Exploring 'China Underground'

How big is China? Bigger than you can wrap your mind around. Really. 1.3 billion people are hustling, trying to figure out what to do with themselves in a booming 21st century China. It’s a place that makes New York look boring, according to one author. A place where endless business opportunities come up against a stonewall, ironfisted government. A country where the only place to be different — a punk, a poet, a prostitute — is underground.

Taking months to research and travel around and hang out, Zachary Mexico executes in his first book what most merely wonder about. "China Underground" explores the untold stories of young, on-the-fringes Chinese men and women.

Drug dealers, wannabe rock stars, and even the Chinese mafia make an appearance in this fascinating collection of 16 true-life essays.

Here’s what Mexico had to say about his first effort:

JC: What was your initial fascination with China?
Mexico: I guess I started studying the language when I was 15. I went to boarding school in Massachusetts. I went there [China] the next year in 1995. And I guess I just found it to be a crazy, amazing place.

JC: Were these stories hard to find?
Mexico: Yes and no. I had twice as many and I took out the ones that I didn’t think were as good. Some people were hard to find. A couple of people I had known before. And I found a couple of people on the Internet. Some I met by chance.

JC: Which of the chapters was most difficult to research? Let me guess, was it the gay culture?
Mexico: That really was quite difficult. The city I had heard was a huge, gay hotbed. But it wasn’t or it was a complete lie. I went out to all these gay clubs and it was really difficult to get people to talk about it especially.

Another one that was difficult was the mafia guy and the drug dealer. Neither of those guys knew I was writing about them.

JC: Anything you wanted to include in the book, but didn’t make the cut?
Mexico: There were these guys who were making fake everything. Fake passports, fake bags, fake ID cards. In China, there’s fake everything. Even fake beer ... I went there [an area where they make the fake items] with a friend and they wouldn’t let me back in.

And there were all these Chinese Rastafarians I was hanging out with, but at some point I couldn’t find them anymore.

JC: So, let’s talk about the mob. The Chinese mafia, the Black Society, or 'hei shehui.' What was most surprising about the Black Society? Anything you didn’t expect?
Mexico: I expected it to be this huge organized system where it’s secrets handed down from generation to generation, but it’s not. There’s no brotherhood. It’s not like the Sopranos. It’s not guys sitting down talking about territory. It’s more like gangs.

JC: You befriended a Chinese mafia member named Wang Dalong.  You described his birthday party as an event filled with Mandarin pop love songs, cake fights, and lambshank barbecues. It sounds so magical. But then you talk about Dalong’s confession that he wants to go straight. And yet he cruises away from the scene just like a gangster. Part of him seems innocent and others seem well ... just like a gangster. He seems to be a bunch of contradictions. What was Dalong really like?
Mexico: I think anyone who is doing that kind of thing for a living is like that. He was a very nice guy. The kind of guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless you [mess] with him. Then he’d probably kill you.

JC: Do you keep in touch with him? Do you think he has/will choose the straight life?   
Mexico: Yeah, I’ll see him in a couple of weeks. I don’t know what he’s doing. I know he opened a smoothie shop and it closed.

JC: In your chapter called 'The Chickens,' about Chinese prostitutes, you describe young women of various ages (some as young as 15) who sleep with countless men. Prostitution is illegal in China but also very common. There’s also a seven-tier system of prostitution that the Chinese government has established. Tell me more about that world.
Mexico: There’s prostitutes all over the place. It is certainly not surprising. When I was 16, I stayed at the Holiday Inn and there were prostitutes there. In China, it is socially more acceptable for a guy to go to a prostitute than it is here.

JC: You also delved deeper into Chinese gay society. Nine Dragons, the gentleman in your essay whom you profiled pretty carefully, sounds like he leads a horribly oppressed and hidden life. Is this typical of gay men in China? What is it like to live that life?
Mexico: I think it is certainly weird, especially in the less urban areas. It is not condoned at all.
But in the cities you can get by. I have a friend who’s a dude but just dresses as a woman all the time, and he seems to do okay.

JC: You explore Wuhan, the city that is the capital to underground Chinese punk rock. Tell me how the punk band scene in China compares to that of the U.S.
Mexico: In China, it reminds me of how everyone sounded here in the early 1990s. Everyone sounds like old Green Day.

-- Lori Kozlowski

Image: Soft Skull Press

Photo: Zachary Mexico

Comments

[Eileen Chang]

Nice interview, but is Mexico his real name or a pen name? He recently spoke at a book fair in Beijing. Here's some background on it.

At first glance, a literary festival gathering dozens of writers from around the world may seem out of place in the communist dictatorship of China, where censorship of the local media remains very heavy.

But The Bookworm International Literary Festival, now in its fourth year, has proved to be a huge success, providing a platform for a relatively free flow of ideas and offering another example of the complexities of modern China.

"In terms of debate and discussion, I think people are surprised about how much is able to go on here," festival director Jenny Niven said.

The festival does not aim to anger the government, rather to offer a chance for cultural exchanges and intellectual debate, according to Niven, who has brought together roughly 50, mostly foreign, writers.

Among them is Englishman Justin Hill, whose prize-winning first novel set in contemporary rural China, "The Drink and Dream Teahouse," was banned by Chinese authorities when it was published abroad in 2003.

Nevertheless, Hill, who lives in Hong Kong and appeared at last year's festival, was upbeat about the level of freedom of expression in China for these types of events.

"My impression is the Chinese government is more tolerant than people assume," he said, although he did express some caution.

"The problem with China is there is an invisible line that you can't cross. The problem is no one really knows where it is and it shifts depending on what is happening in China at the time."

Perhaps offering some extra cover for the festival is that it mainly targets foreigners in China, with all presentations in English.

Indeed, for expatriates the festival -- to be held in Beijing as well as the cities of Chengdu and Suzhou further south -- offers a rare opportunity to meet and listen to some stars of modern literature.

Among the headline names this year is Rabih Alameddine, author of "The Hakawati," meaning "The Storyteller" in Arabic and which The New York Times Book Review hailed as a stunning work offering the Western reader a glimpse of the Arab soul.

One of the most popular writers -- his two sessions have sold out -- is American William Zorzi, a screenwriter for the US television series "The Wire" that brilliantly portrayed gang and police life in modern Baltimore.

Among the Chinese voices at the festival are Mo Yan, author of "Red Sorghum," which was made into a film by acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, and poet Xi Chuan.

Festival director Niven said the event was an extension of a series The Bookworm, a cafe-restaurant-library chain in China, has developed over the past few years and which has brought more than 200 writers to the country.

They have included Hong Kong's last British colonial governor, Chris Patten, influential US columnist Thomas Friedman and Chinese author Ma Jian, who left China after some of his works were banned.

The increasing number of Western writers travelling to China is part of an Asia-wide phenomenon, with literature festivals mushrooming over the past few years since a trend-setting event in Hong Kong in 2000.

Festivals have since been held on the Indonesian island of Bali, the Sri Lankan coastal town of Galle and the eastern Chinese economic hub of Shanghai.

Hill, who is also a contributing editor to the Asian Literary Review, said the rising number of festivals was partly because people in the West and elsewhere around the world wanted to know more about Asia.

"There's a lot more interest in literature about Asia and set in Asia," he said.

However he also put it down to the growing number of Westerners living in the region.

"In Suzhou last year, I was astonished at the number of foreigners there," he said, recalling walking into a bar in the eastern Chinese city on St. Patrick's Day to find it full of expatriates

[Eileen Chang]

Newsweek magazine blogs this week that Mexico is the pen name of some Jewish indie rocker bar owner China hand named Zachary Walkdman whose parents run a major swimsuit apparel firm founded by his great grandfather in New York area. Mexico apparently confessed to the Newsweek reporter over a few dozen glasses of cheap Chinese wine during a long night in Beijing....