THE HUMAN TRAFFICKER

Abducting or trafficking in women is a criminal trade that has a long history in China. In the old days, this profitable business was controlled by crime syndicates—the triads—which lured rural girls and women with offers of nice jobs in big cities, then sold them into brothels at a high price. After the Communist revolution in 1949, the government eliminated the triads in many parts of China. The business of domestic human trafficking has now been largely taken over by country bumpkins like Qian Guibao, whom I visited at a detention center in the city of Chongqing. I interviewed him for over two hours; since I was not allowed to bring any recording equipment into the prison, I had to write up the interview from memory.

LIAO YIWU: You look like an honest hick. How did you end up in this trade?

QIAN GUIBAO: My experience was nothing unique. I was a peasant in River Valley Village in Pinggu County, Sichuan Province. Have you heard of Pinggu, home of the famous pandas? In the old days, the mountain next to our village was covered with lush forests and provided us with everything we needed for a living. We would pick up the timber left by the lumber mills and sell it. It was pretty good money. In addition, the mountain was rich in many natural food resources. But as the demand for lumber increased, the trees disappeared fast. Soon the forest was gone. The lumber factory closed, we had no more leftover timber to sell, and it was impossible to plant crops on the bare, deforested mountains. You probably haven't visited my hometown, but you can't make a living there as a peasant. Before I turned twenty-eight, I had violated the one-child family planning policy because my wife had given birth to three girls. I couldn't even afford to buy pants for them.

Everyone else in the village was pretty much in the same situation. Men would wear pants made from dry grass when working in the field. They left their real pants at home, saving them for holidays and special occasions. In the wintertime, women and girls would be stark naked, huddling next to the stove to do housework. We led miserable lives until 1992, when a couple of young guys in the village decided to take the leather goods that many families had saved for years and sell them at the local market. With the money we got, we bought ourselves bus tickets and left the village. At first we found construction jobs in the county, and then we followed a contractor all the way to the northwestern province of Gansu. We soon gave up the hard labor jobs and I began to go from village to village, doing some small retail business. It was quite an eye-opening experience.

Northwestern China is enormous. In many places, there's nothing but barren desert. It was even hard to get drinking water. Locals would keep the snow in a big pond and the melting snow provided them with drinking water for half a year. In these villages, the men were honest and kind. They loved their women and followed them around. Since most families prefer boys to girls, there weren't too many women in the region. Young men would spend years pinching pennies so they could use all their savings to find a woman to marry. I felt so sorry for them. Each time they saw a woman, their eyes would brighten up with lust, ready to mount her and fuck her immediately.

My hometown in Sichuan was pretty poor, but I hadn't seen any men as desperate as these. As you know, the Sichuan women have a reputation for being industrious, good-looking, and nice to their men. Guys in the northern provinces love women from Sichuan. With that in mind, I saw a moneymaking opportunity.

LIAO: What was your first experience like?

QIAN: I couldn't sell anybody, so I married two of my daughters to two guys in a village in Gansu Province. My in-laws were considered relatively rich in the area. I received six hundred yuan and eight sheep. I sold the sheep to a peasant at the train station for fifty yuan each. So I ended up getting a thousand yuan [about $120]. I had never felt so rich. I was exhilarated beyond control. But a couple of days later, my daughters told me that they had met a few other Sichuan wives in the village. Those women were brought to the village by human traffickers, and guess the price those bastards asked for each woman: over two thousand yuan each. Basically, I lost money in the deal. Damn.

LIAO: You sent your daughters to a faraway place and married them off to strangers for money?

QIAN: What do they know about happiness? My daughters are the children of a poor peasant. As long as their husbands have dicks, that's all I care. The more often women get laid, the prettier they look. Of course with some women, after they give birth to a couple of kids, their looks are gone forever.

LIAO: How did you manage to expand your business?

QIAN: I realized that I could be pretty charming. When I started out, I was a little nervous and lacked confidence. I tried to do some honest business as a matchmaker for the women in my village. But it was really tough. I ran my tongue nonstop and talked up a storm, but my success rate was very low. Women growing up in the mountains had never left their native villages before. It was difficult to show up out of the blue and convince them to leave home and travel thousands of miles to marry a stranger. They wouldn't do it even when I threatened to kill their parents.

I had no other alternative but to entice them with beautiful lies. First I told them that I was running a restaurant in the north and recruiting waitresses to help out. I promised to pay them decent wages and cover their food and accommodations. Those lies didn't fly. So I came up with some new ideas. I had some fake identification cards made and claimed that I was recruiting workers for a textile factory in the north. I told the women that wool was cheap in Gansu since cows and sheep were abundant; it was an ideal location for the manufacture of sweaters and rugs. I told all sorts of lies, and finally some of them worked. Soon I became bolder and bolder. I set up contacts in several major cities in the northwest. My job was to transport the “goods” to a certain location, and my contacts would “distribute” them to the villages.

Practice made perfect. My tongue became as slick as if it were soaked in oil, and I could easily lure a real goddess from heaven into marrying a human on earth. There were many women who would swallow my crap like it was the most nutritious food they ever ate. If they believed in my crap and ended up getting sold, it served them right.

LIAO: You were trading human flesh.

QIAN: Comrade, that is certainly not a nice way to describe it. I didn't run a brothel.

LIAO: Have you ever forced innocent women into prostitution?

QIAN: A virtuous woman will never prostitute herself, no matter how hard you force her. But most women are just like men. They crave adventures and love easy money. It's true that I sold over twenty women in the past five years, but those women came to me on their own. I didn't threaten them with a gun. I wasn't a bandit or kidnapper. You didn't even have to use dirty tricks to lure them. There are so many poor bachelors in the north. I provided a service that linked those lovebirds thousands of miles apart. The beginning of their relationships might not sound too auspicious or tender. Sometimes the brides want to commit suicide. But after their initial reluctance or rebellious protests, most of them ended up accepting their fate. As time went by, their lives became better and more harmonious.

As for being tied up and beaten, it is quite normal in the countryside. A man cannot be considered a good man if he doesn't beat his wife or if he is too old to pick up a cane. Once, my wife and I were carrying some corn back from the field. I became so horny and wanted to have sex with her. She said she was having her period and that I'd at least have to wait until dark. I wouldn't give up and insisted that I fuck her in the daylight. She then said she was too tired, and didn't want to take off her pants. I got mad. Before I had the chance to grab a wooden pole and force her to strip, she bolted out the door. I chased after her. She jumped in the village pond, attempting to drown herself. Ha! Guess what? The water was only waist deep. She began to cry and scream when her body didn't sink.

Oh well, those girls that I transported to the northwest had much better luck than my wife. As the saying goes: Beatings and quarrels make good couples. I'm just trying to supply what the market needs.

LIAO: You deceived those women and tricked them into the business. You ruined their lives.

QIAN: I was also trying to provide a solution to a problem that the Chinese government faced. In some northern regions, there are too many bachelors. The regional climate is too dry and people are poor. Sooner or later, there will be disturbances. By taking women over there, I balanced the yin and yang. This helps dissolve young guys' sexual tension. As you know, the matchmaking service in the city collects fees. I was in the same business. Actually, if you deducted the cost of train fare, food, and other miscellaneous stuff, there wasn't much left as profit. Sometimes, after I negotiated with my contacts in the north and sent the girl over, the village bachelor would change his mind because he couldn't afford the fee. We'd have to sell her at a cheaper price.

LIAO: Didn't you worry about bad karma?

QIAN: Bad karma? That's such bullshit. If you read newspapers nowadays, you will constantly come across stories about how someone became enlightened and has finally come to realize the true value of life, blah blah blah. The so-called “value of life” is nothing more than not having to worry about money. When someone earns money without working hard, he begins to bullshit about the value of life. Just like a pop singer, who only needs to open his or her mouth, sing a couple of songs, and the money pours in like crazy. That's why everyone adores pop stars and models. I'm a peasant. Nobody envies the life of a peasant.

I admit that I lied to them and used deception. But in this world today, could you tell me a person who has not lied to get what they want? The only honest beings are animals, such as stupid pigs.

LIAO: For victims of human smuggling, there is no such thing as a traditional wedding. In many cases, I'm told, the guy's parents hire some fellow villagers to tie up the girl immediately after the human trader hands her over and then the groom rapes her.

QIAN: Rape? These guys are having sex with their wives. You can't call that rape. Of course, you're a city guy. You can meet girls at nightclubs or dance parties, or even at train stations. There are so many ways for boys and girls to meet in the city. If you're a shy guy, you can always join a government-run matchmaking service, or place a personal ad in the paper. If it doesn't work out with one date, you can meet someone else. Poor folks in the countryside are not so lucky. As for weddings, according to the local tradition, as long as you have a ceremony, with drums and horns, and invite everyone to a banquet, you are considered husband and wife. Country folks have been following these traditions for generations. They never follow the so-called “legal procedures.” Law just doesn't apply in those regions.

LIAO: Well, the law applies to you. Are you going to get the death penalty?

QIAN: I actively cooperated with the prosecution and they reduced my sentence to life imprisonment. I accepted the verdict and pleaded guilty. But I still can't accept the charges—that I've harmed the general public or caused lots of trouble for the government.

LIAO: Is your human trafficking group still in business?

QIAN: We used to have over ten people. Now, seven are here in this jail. Those guys working in the northwest were thrown into local jails. The two group leaders have been executed. I wasn't listed as a top criminal because I merely organized the goods and didn't abuse any of the women. I persuaded my colleagues not to touch the goods because northerners are pretty conservative people. They want the goods in their original packages. They want to see blood on their wedding night. Once you deflower the girl, you can't get a decent price.

LIAO: Did you only target women from the poorest villages?

QIAN: Mostly, but one time I managed to talk some university graduates into the deal. One of them was working on her doctoral degree at a university.

LIAO: With that ugly face of yours?

QIAN: Damn right. I acted very sophisticated. With those intellectuals, you could never use the lies you'd use to recruit for small companies or textile factories. They would see through your tricks right away. I dropped all my masks. I told them I was a peasant from a fairly well-off region, which was covered with fruit trees and thick forests, an uncultivated Shangri-la. When it comes to bragging about the abundant natural resources of the countryside, I'm an expert. It didn't take long for the female college students to change their minds. Then, I pretended to seek their advice on how to do business. I told them that my village desperately needed some educated folks to go help cultivate the natural resources. I invited one of the Ph.D. students to visit my village so she could refer more students to help my village do business. I told her we would hire college students and pay them high salaries. She fell for it so easily. I've got a remarkably slick tongue. Unfortunately, once you snatch those educated women, they can be a handful. One girl was locked up in a cell for over a week, but still wouldn't cave in to our demands.

LIAO: If I were the judge, I would first cut off your tongue as punishment. It deserves to be cut off.