Writing
Yu Li: Confessions of an Elevator Operator
Translated by: MDS
1
Yu Li's face was covered with acne, which was unusual at his age. The acne had only sprouted in his late twenties, and its unexpected appearance convinced Yu Li that his youth had truly arrived. The fire within was burning, and the thing in his pants was burning as well. His youth had arrived late but it was vigorous -- Yu Li was champing at the bit.
2
Yu Li was from a small town in the Hengshui area of Hebei province, a place with no tall buildings. He worked as a quality controller in the famous local state-owned fake Hengshui wine distillery[i] where he'd muddled along for more than ten years.
Yu Li got fired when the distillery realized that their production of fake wine dropped ten per cent during his shifts. It was discovered that, in the course of his inspections, Yu Li had drunk vast quantities of the wine. When the factory was set a target of increasing its output by ten per cent within the year, Yu Li was axed.
During his first nine years of working at the distillery, Yu Li had been a teetotaller. He'd inherited an allergy to alcohol — even the tiniest drop caused his whole body to break out in red spots — and it was for precisely this reason that the distillery had hired him as a quality inspector.
When Yu Li started drinking at work, it wasn't because he wanted to drink; drinking made him feel terrible. On one occasion, his body swelled by ten per cent and he was covered with monstrous purple blisters. It made him feel like death. But he had to drink because, the way he saw it, alcohol was the one thing his job enabled him to get for free; in the same way the only thing a toilet cleaner could get for free was shit.
Yu Li was no idiot. He couldn't turn down this one perk.
3
After Yu Li had wasted another year in that small town with no tall buildings, an opportunity came to go to the city and work as an elevator operator.
One day Wang the Third, who had left for the city a year earlier, returned to their town. He asked stay-at-home Yu Li if he wanted to leave and go to work in the capital, adding that by great fortune he knew of an elevator-operating team that might just be short of one operator.
'What's an elevator?' Yu Li asked.
Wang the Third explained that elevators were related to the trend of building automation. He asked whether Yu Li could speak any English or use a computer, because in Beijing the required cultural level of a would-be elevator operator was extremely high.
'What is English?' Yu Li asked. 'What do you mean, use a computer?'
Yu Li's parents were distraught because their son was unemployed and would never bring them a daughter-in-law. Realising that Wang the Third hoped for a gift, they went to their cellar and dug up two bottles of one hundred per cent genuine fake Hengshui white wine for him to take home.
A fortnight later, Wang the Third returned to the small town with no tall buildings and told Yu Li that even though ten people had applied for the elevator operator position — including one with a Master's degree — because Wang the Third knew the elevator team leader, the team leader had chosen Yu Li.
This was how Yu Li became an elevator operator.
4
Hebei province had also produced the fictional character Rickshaw Boy,[ii] who, just like Yu Li, had entered the capital full of youthful swagger. But unlike Yu Li, Rickshaw Boy had merely operated rickshaws. Yu Li was going to operate ... an elevator.
The evening that Yu Li left for the city, the small town without any tall buildings celebrated madly. Everyone said that Yu Li finally had prospects because he was going to operate an elevator.
Even the boss of the fake wine distillery showed up, having heard that Yu Li was going to the city. Because he sometimes went into the city himself, and had used an elevator on occasion, he thought he could steal a bit of Yu Li's glory.
'What? Operate an elevator?' he said. 'Do elevators need people to work them?'
'Even airplanes need people to work them,' Wang the Third answered for Yu Li.
Later, Wang the Third secretly disclosed to Yu Li his future monthly salary: 88 yuan.
5
Building B was located in the capital's most prosperous district, District C. In this luxury residential development, every square metre cost 10,000 yuan. The building had an amazing total of eighteen floors. Basically, those who lived in Building B, Gate A belonged to the capital's middle classes. Eighty per cent were bureau-level cadres or the equivalent, fifteen per cent were department level or equivalent, with fifty per cent of them middle-aged and thirty per cent single. The building also boasted one department head, two deputy department heads, one male A-list movie and TV celebrity, and one C-list female movie and TV celebrity.
Because it was home to a government department chief and a nationwide celebrity, Building B was politically sensitive. For this reason, it was impossible for the building to use an imported elevator, one that had been manufactured in Japan or the US. If the Japanese or Americans had known that there was a China government department head living there, they might have installed a bug in the elevator. So the elevator selected was a domestic product.
The vast majority of Chinese elevators required people to operate them because, without people, they simply wouldn't have gone anywhere. Just like the vast majority of domestically produced cars, they were hand operated; automatic gears hadn't yet appeared in China. This meant there was still a need, however small, for people like Yu Li.
Each of the building's elevators required five people to keep them going. And this was why Yu Li endured the hardships of a long journey from the small town without any tall buildings in Hengshui district: to go and operate an elevator.
6
Before starting work, Yu Li received three months' induction training in elevator operation. The training's core content comprised:
- the constitution of the People's Republic of China
- the Beijing citizens' charter
There was also:
- ‛love the Party, love socialism' training
- patriotic training
- citizenship education
- anti-imperialism, anti-feudalism education
- basic human rights education
- basic principles of electrical engineering
- the early stages of socialism theory
- basic computing
- basic English conversation
- basic combat methods
- basic survival methods
- basic Mandarin Chinese
The team leader invited the head engineer at the San Tong elevator factory to drop by and give everyone an introduction to the San Tong elevator's basic operation principles. Topics covered by the speaker included:
- Twenty or thirty ways to respond to a critical situation.
- What to do if you're trapped in the elevator without any light.
- What to do if you suddenly start to plummet to the ground from the nineteenth floor or above
'Doesn't this building only have eighteen floors?' one of the students asked.
'Which is why you'd regard it as a critical situation,' the head engineer replied rather impatiently.
After that, he made everyone watch clips of the American Challenger shuttle soaring towards space and then exploding spectacularly.
By the time Yu Li had finished watching the clips, he was trembling.
7
During the training, the team leader took Yu Li aside for a quiet word. He said they had made an exception in choosing Yu Li for training, because not only did he not have a Beijing work permit, he didn't have any education. The way the team leader explained it, Beijing and Hengshui were completely different places. Beijing was full of talented people; there were upwards of a hundred thousand people employed in the capital's elevator-operation industry, and the average education level was a three-year diploma.
The team leader then revealed the real reason why Yu Li had been selected as an elevator operator, which had nothing to do with his friend Wang the Third. The real reason why Yu Li had been selected ahead of so many better-qualified applicants to operate the San Tong elevator was because he was single. As a carefree singleton, a man without a family, he could put his heart and soul into the work of operating an elevator.
On hearing this, Yu Li was very moved.
When the three months' training was almost finished, the team leader finally got around to the most important topic of the entire training program: political matters.
The team leader explained that Gate A wasn't at all the same as Gate D, the biggest difference being that Gate D, just like Gate C, didn't have a department chief. But Gate A did.
'Who is more important — the team leader or the department chief?' Yu Li asked.
The team leader didn't answer Yu Li's question directly, but said that protecting the department chief well was equivalent to protecting your country well, because the country couldn't do without the department chief. Without a department chief, there wouldn't be a country.
'This is a political assignment,' the team leader explained solemnly.
As for the A-list male celebrity and C-list female celebrity, the team leader said that they should make protecting the female celebrity their priority because, given current social trends, in the future Chinese female celebrities were sure to be hotter than male celebrities. For example, even though today the female celebrity was only C-list, her boyfriend was A-list.
When it came to how to guarantee the personal safety of the senior official and the two celebrities, the team leader didn't give direct instructions. Instead, he arranged a screening of a film about the revolutionary-era model worker Lei Feng.[iii]
After the film, the team leader wanted to add a few words to summarize the lessons they had learned, but everyone pleaded with him not to say any more.
The team leader invited a comrade from the C District police precinct to talk about ten famous recent Beijing murder cases, and to give some guidance about dealing with criminal elements in elevators.
'You must keep control of the elevator-control mechanism, and keep the criminal elements away from the department chief,' the police officer said.
At this point, the trainees thought to ask which among the few hundred apartment units in the building was that of the department chief. And what did the department chief and the celebrities actually look like?
'That is a national secret. Do you think we can tell you?' the team leader said condescendingly.
In fact, he didn't know either.