Waxberries
1
Once the April accounts were done, the work in the section eased off.
The new platforms came every year in smaller numbers. Two more people had left the purchasing section and the seats were not refilled; the desks were cleared off clean, and the two office chairs sat there by themselves. On Friday I was chasing the screen plant and the voice on the phone was very polite: it's in the schedule, end of the month, we'll certainly release it by the end of the month. In the past they would have thrown one flat sentence at me: I'll look at the schedule.
Early that spring Manager Ishikawa was transferred away, his rotation finished, back to the head office in Japan with a promotion. Only after he left did we work out how restful his way of managing had been: the section chiefs decided things themselves, and he smiled and looked only at the big numbers.
The new manager's name was Watanabe. He arrived in April. On his second day he held a morning meeting, in a crisp suit, back straight, bowing half a bow, and said three sentences in all: "My name is Watanabe. I come from the head office. Please treat me well."
He took the chair at the very front of the open room and had it raised half a notch. Twenty-odd rows of desks away, I could look up and see the back of his head, slightly domed, like a probe fixed at the far end of the room.
On his third day, a mail went out to the whole plant: rules for managing exception reports. Every section was to enter the day's production and material exceptions into the system line by line before half past four, and the sign-off chain ran all the way up to the manager.
For those of us doing the work, this added one more job: proving that we were working.
Ishikawa had gripped the big things and let the small ones go. Watanabe wanted his hand on everything. From the second week the room began to care about the format of reports and the wording grew more and more dignified, while the matters themselves stayed the same. The colleague diagonally across from me wrote "to be determined" in the estimated recovery time and had the report bounced back on the spot, with an electronic annotation of two cold characters: specific. He had no choice but to change it to an estimated five days. The fifth day came, the goods did not, and the exception report was copied out again. The annotation did not come back.
And just as the open room was settling into quiet, a new section appeared in that row of empty desks.
No sign went up. A few notebooks were set out where junk used to be piled: the Purchasing Development Section. Qingtian was its chief as well. He had been MBK's section chief, and when the new section was set up he carried both. The Materials and Procurement Department now had three sections level with each other: Purchasing, Purchasing Development, MBK.
Watching Qingtian go through the supplier register day after day and pull quotation sheets, people in the section guessed all sorts of things in private. Zhang Guolin said more than sixty percent of Toshiba's materials were locked inside the group and the Japanese zaibatsu at home, and a private Chinese plant could not even find which way the gate faced; what meat was a new section supposed to tear off?
That afternoon Qingtian walked over to the side of my desk, hands in his pockets, looked at my screen first, then at me.
"You. Come and help me." Qingtian said. "You know the purchasing section's materials. Localisation. Start with injection-moulded parts."
What I had always handled was LCD screens and keyboards; the injection-moulded parts were someone else's patch. What Qingtian had picked was me, not the materials in my hands.
Zhang Zheng drifted over from the far end of the aisle. He was the team leader, my old boss, not yet forty, with a friendly smile for everybody. He stopped at the edge of the aisle and asked one question. "Section Chief Qingtian, if I lend you the man, who chases his materials?"
Qingtian said, "Materials get chased, work gets done."
Zhang Zheng nodded, smiling, and said of course, the new department should be supported. Only after Qingtian turned and walked off did he rotate the tea cup in his hand and drop his voice very low, low enough that only I could hear. "The development section is on the crest of the wave. If nothing has moved in six months, apply to come back yourself."
Zhang Zheng never smoked, never took sides, never reddened his face at anyone in his life. He always stopped his sentences half a beat early.
I answered, and that afternoon moved my things to the next row. The open room was the same open room, only my name in the system now hung under two sections at once. Wang Haihong poked her head over from MBK next door and teased me about my promotion; Zhong Ying sat to one side with her lips pressed in a small smile and pushed half a bag of preserved plums onto my desk.
2
Three candidate plants were shortlisted. Two in Kunshan, one Taiwanese-owned, one a joint venture, with a client list of international names and system documentation as thick as a dictionary. One in Yuyao, a small private plant, making its own moulds, doing its own injection moulding, in its own buildings — and the thinnest set of documents by far.
In May we went to look at the plants, Kunshan first.
Only three of us went to Kunshan: Section Chief Qingtian leading, a senior engineer sent by Quality, and me.
The Taiwanese plant put on a show to frighten you. A marble gatehouse at the entrance, the lobby air-conditioned to the hilt, the receptionist neatly turned out, smiling as she presented mineral water on a tray. The Taiwanese boss wore a crisp grey suit and his hair was combed without a strand out of place. The moment Qingtian stepped out of the car he hurried up, bending very low, offering his card with both hands, his face all smiles, and out of his mouth came a string of fluent, pleasant, Tokyo-accented Japanese.
That deference to Qingtian came from a deep soaking in Japanese corporate culture. But when he turned to me and the engineer from Quality, he gave a slight nod, his eyes passing lightly over our blue work clothes, the corner of his mouth holding a smile that was polite and a little distant.
In the meeting room the lights dimmed and a twenty-minute film played, Chinese and English. Then they walked us through the showroom, spotlights on precision moulds in glass cases, polished brighter than a jeweller's display. The shop floor was fully enclosed; going in meant changing into a full set of antistatic clothing; the floor was a gleaming green epoxy, without a speck of dust.
But the moment we sat back down at the negotiating table and Qingtian pointed at the drawing of the notebook shell and asked about cost, the Taiwanese boss pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, spread both hands on the table, and his tone turned at once into push-hands. "Section Chief Qingtian, you are the expert. Toshiba's quality requirements are the highest in the industry. Our labour hours, the maintenance of the clean room, and the cost of the original engineering plastics are all right there. On cost reduction, of course we can talk. But that depends on how much of next year's machine allocation your company can give us..."
Lunch was arranged in a private room at a formal restaurant in Kunshan, a round table covered in seafood. Through the meal the Taiwanese boss and Qingtian went back and forth entirely in Japanese, about old times at the Japanese head office, about personnel changes in Tokyo. The engineer and I could not get a word in and could not follow what they were talking about, so we kept our heads down and ate.
That meal was very polite and very grand.
On the highway back to Hangzhou, Qingtian leaned against the car window and did not say one word the whole way.
Two days later the Yuyao boss's call came through to my desk. He knew no English and no Japanese, and when he dealt with the big Japanese plant it all went through me.
His Mandarin carried a thick eastern Zhejiang accent and a big voice, and he was extremely polite. "Manager Qi, the hot weather has come, and I know you are busy over there. The waxberries on the hillside behind our plant are ripe, grown ourselves, nothing added! Bring your whole department over. We have plenty, everyone can come and taste them, and have a look at the plant while you're at it, give us some guidance!"
I passed it on to Qingtian, and Qingtian reported the plant visit to Watanabe. Watanabe was bent over his exception reports, did not lift his head, and gave a faint nod.
On the day of the trip Qingtian simply hired a coach. Not only our development section — the off-shift people from Purchasing and MBK were all loaded on, and the coach was full. Wang Haihong began handing round snacks the moment she got on; Zhong Ying sat by the window and watched the scenery quietly. Once the coach passed Shaoxing, the roadside stalls selling waxberries thickened along the national road, bamboo baskets set out at the roadside under a layer of wet green leaves.
At the Yuyao plant the yard was small, the concrete bleached white by the sun.
The boss was already waiting at the gate. He wore an ordinary short-sleeved polo shirt and a pair of old leather shoes marked with oil, his skin burnt dark, and when he smiled the corners of his eyes were all fine creases. He looked like an ordinary foreman who worked in the shop, with none of the bearing of a boss, plain through and through.
He did not take us into an office for tea. He pulled open the heavy iron door of the workshop. "Let's look at the shop first, then go up the hill and eat the fruit!"
There was no gleaming floor as in Kunshan, and the air carried the smell of melting plastic. CNC machines, wire EDMs, surface grinders, one after another, neatly in a row, the floor swept clean. In the moulding shop there were no robot arms in those days; the workers at each machine opened the mould and took the parts out by hand. In canvas gloves they lifted the freshly moulded notebook shells one by one, pinched off the runners, and set them on the conveyor. Dimensions checked with calipers, ticks made one by one on the handwritten board beside the machine.
In the warehouse Qingtian pulled out a material movement card at random. The in and out dates followed one another with no gap, not one day missing. He put the card back and said quietly to me, "The books are clear." Beside us the boss recited equipment accuracy and tolerance limits without even opening a notebook, answering as he was asked.
When we had seen the machines the boss waved an arm. "Come on! Up the hill to pick waxberries!"
The orchard was on the slope behind the workshop. A few hundred trees, none of them tall, thick with leaves, the branches heavy with dark red fruit; nets were spread underneath to catch the few that ripened and fell.
Under a tree the boss pinched off a plump berry and handed it over. Everyone leaned in to look — and with a turn of his fingers, out of a seam in the dark red flesh, a small white worm poked its head out and crawled.
A few of the young people used to office work stepped back half a pace without thinking, and Wang Haihong gave a small cry; surely a fruit picked straight off the tree was not something you could eat.
The Yuyao boss was not bothered in the slightest. He peeled the little worm away, flicked it off with a finger, and without even looking put the berry in his mouth and chewed, purple-red juice running down the corner of his lips. "Nothing added! A worm means no pesticide! It's sweet. Try it!"
We all stared, and then we all laughed.
The stiffness of the open room was blown away by that smell of soil. Wang Haihong rolled up her sleeves and reached in; the young people crowded round the trees laughing. One bite and the juice burst in the mouth, sweet and sharp, and everyone's fingers and mouths were stained red.
In the middle of the picking the sky changed without warning. A Jiangnan summer storm came down out of nowhere, the drops as big as coins, rattling on the waxberry leaves.
The ripe berries were beaten off by the rain and scattered everywhere.
And just then a heavy ripe berry was washed off the top of a tree, and came down, dead straight, and landed with a plop in Wang Haihong's open palm.
Wang Haihong was soaked through, her hair plastered to her forehead, and she looked down at the berry in her hand and doubled over laughing. Qingtian was standing in the rain too, his usually easy face covered in water, his shirt wet down to the waist, two berries in his fist, laughing with the rest of them.
The rain came fast and went fast.
We came down the muddy slope with half our bodies streaming, juice on our faces, and laughter all over the coach.
As everyone was getting on to go back, the Yuyao boss came running up with two workers, out of breath, carrying several dozen new bamboo baskets covered with damp cloth.
"What you pick off the tree is nothing," the boss said, rubbing his hands, grinning with real feeling. "These I picked off the old trees the day before yesterday and left to cool at home, the best of the bottom of the pile! One share each, two baskets apiece back to Hangzhou!"
Back in my rented room in Hangzhou I took a hot shower and carried the two baskets to the table.
I picked one up and put it in my mouth, and for that instant I was struck still.
The berry was so sweet it had almost no sourness at all, thick-fleshed and small-stoned, nothing but pure sweetness.
The two baskets sat in the room for a little over a day. By the second evening the whole room was full of a faint, clean, subtle smell of wine.
3
But back in the office, the sweetness vanished on the spot.
The quotation came in. The price the Yuyao boss wrote on his handwritten sheet dropped the whole Purchasing Development Section into dead silence.
Qingtian built a comparison table on the computer. One line for the Japanese plant's current purchase price, with sea freight, duty and insurance all loaded in and spread across it; underneath, one line for the unit price the small private plant in Yuyao had quoted.
Forty percent.
Sixty percent cheaper, straight out.
I stared at that number and my palms went damp. This was not saving money. This was smashing the Japanese head office's rice bowl. It amounted to telling everyone, on paper, that for the past ten years the parent company had been selling to Hangzhou at double the price.
Qingtian printed the report and took me to the Quality Section.
The quality section chief looked down at that "forty percent" and the equipment list from Yuyao, turning the pages slowly. At the last page he snapped the file shut and pushed it to the corner of the desk.
"A small private plant. The process is not up to standard." He picked up his tea cup and looked at his screen. "Even if the price is lower, if there is a mass quality failure, who carries it? The head office will not accept it."
Qingtian stood at the desk. "The documents are complete. They open the moulds with their own money, they fund the samples themselves, they don't ask the plant for one cent. Look at the sample first."
The chief did not even look at Qingtian. He turned the small desk calendar over one page, then back again, lifted his cup, took a sip of water, and said nothing more.
Qingtian stood there a while, said quietly, "Please," and turned and left.
Going out, I looked back. The basket of waxberries that had been left in the pantry for everyone, sweet as honey, had been eaten clean; the dry empty bamboo basket had been kicked against the wall by the cleaner, along with the rubbish.
4
The Yuyao boss had genuinely put everything he had into it.
The big plant had not paid a cent in advance, not even given him a formal letter of intent. He borrowed several hundred thousand yuan of his own to open the moulds, and paid for the materials and the samples himself.
Six whole months, six rounds of samples.
I logged it in the system, entry by entry. Each round of samples came in and our own Quality Section picked it over first; once they had picked it over enough they wrote an inspection report and sent it to the head office in Japan.
And those Japanese at the head office had sharp eyes. The faults they found were fine and small.
Round one: the locating posts on the assembly would not seat, off by two hundredths of a millimetre; annotated by the Japanese side and returned.
Round two: every dimension passed, and the head office found, under a strong light, a faint moulding sink mark that the eye could barely see.
Round three: heat ageing test, the plastic clips slightly deformed.
Round four: Yuyao changed the mould, and dimensions and appearance all passed. By the rules, our Quality Section should now sign off "qualified" in the system.
But the approval flow hung in the system for four whole days without moving.
Qingtian took me to Quality again. Facing Qingtian's questions the chief spread his hands and sighed. "Qingtian-san, what use is my signature? If that gate at the head office doesn't nod, and I sign, and the clips fail in mass production later, whose responsibility is it?"
Qingtian said nothing, turned, and walked out.
By the time the fifth round of samples arrived it was already late autumn.
That day it was drizzling. The Yuyao boss drove up himself in an old Santana and delivered the sample case to the reception meeting room at the plant gate. Outside suppliers are strictly barred from the open office; he sat in the meeting room and waited, properly.
When Qingtian and I pushed the door open he was slightly wet about the hair, and hurried to stand and come forward, a plain, honest smile on his face, and set the case on the table and opened it gently. "Section Chief Qingtian, Manager Qi... this time I measured every set of moulds myself in the shop with the calipers, several times over! See if it suits you!"
Qingtian took out a sample, ran his hand carefully over the chamfers and the ribs, and nodded at the boss. "Thank you for the trouble. We'll send it for testing."
The sixth inspection report finally came back all green.
When the Yuyao boss heard it on the phone his voice shook, and he said thank you again and again. That afternoon the Yuyao plant set off a whole string of firecrackers in celebration.
But when the call was over, the whole open office was dead quiet. Not one person clapped, not one person offered congratulations.
Manager Watanabe sat at the very front and did not even lift an eyelid.
5
With the sixth round all passed, by the proper process the first small trial order should have been issued, five hundred sets.
The material cost was nothing; the Yuyao boss even offered on the phone to give the five hundred sets free, no charge, as long as they could get into the system.
But the electronic flow for the trial order went up through Oracle to the head office in Japan, and after two weeks the only thing the system returned was four cold Japanese characters:
検討之中. Under consideration.
Qingtian sent three urgent follow-up mails laying out the measured data from six all-green rounds, and the reply was still the same four characters. Under consideration.
After winter set in the open room was especially cold.
Manager Watanabe went on reviewing the plant's exception reports one by one at half past four every afternoon. One day near the end of the shift he came over, cup in hand, walking unusually slowly, and stopped at the side of Qingtian's desk.
"The trial order. Where has it got to?" Watanabe asked quietly.
Qingtian stood up and bowed slightly. "It's with the head office for sign-off."
Watanabe looked into Qingtian's eyes and held it for fully two seconds, then asked a question worth turning over. "On the Hangzhou side... everyone has signed?"
Qingtian said, "Everyone."
Watanabe said mm, and did not say half a word more. He took his cup and walked back, step by step, to his raised chair.
In that moment, standing behind Qingtian, I finally understood it completely.
There was never going to be a trial order.
That figure, forty percent, could not stand the light from the beginning. Once it was approved and landed, it would tear open a wound, and out of it would come the pus of ten years of the Japanese plant buying materials at inflated prices and passing interests around inside.
Nobody was a bad person — not the quality chief, not the engineers at the head office. They were simply using the most proper process, the strictest standard, the most impeccable compliance, to strangle quietly in the cradle anything alive that might upset the balance.
They would not say "not qualified", because Yuyao had genuinely done it beyond reproach.
And they would never say "agreed", because in that precise, cold system there was no such option as "agreed".
Toward the end of the year the head office finally sent its decision. Not a refusal — only one light sentence: "To ensure consistency in mass production, we suggest deferring introduction and adding a batch reliability assessment."
One sentence, and the sentence was death. The several hundred thousand the Yuyao boss had put into the moulds, the six rounds of data measured through sleepless nights, all of it became scrap iron.
On the last day before the holiday I tidied up every sample log from my secondment — rounds one to six, six thick folders — and sealed them neatly into the shared directory.
My desk was moving back to Purchasing.
Passing Qingtian's desk, he was facing his notebook screen, amending the supplier assessment table, one entry at a time. In the column for number of times filled in, the number had already reached eight, and he was still amending it, slowly and carefully.
Passing the MBK desks, Wang Haihong was clearing her desk to go home for the New Year, and the big plastic cup on Zhong Ying's desk had already gone into her bag.
I went back to the rented room and stood on the balcony.
In the corner of the balcony sat a clean, empty bamboo basket. Six months earlier the Yuyao boss had filled it with top-grade waxberries and given it to us.
The waxberries had long been eaten. The smell of wine that had filled the heart and the nose had long since gone, on that hot afternoon of summer rain.
There was never a second basket.