Country Driving [189]
When the weather was good, I went for long runs in the hills south of town, through terraces of tangerine groves. The fruit in this region is wonderful—that’s another reason I enjoyed spending time there. I found a decent Sichuanese restaurant and a first-rate noodle shop, and I explored the towns along the expressway. I liked having regular routines, and I liked the boomtown rush, the energy that comes from so many people on the move. And there was invariably something surreal about these trips to the south. Whenever I flew from Beijing and the plane touched down, a text message immediately appeared on my cell phone:
Welcome to the home of one of China’s ten most vital economies:
Wenzhou. Here in the pioneering hometown of “Daring
Trailblazers, Harmonious Citizens,” the Wenzhou City Municipal
Communist Party Committee sincerely hopes that you find
friendship, business opportunities, and success.
On one flight I met Mao Zedong. It was the first Beijing-Wenzhou departure of the morning, the 7:30 Air China special, and the moment I got to my seat I fell asleep. As usual, the flight was full of businessmen and cadres. While they were boarding I dozed fitfully, and at one point I half awoke and saw, as if through a fog, a passanger who bore a remarkable resemblance to the Chairman. But I dismissed it as a dream, at least until the plane took off and I heard two flight attendants talking.
“The actor who plays Chairman Mao is back there!” one of them said.
“Which row?”
“Twenty-five!”
He had the middle seat, wedged between two Wenzhou businessmen, who had conked out like nearly everybody else on the flight. But the actor who played Chairman Mao was completely alert. He wore a neat gray suit, a red tie, and stage makeup—his face glowed with unnatural brightness. His teeth gleamed, too, and his hair had been dyed black and brushed away from his forehead, the way Mao used to do it. He even had a prosthetic mole on the left side of his chin. Every time somebody walked past on their way to the bathroom, they did a double take: Mao Zedong, sitting in economy class, seat 25E.
After we landed in Wenzhou, a bus transferred all passengers from the plane to the terminal. The bus was even more crowded than the plane, and I found myself pressed against Chairman Mao. I introduced myself and gave him a business card; he fished one of his own out of a pocket. It listed no fewer than seven official titles:
Jin Yang, The Actor Who Plays the Role of the Great Leader Mao Zedong
Director, Phoenix Cultural and Artistic Center
Director-General, China International Film Company, Ltd.
Vice-Manager, Beijing Strong and Prosperous International Martial Arts Cultural Development Company
Business Director, Beijing Film Research Institute
Honorary Director, Zhonghua Societal University Film Institute
High-Level Advisor, China Red Dragonfly Group
Chief Inspector, China Red Dragonfly Business and Cultural Center
He was traveling to Wenzhou in order to film a miniseries for China Central Television. They planned to tell the story of an incident from the 1940s, when the Red Army clashed with Japanese invaders in Zhejiang. Jin Yang said that for the past decade he had played the Chairman in movies and television shows. He smiled when he read my business card.
“Oh, you’re a journalist,” he said. “There was a famous American journalist named Edgar Snow who was friends with Chairman Mao.”
I was well aware of Edgar Snow, whose history is a cautionary tale to any Missouri native who writes about China. Back in the 1930s, Snow had been a favorite of Mao and Zhou