Country Driving [52]
Xu told me that China’s pace of change represented Sinomaps’ biggest challenge. They had to update Beijing city maps every three months, because of all the new construction, and the auto boom was creating a type of private market that had never existed. During the 1990s, Sinomaps published only five simple road maps for motorists; now they had more than twenty. Their target market was shifting away from government and military, but they still had an idiosyncratic notion of the private consumer. “We publish many maps of things that people need because of economic development,” Xu said. He meant this literally—the company was attempting to map the things that Chinese people buy. “We publish a Restaurant Map, which shows all the places where you can eat in Beijing,” Xu said. “And we make a Special Tourist Map, which shows not just the famous museums, but also places like Bar Street and Silk Alley.”
I mentioned that the old Silk Alley, which had been a popular clothes market, had recently been demolished and moved to a new location.
“See what I mean?” Xu said. “Now we have to change that one, too!”
Proudly, he showed off other specialty maps. The Xiaodian Wuyu Amazing Shopping Map featured malls and stores. The School Map of Beijing identified every educational institution in the capital. The Chinese City Real Estate Map was designed for investors, and it listed estimated apartment prices in cities across the country. If you were looking for something that would go out of date quickly, the Chinese City Real Estate Map was a good bet. There was also a Medical Map of Beijing—a hypochondriac’s dream, marking the locations of hundreds of hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies. It occurred to me that Sinomaps, which had spent so many years focused on government and military, still hadn’t quite grasped the concept of creating an open-ended tool for the private individual. In their eyes, people need direction; it’s not enough to give them the best possible Beijing atlas and let them figure out for themselves whether they want to find a restaurant, or a pharmacy, or a six-month-old real estate price. At the end of our conversation, after sitting side by side for an hour, Xu and I rose simultaneously and shook hands, as if marking the end of our diplomatic summit. He wished me good luck on my travels; he told me to come back any time. Out in the hallway, that Ping-Pong ball was still zinging when I left.
FROM THE TENGGER DESERT I drove west into Gansu Province. The road was unnamed, too small to qualify as a national highway, but recently it had been paved as part of the government’s infrastructure project. Truckers were already using the route, and billboards lined the way: “The Road Police Patrol Wishes You a Safe Journey” “The Silk Road’s New Face: The Road Patrol Protects Safety.” But there still weren’t any law officials to be seen, and it was just another version of the terra-cotta cop strategy—policework by allusion. Outside the village of Hongshui, a truck had broken down beside the road. Three men stood beside the vehicle, petting the invisible dog with an unusual degree of urgency. Cars and trucks flashed by, just like the question on the driving exam:
344. If you see an accident and the people need help, you should
a) continue driving.
b) stop, do what you can to help, and contact the police.
c) stop, see if the people offer a reward, and then help.
I pulled over and the truckers told me that their oil pump had failed. It was a big Liberation truck, the model known as Ju Neng Wang: “The All-Powerful King.” They had been petting the dog for an hour and a half before I stopped. They asked if I could give one man a ride to Anyuan, the nearest town with a train station, and I agreed. They put the old oil pump in a burlap