A modest business proposal

It was a familiar summons: a friend of a friend had a business proposal. I was having a quiet evening at home but dragged myself to the coffee shop for a meeting. The friend was waiting. I couldn’t remember him. We’d met once, several years ago. He pulled out a photo to prove it.

He made the introductions. The man with the proposal worked for the State Grid, the national electricity supplier. He managed a hydropower plant on a mountain a few hours’ drive away. Beside the plant was a vast hotel and activity centre, including a semi-artificial ski slope. I know of the place but have never been. Once you have seen one Chinese state-owned industry tourist resort spinoff, you never want to see another. Imagine British Rail running a funfair.

The man from the Grid proposed that we jointly set up a western-style bar and restaurant on his mountain, aimed at the foreign market. Since my wife and I run a western-style bar and coffee shop on a mountain that attracts foreigners, I suppose it was a reasonable idea. He could be forgiven for forgetting that his mountain is twice the distance from Shanghai, is nowhere near a train station and doesn’t have a village of 100-year-old, stone-built foreign villas that has expat wives swooning with fantasies of restoration projects.

I politely turned him down but suggested that he made more of the ski slope, a unique attraction in southern China. He’d talked it up in the meeting. It was almost a kilometre long and had snow-making machines. “Yes,” he said, “but the trouble is”—he paused and gave me a disarmingly honest smile—“it’s not exactly steep.”

Something in the air

I decided to cycle to Shanghai, which is 125 miles from the foot of our mountain. The country on that route is flat, intersected by canals and increasingly covered by factories. Most of them are light industry, manufacturing paint, chemicals and electrical components. Halfway to Shanghai is Zhili, for example, a town that claims to be a world centre for making children’s clothing.

It was a warm spring day and a breeze blew away the smog. But it couldn’t blow away the smells, which changed every few miles as I passed a different factory: paint, textiles, floor sealants, fertiliser. To begin with I perversely enjoyed them. But I soon missed the fresh air of our mountain.

I stopped riding about 30 miles from Shanghai because I was short of time. I found a taxi and put my bike in the boot. At first I thought it was fatigue or car sickness that was making me nauseous. But neither of these things have ever given me such a lump in my chest. I tried to take deep breaths but my lungs seemed to have shut the door on my windpipe. The feeling was scary. It took about an hour to pass.

That evening, a Shanghai-based friend told me a doctor had diagnosed his young daughter with a potentially serious respiratory condition. Yet it disappeared without treatment on a trip to the US. My children are both becoming keen cyclists. They’ll stay in the hills from now on, and so will I.

Dangerous driving

It’s not just outspoken artists and lawyers who run the risk of being locked up in China nowadays. For the May holiday, the local police gave us yellow pieces of paper to put on the tables of the coffee shop. On the front were eight characters: “If you drink drive, proven guilty, into prison.” Good to know you have to be found guilty.

There was more detail on the reverse side. As of 1st May, anyone caught driving dangerously or drunk will, after due process, be fined and sent to jail. No specifics on the fine or sentence. In small print there was the admonition: “No driving at all after drinking.” I asked the local police who said best to abstain completely if driving.

I hope they’ll tell the local government. Their official driver, a notorious alcoholic, pulled up beside me the other day. He wound down the window, burped a gutful of fumes and shoved a bundle of namecards at my dog. “I can do business on my own now,” he said. “You got any guests need a ride, give them one of these.”

“Of course I will,” I lied. “Thanks. Let’s go for a drink sometime,” he said and drove off towards a tree.