On the monitor is a video posted to Youku, which is like Chinese YouTube, except with more censorship and less copyright protection.
There’s a two-lane road where a small truck faces off against a weird assortment of vehicles: a newish Buick, a couple of Chery sedans, a beater PLA Jeep, even one of those crazy “mosquito” tractors. A bunch of people stand on the road waving signs, and I recognize Sparrow and Kang Li. Kang Li is at the head of the crowd, confronting the driver, who’s red-faced and furious, shaking his fist, and I think he’s going to take a swing at Kang Li, but he doesn’t. Kang Li just stands there, calm but alert-energized. He gets off on this kind of thing, I’m guessing.
The video’s been edited, actually cut together pretty well, and the next shot is of Kang Li with his arm around the driver, calming him down, and another woman I don’t recognize talking earnestly to the driver.
Shots of the crowd watching the confrontation.
And shots of the inside of the truck: stacks of bamboo cages with cats crammed into them. You can hear them crying, hissing. Terrified.
Time passes. It gets dark. The activists sit on the road. No one’s going anywhere. Shots of activists with their signs and candles.
Finally a cheer goes up from the crowd. Kang Li and the other woman and the driver smile and nod and do little head bows. A deal has been struck.
Next we see the people passing the bamboo crates from person to person, loading them into the cars and the tractor. And in one of those shots I’m pretty sure I see Jason, lending a hand with the loading, his hair longer and darker than in the photo I have of him, his face framed by a backpacker beard.
The final shot: Kang Li with a cat in his arms. The titles read, in Chinese and English: “Yangshuo Friends of Animals-Love cats, don’t eat them!”
“That’s a good cat,” Kang Li says. He’s come over to peer at the monitor. “A French lady who has a restaurant in town took that cat. She has three now. Donated a lot of money for the rescue, too.”
“So David made that video?” I ask.
Sparrow nods. “Yes. Very good with the camera and the… the edits.”
“Can you send me the link?” I ask.
I SIT ON THE couch, elevating my leg again. Kang Li brings me a beer. I’m starting to like Kang Li. I mean, how can you not like a guy who’s tough, gets gooey over cats, and brings you beer?
Sparrow, meanwhile, sits in front of her computer with a neutral smile. I’m not getting her. I had the feeling, last time in the Gecko, that she knew something, that she wanted to talk to me, but either I was wrong or she’s not ready to share.
“Did David ever talk to you about seeds?” I ask.
She frowns. “Seeds?”
“Special ones. GMO. Uh…” I’m not sure if she knows that term in English, and I don’t know it in Chinese, so I look it up on my phone. “Jiyingaizao.”
“Ah. Wo mingbai.” She hesitates. “Maybe. Maybe he has this interest.”
“So he talked to you about it?”
“Sometimes.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Just that… such things are damaging. To the natural environment. To animals. And people.”
I watch her. She doesn’t want to meet my eyes. “What do you think?” I ask.
“I don’t know enough, maybe.”
“Well, I do,” Kang Li says loudly. “They’re dangerous. Come on, look at this country. You can’t trust the food, you can’t breathe the air, and we should let them make a fish tomato?”
“A fish tomato?”
“Dui! Take gene from a fish and put it in a tomato. You Americans tried that.”
“We did? Why?”
He shrugs. “Maybe so it can swim?” Then he grins. “Supposed to keep it from freezing, I think.”
“Zhen exin,” I say, because it really seems pretty disgusting.
“I hear you want to make new kind of fish! Take gene, put in guiyu. Samenyu,” he adds, off my blank look.
“Salmon?”
“Dui. Corn, hay, rice.” Kang Li ticks each one off on his fingers. “They change them so you can use…” He turns to Sparrow. “Zenme shuo ‘nongyao’?”
“Pesticide,” she tells him.
“Pesticide,” he resumes, “and not kill the plant. But then other weeds become stronger. Must use more and more nongyao, pesticide. Too much poison, already a problem in China. We don’t need more.”
“And now you have the superweeds,” Sparrow says hesitantly.
“Yes. The nongyao can’t kill them. Crowd out other crops.”
“Some even have this… this dusu inside, this poison, to kill insect that eat plant.”
“And that’s supposed to be okay for us to eat?” I ask. Because it sure doesn’t sound okay.
“Maybe.” Sparrow gives a tiny, eloquent shrug. “Or maybe cause organ failure. Maybe cancer. Allergies. Make animals sterile. Many health problems. Or just not so nutritious as natural food.” She no longer sounds hesitant. “Perhaps factor in death of bees. With no bees, what will happen to food supply?”
“Plus contaminate other crops,” Kang Li puts in. “So you don’t have original kind anymore. Just changed.”
“And once changed, we don’t know how the plants develop. Mutate. Could change into something else.”
“Something we can’t eat,” I say slowly, getting it. “Or something that might kill us.”
Sparrow nods. “We just don’t know.”
I remember something else, something that Wa Keung told me about the New Century Hero Rice.
“I’ve heard you can’t save seeds and grow from them the next year,” I say. “That you need to buy the seeds each time.”
“Ah, yinwei zhezhong zhongzi bufayu?” Kang Li asks. The type of seeds are…?
“Bufayu?” I ask. It’s a word I don’t recognize.
“Sterile,” Sparrow supplies. “Not necessarily bufayu. But buying seeds every year, this is not new. You know hybrid seed?”
I nod. I read the Wikipedia entry anyway.
“Farmers for many generations breed for example two different types of rice to make a better one. But this kind not stable. Second generation not as good as first. By third or fourth, maybe they don’t grow at all.”
This stuff is making my head hurt. “So how’s that different from GMOs?”
“GMO more unpredictable. These kinds not bred by farmer. They change plant DNA, in laboratory, even put in DNA from other species.”
“Like the fish tomato?” I guess.
“Yes,” she says, nodding hard. “Just like that. Because with the gene… the gene splicing, you can have the… the tubian. The mutation. They even try to create seed that fail completely, after first generation. Because maybe second generation already no good.”
“So the farmer would have to buy new seeds from the company every year,” I say, now getting it. “They’d have no choice. And there’s no bad second generation to worry about.”
“Maybe.” Sparrow gives me a narrow-eyed look. “So you have an interest in this topic?”
“I have an interest in finding David, like I told you,” I say. “And he’s interested in this topic.”
Truthfully, I have to say, the whole thing is making me queasy. I mean, it can’t be good for you, eating plants with a poison inside them, can it? Or that sterilize themselves. Or that have added fish genes. I keep picturing tomatoes with fins. That can’t be a good idea.
I notice that Sparrow’s still watching me, and I’m pretty sure there’s something she’s not saying.
“We have dinner now,” she finally does say. “Please, join us.”