Jim is working for an American company and living in Sinpapore. He represents a company that sells manufacturing equipment. The vice president of marketing is visiting from America, the man is a giant former professional football player who exerts his authority over every situation with a deep booming voice and a serious look that projects out from the big brown sunken eyes of the scotch drinker that he becomes in the evenings.
Jim and the boss are sitting in the business section of a commercial jet headed to Xian from Singapore. The interior of this aircraft is rather shabby looking and plane is small enough to land and stop on the runway at the airport. The seats in the business section are as cramped as all of the other passenger seats in the aircraft, but the flight attendants wear special uniforms and they are paying special attention to the passengers.
Before takeoff, the big man knocks back three or four doubles, and before the plane reaches cruising altitude, the flight attendant brings him another drink to carry around the cabin. A couple of decades ago, airline security was an informal affair. He stumbles up to the open door of the pilot's cabin and disappears. Jim gets out of his seat and walks up the aisle to find the boss.
The vice president is engaged in friendly conversation with the pilots. The view is spectacular from here, great tropical puffy white clouds are brushing past the cockpit, standing deep within the cockpit, right behind the pilots, you can see all around. Singapore and the warm green equatorial islands below recede and there is only brilliant sunshine and blue ocean. Paradise slips away as they head to the grimy poverty of Xian and the brown dusty winter of Mongolian desert that lies at the edge of Xian International Airport.
One of the pilots ask, what are you guys doing in China? The boss, slurry now, I'm gonna show this kid here how to sell some industrial equipment to the communists. What about you guys?
The pilots looks at each other and are quiet, and laugh. Well, did you see the flight crew? Yeah, I see those traditional Chinese skirts. We're going on to Beijing, and we're taking a couple of the ladies to see the Great Wall, except we've all already seen the great wall about ten times, so we're going to hang out at a hotel called the Great Wall, in the city, if you know what I mean.
Uh! He empties his drink with a mighty flourish, likes he hauling off a long football pass. Well, selling is like sex when you do it right. And he gives Jim that half serious dirty look and lunges back into the cabin and down the aisle to the men's room at the end of the tube.
At dark, the airplane settles into a long, low approach to Xian airport. You can actually see them turn on the lights at the airport on the final approach. A service crew pulls up to the plane and it appears this is the only plane that is being actively serviced. The passengers fall silent and file down the stairs that have been rolled up, there is thin cold rain, and they fill up a small bus which has the engine and lights and heat turned off. At the airport, through customs, all of the employees are wearing green Mao suits, most of them are men and it seems like all of the are smoking. Strangely, it feels like home to Jim - in the sense that it is familiar, feels safe and peaceful, and is totally predictable.
At the factory, the two Americans sit in a huge unheated concrete hall with green tile floors, stark walls - the first five feet up from the floor is painted dark green for practical reasons related to the dust storms that arrive in the spring - stark white walls above the green stripe that run up to huge windows that ring the room below the ceiling. Sunlight filters through these windows, and everyone, including the Americans, are enjoying Chinese cigarettes, great puffs and thin streams of white smoke cuts the sunlight into swirls and slow rivers of dreamy clouds that join other clouds, and you look down to the end of the great room and see a giant painting of retired politicians now poets drinking and relaxing at a Taoist estate, it seems these local party leaders have balanced the party flags and Mao statues that greet you when you enter the front gate of the factory.
Everyone has his own giant, stuffed chair and a little table with a blue porcelain tea cup that has a lid that gives a pleasant rattle when you lift it up a little and take a sip, the bottom thickley package with Jasmine leaves, and the factory chairman himself refills the cups. Long before the business meeting begins, there is pleasant discussions, and even silence as the men and women smoke. One of the old cadres puts his head back and is taking a nap. The Americans and Chinese are friends, this is a follow-up meeting from that last time members of the group met when some of the factory managers were visiting Jim's company in America. Finally, the factory chairman sits up tall in his chair, looks around the group, and begins the business meeting. He speaks. His name is Zuo Zhong.
