prepared all of it for a fee of less than eight hundred dollars, and for the most part he copied the templates directly from competitors and other companies. He gave them an English name, too: the Lishui Yashun Underdress Fittings Industry Co., Ltd. On the company Web site, the designer posted a photograph of a sparkling multistory complex that had absolutely nothing to do with their facilities in Lishui. The Web site also noted that they had “many years” experience in the manufacture of bra rings, and it described the Machine with particular pride: “German import completely automatic production equipment.”
The company’s theme color was hot pink. On the Web site, the description of the Machine featured a hot pink border, and hot pink bubbles bounced around the home page. The sample books were the same color, and they featured photographs of sultry foreign women wearing bras and halter tops. Even the bosses’ business cards had been printed in pink. They were decorated with the new company logo:
When I first saw the design,