Country Driving [222]
the government of Wuhu: For information about Chery, I interviewed a number of workers and company officials in Wuhu, including Lin Zhang, the general manager for Chery’s International Division, and Yin Tongyao, the company president. The company’s strategy of asking forgiveness rather than permission was explained to me by Chu Changjun, the Communist Party Deputy Secretary of the Wuhu Economic and Technological Development Area. I also spoke with John Dinkel and other foreign consultants and partners. For more information, see my article about Chery:
Hessler, Peter. “Car Town.” The New Yorker, September 26, 2005.
one step away from the complacency that comes with happiness: There are various and often conflicting explanations of the spelling of Chery’s name. Here I’ve relied on what company officials told me in Wuhu.
In Genghis Khan’s military: For background on Genghis Khan and the rise of the Mongols:
Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.
Yin Geng’s words: Many of these quotations are from David Spindler’s unpublished research. He has published an article about Altan Khan and the “Raid of the Scorned Mongol Women”:
Spindler, David. “A Twice-Scorned Mongol Woman, the Raid of 1576, and the Building of the Brick Great Wall.” Ming Studies 60 (Fall 2009).
earliest known maps: For a discussion of the earliest known Chinese maps, and the impact of Pei Xiu, see the following article. (In English sources his name is often rendered as Pei Hsiu.):
Hsu, Mei-Ling. “The Han Maps and Early Chinese Cartography.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 68, issue 1 (March 1978): pp. 45–60.
cartography developed out of astronomy: For background on the history of Western cartography, and contrasts in development with Chinese mapmaking, I interviewed Patricia Seed, a historian at the University of California, Irvine. Her article provides an introduction to early European maps of Africa:
Seed, Patricia. “The Cone of Africa…Took Shape in Lisbon.” Humanities 29, no. 6 (November/December 2008).
for Lu Xun:
Roberts, Claire, and Geremie R. Barmé, editors. The Great Wall of China. Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 2006. Page 24.
“more like a river than a barrier”:
Waldron, Arthur. “Scholarship and Patriotic Education: The Great Wall Conference, 1994.” China Quarterly 143 (September 1995): p. 846.
we stuck the severed heads: This quotation is from David Spindler’s research.
“Time seems to have lost all power”: For background on Aurel Stein in China:
Walker, Annabel. Aurel Stein: Pioneer of the Silk Road. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998.
BOOK II: THE VILLAGE
Part I
Even as far back as the seventeenth century: For background on the book culture of imperial China:
Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida. Education and Popular Literacy in Ch’ing China. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1979.
texts from the late Ming dynasty: This detail comes from David Spindler’s research.
in AD 1615, a crew of 2,400 soldiers: David Spindler has transcribed and studied the tablet above Sancha; these details are from his research.
118 boys born for every 100 girls:
“Rising Sex-Ratio Imbalance ‘A Danger’.” China Daily. January 23, 2007.
estimated that more than one million Chinese had been infected with H.I.V.: At the time of Wei Jia’s illness, the Western media carried many reports of unsanitary donor practices in China, and people feared that the country was on the verge of a major epidemic. In 2001, a United Nations report estimated that over one million Chinese had been infected, and they warned of a possible figure of twenty million by 2010. The Chinese government, on the other hand, estimated that there were only 840,000 H.I.V. and AIDS cases in 2003. In the following years, it became clear that the epidemic was not as widespread as many believed. In 2006, the figures were actually reduced: the Chinese government, working with the World Health Organization