The Forbidden Game Read online

  ‌1

  ‌Foundations

  Zhou Xunshu never believed in the stone man, though it looked down on him every day from across the valley. Thousands of years ago, according to village legend, there were two stone men, but one of them had been struck by lightning while bathing in a pond at the foot of the cliff. All that was left of him was a large rock, shaped vaguely like a human head. The stone visage of the survivor protruded from the top of a tall white cliff face, and in 1984, twelve-year-old Zhou was trying hard to ignore its presence while he grazed his family’s oxen in a clearing on the opposite side of the gorge.

  Some villagers feared the stone man. They told with sincerity a more recent tale that centered on a tree that once sat on top of the stone man’s head, protecting him like a large umbrella. One day, a family was carrying their daughter to another family’s home to give her away for marriage. No one knows why, but on their walk back they decided to chop the tree down with an ax. Not long after, the entire family died.

  Some villagers prayed to the stone man, believing he had the ability to protect them and improve their lives. Zhou didn’t see any use in praying. He was convinced nothing was powerful enough to make life better in his miserable village. Not even a man made of stone.

  By the time Zhou was twelve, he had already been working in the fields for more than two years. He’d take to the grassland with his sickle and harvest fodder for his family’s livestock. He’d set out for a clearing with their oxen and wait there as they grazed. Many other village boys would do the same. There was a game the young cowhands would play as their cattle nibbled on the grass. The boys would dig a hole in the earth, about twenty inches in diameter, and using bamboo sticks and their harvesting sickles, take turns hitting a stone or a wad of paper. Whoever hit the “ball” into the hole in the fewest “strokes” would win an item of food from the other players. The boys didn’t have a name for this activity. It was just a folk game that had evolved over time, one of the many pastimes the village children invented to stave off boredom. They certainly didn’t call it “golf.” Nobody in the village of Qixin – and very few people in China – had ever heard of that game. The country hadn’t been home to a golf course in nearly four decades.

  But that had changed earlier in 1984. Henry Fok, a billionaire tycoon from Hong Kong, had recently opened an eighteen-hole layout designed by the golf legend Arnold Palmer, near Zhongshan, a city in southern China’s Guangdong province most famous for being the birthplace of Sun Yat-sen, known by many as the “Father of Modern China.” Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club may have been the first golf course in Communist China, but China had been home to several courses during the first half of the twentieth century. Most were in the foreign-occupied, self-governing zones of Shanghai, where a group of British executives had opened the city’s first golf course in 1896. Its nine holes occupied part of the downtown expanse now known as People’s Square. The Shanghai Golf Club sat alongside the Shanghai Racecourse, a wildly popular horse track, the former clubhouse for which – still famous for its grand clock tower – today houses the Shanghai Art Museum.

  By the 1930s, the city was home to a handful of courses that catered to its predominantly foreign elite. In 1935, a Fortune magazine piece profiled a day in the life of a typical Shanghai-based expatriate, or “Shanghailander”: “At noon you make your way to a club for a leisurely lunch and two cocktails… You return to your office. But at four-thirty you knock off again for a game of golf at the Shanghai Golf Club or the Hung-Jao Golf Club, both resembling the Westchester County variety except for the attendants in white nightgowns.” Golf’s persisting image as a frivolous amusement for the privileged classes is precisely why Mao Zedong denounced it as a “sport for millionaires” when the Communists seized control of China in 1949. Existing courses were plowed under or repurposed – for example, Hung-Jao Golf Club (or “Hongqiao,” as it’s spelled nowadays) is now the site of the Shanghai Zoo.

  But now Mao was dead, and Deng Xiaoping’s free-market reforms were in full swing. The Chinese government remained suspicious of golf, that symbol of Western decadence, but it was also pragmatic. Golf could be a magnet for overseas business and tourism, and Zhongshan was just across the border from Macau, a popular destination for Japanese travelers. Government officials were also none too pleased that China was unable to field a team when golf was introduced as a sport in the 1982 Asian Games. “The Red Chinese are convinced that golf is one way they can get elite people to visit there and spend money,” Palmer said before his initial China site visit in 1981. Palmer saw opportunities, too: “There are 800 million people. Imagine if just a fraction of them played golf,” he noted. Alastair Johnston, then vice president of Arnold Palmer Enterprises, was equally bullish, saying China “could be Japan 100 times over.”

  When, after a year-and-a-half of negotiations, Palmer’s team broke ground at Zhongshan Hot Spring in 1982, it became clear that any golf history or knowledge the country once enjoyed was a distant memory. “The Chinese know nothing about golf. Absolutely nothing,” said Palmer, who would later write about his China adventure in his memoirs.

  When he arrived for his first site inspection after construction began, Palmer couldn’t believe his eyes. All he saw were thatched huts; a pop-up village housing more than a thousand laborers tasked with molding the challenging terrain – nestled between mountains and rice paddies – into the course Palmer had designed. They were doing this all by hand – they had no bulldozers, no tractors and no trucks. Nearly half a million yards of dirt were being moved by industrious men and women using little more than shovels and burlap sacks. “The rocks too big to fit in their sacks were carried on their heads,” Palmer wrote. “Boulders were ground to gravel by sledgehammers, with workers lined at the ready to remove the rocks when they were small enough to be carried away. It was an unbelievable sight.” He recounted an interaction he had with one of the workmen:

  [I] gave this man a golf ball I had in my pocket. He stared at it for a few moments, then tried to take a bite out of the cover. “No,” I said. “You don’t eat it.” That’s when it dawned on me that the men engaged in the grueling labor of building our course had no idea what golf was. When I explained through an interpreter that this ball would be used to play the course our new friend was building, his eyes lit up and he took the ball from me as if I’d just presented him with the crown jewels of China.

  Word of the historic course in Zhongshan never made it to Zhou’s tiny village nine hundred miles to the northwest, nor word of any of the dozen or so golf courses built in China over the next decade. It’d be another twelve years before Zhou heard the word “golf” or saw a real golf ball. But when he did, it would change his life, far more than the stone man ever did.

  *

  Wang Libo didn’t think it was possible for his skin to get any darker. He had been laying bricks, one after the other, for five years under Hainan’s scorching sun. It was 2004. He was thirty-one years old and, like many Chinese, he dreamed of a better life.

  The work was hard and monotonous, and it would often keep him away from home for months at a time. He’d chase jobs all over China’s island province, sometimes working with modern rectangular bricks, sometimes lugging the large lava rocks he grew up with. He built houses. He built roads. All for little more than a thousand yuan a month – about $125. But his growing family – he had a wife and three young children back in the village – needed every yuan. The fruit trees his family had relied on for generations were no longer enough. Times were changing, even in remote Hainan.

  But Wang’s wife was beginning to complain that life was boring with him on the road. She needed his help around the house, and the children needed their father. So Wang vowed to make a change.
/>   Life was simple in tiny Meiqiu village, about fifteen miles south of Haikou, the capital city. Even with his family’s small monthly income, Wang had managed to squirrel away a fair bit of cash. So, in the spring of 2005 he decided to invest in his family’s future. For twelve thousand yuan, he bought a san lun che, or three-wheeled car, which, based on his morning conversations with other drivers at the teahouse, would be his ticket to a better work–life balance. He’d be able to stay close to home, while helping the rural population meet a very basic need: Getting themselves, and their stuff, from one place to another. This part of Hainan, like most of the province, was extremely poor, and very few people could afford vehicles of their own. These three-wheelers had only been around for the past five years or so, and the only vehicles Wang remembered from his youth were dump trucks that transported loads of lava rocks toward the sea.

  In years past, most people would simply stay close to home. The villages were largely self-sustaining. But the island economy was changing. People needed to go places. They needed to buy, to sell, to figure out new ways to put food on the table. People were adapting. Wang was, too.

  The san lun che, a common sight on urban and rural streets throughout China, is basically a motorized, modernized rickshaw. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Wang’s was utilitarian blue, and large enough to carry people and cargo. The front looked kind of like a motorcycle, with a box-like metal carriage affixed just behind the driver’s seat. Around eight people could sit, somewhat uncomfortably, facing each other with their backs against the outside walls. Best of all for the passengers, and Wang’s precious skin, everything, including Wang’s cockpit, was enclosed and shielded from the sizzling sun. This armor, and the unusually loud growl of the engine, gave the vehicle a tank-like appearance, although if you were ever to ride in one you’d know they often feel as though one small pothole could make the whole thing fall apart.

  Wang bought the truck on April 13, 2005, but according to the Chinese lunar calendar, that was not a good day to launch a business. So Wang waited a couple of weeks for a day that seemed appropriately auspicious for his initial ride. With nervous excitement, Wang rumbled off, ready to play the role of taxi or delivery truck, hoping his twelve-thousand-yuan gamble would pay off. His family was counting on him.

  Wang drove from Yongxing, the closest town to his village, toward Xiuying, an area on the outskirts of Haikou, home to a variety of popular markets. It wasn’t long before people were waving him down and paying him the two-yuan fare. He fell into a rhythm. Back and forth. Back and forth. The same road, all day long.

  But Wang enjoyed his new job. The route may not have changed, but the passengers did. From morning until night he could meet new people, make new friends and share ideas – that is, when the engine was quiet enough to talk over. He enjoyed the camaraderie with the other drivers, as well. They’d take breaks together at local restaurants and outdoor teahouses. They’d play the local lottery together – everyone, it seems, played the lottery in Hainan – studying confusing sheets of numbers with elaborate care.

  Most days, the hours were long, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Wang didn’t take weekends off. But the money was good. He could make around a hundred yuan (about $12.50) a day, and up to two or three hundred yuan on really busy days, more than tripling the monthly salary he earned working construction. And the best part of it all? At the end of the day he got to go home to his wife and children.

  “It was so much better than laying bricks,” Wang said.

  When Wang bought his san lun che, he was told its expected lifespan was around eight to ten years. And he didn’t see any reason why he wouldn’t continue working as a driver well into his forties. Maybe it’d be what he did for the rest of his life. This was still Hainan, after all. Change may happen, but it happens slowly. Or at least that’s the way it had always been before.

  *

  When Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club opened in 1984, Hainan was not yet a full-fledged province, and most mainland Chinese still observed the island with equal parts curiosity and fear. Despite its close proximity to the mainland – just eighteen miles from the southern tip of Guangdong province – for centuries Hainan was seen as a far-off and dangerous land, home to an unhealthy climate, impenetrable jungles and an unpredictable and treacherous sea. Some wrote it off as nothing more than a typhoon-plagued atoll inhabited by a motley collection of mysterious natives, ruthless pirates, banished criminals and exiled officials. Indeed, in the days before his expulsion to Hainan, disgraced Tang Dynasty chief minister Li Deyu complained he was being sent to the “gate of hell.” Several of these perceptions persisted well into the twentieth century. One Hainan local recalled how, when he arrived on the mainland for university in the 1980s, his fellow students were surprised he didn’t have a tail.

  But it was also during this decade of reform and opening up that top-ranking officials began referring to Hainan as China’s “treasure island,” both for its rich natural resources and its sun-blessed, palm-tree-lined beaches. The island, although poor and backward, had potential, though at first no one could quite agree what for. Some felt the island should focus on agriculture, others emphasized industry, and there were those who favored the establishment of a free trade zone. Nothing much seemed to happen.

  Thus, for Wang Libo, growing up in his tiny Hainan village meant a simple life, with very little interference from the Chinese authorities, let alone the wider world. His hometown, Meiqiu, appeared to be frozen in time. Like many villages on the island’s northeast coast, it was laid out in maze-like fashion with narrow stone paths weaving between small, single-story stone homes assembled from irregularly shaped lava rock and sporting tile roofs. Some of the structures were hundreds of years old. Everything was a shade of gray.

  As a young child in the early 1980s, Wang attended classes in the village’s old stone schoolhouse. There was one teacher for both first and second grades, and there were only two classes: Chinese and math. When first grade was being taught, second grade would take a test, and vice versa. Their work was lit by traditional handheld oil lamps, and Wang recalls each pencil being a precious possession. If Wang lost one – just one – his parents would get very angry.

  Outside school, free time was abundant, but Wang and his classmates had to be creative in how they spent it. There were no video games, no televisions and very few toys. He and his friends would play hide-and-seek, marbles and Chinese chess. There were ball games, too. One, played on a patch of dirt in front of the primary school, involved pushing a ball into holes dug in the ground.

  But Wang’s favorite ways to kill time required cunning and dexterity. He especially liked to catch lizards and birds. The local lizards, about twice the size of a gecko, spent most of their time hidden from view, but when they’d emerge onto rocks hoping to soak up some sun, Wang was ready to pounce. He’d move slowly at first, and then distract the creature by placing a stick or a hand in front of its face. With his free hand he’d snatch the lizard by its belly. Then it was time for the pointed stick – this was no catch-and-release exercise – and an open fire. Meat was still largely a delicacy at the time, reserved for only the most important of holidays, and roasted lizard was a treat for the children of Meiqiu. Their diets at the time consisted primarily of cassava, jicama and other fruits and vegetables. While people had enough to eat, which wasn’t the case in prior decades, a lizard here and there provided a pleasant dose of protein. Wang would tuck the cooked lizard inside an edible leaf, sprinkle it with oil and salt, and dig in. “It tasted good,” Wang recalled. “So natural.”

  Almost everyone in Meiqiu could climb trees, quickly. Even the tallest ones. They’d take off their shoes and race up a trunk as if it was a short flight of stairs. “If we can’t climb trees, who can harvest the fruits?” Wang asked. And it was deep inside the web of branches created by the village’s lychee trees that Wang and his friends took part in another popular pastime: raiding bird’s nests. If they found eggs inside, they’d cook the
m and eat them. If they found infant birds, they’d snatch those up, too, and attempt to raise them as pets. The hatchlings often died.

  In 1985, when Wang was twelve, something happened that would change the way the island’s youth spent their free time forever: television arrived. The first set in Meiqiu was a black-and-white model with a seventeen-inch-wide screen. It resided in the family room of one of the village’s richest men, a public servant in charge of managing the area’s roads. Though he lived in a small, single-story lava-rock home like everyone else in Meiqiu, he was more than happy to share this technological wealth. Every night at around seven o’clock, the official and his wife would set out benches for a crowd. Wang recalled that more than twenty people, from young children to grandparents, showed up daily. It was the biggest thing to hit the village since, well… Wang couldn’t think of anything else from his childhood days that came close to it. The room was often so mobbed, he’d have to sit outside and peer in through the front door.

  The TV received three channels – China Central Television (CCTV), Hainan TV and a local Haikou station – and the villagers would regularly stay and watch whatever was on until midnight. Wang’s favorites were Zaixiang Hushan Xing, a martial arts drama, and Dream of the Red Chamber, a series based on the classic Qing Dynasty novel. “TV dramas were such a precious thing for us,” Wang recalled. “Everybody would finish watching them before going to sleep.” Of course, there were days when the TV was unavailable, and he was forced to go back to his normal evening routine of doing homework or sitting under the village phoenix tree listening as the adults swapped folk stories. This pause in programming was not because the official and his wife got tired of hosting the community viewing parties. Quite the contrary. They loved the attention and status. Instead, the issue was infrastructure. Electricity was highly unreliable in Meiqiu, and the supply would cut off for days at a time. So it could be TV one day, oil lamps the next.