| MARK LEONG/MATRIX FOR TIME |
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Chinese Junk
Drugs were the scourge of pre-communist China. Today the country is using again—and producing too
The dragon came chasing Little Jie one night in 1996, in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen. Outside, young Chinese were trading their talents for a pocketful of cash. But Little Jie had already made money crooning Canto-pop songs at local nightclubs. People in his hometown of Lanzhou talked about how Little Jie had made it big, how he had even traveled to Hong Kong to sing his songs. But Little Jie felt empty. So that night, he took a hit. "That was the beginning," he says. "Or maybe the end."
That first hit turned into two, then 200, then so many that Little Jie lost count. To pay for the drugs, he played more nights at the clubs. Then, he found he didn't have enough time to sing anymore. His career was interfering with his drug habit, so the job had to go. Pretty soon Little Jie was dealing himself. He learned all the languages of the drug trade: Cantonese, Sichuanese, Dongxiang dialect. At first, he went to Sanjiaji to buy, dirtying his face and wearing ragged clothes to escape notice by undercover cops. Later, when he lacked the lucidity to do even that, he became a mule, swallowing condoms filled with heroin, ferrying them to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. A friend once ingested 20 condoms, each filled with two grams of heroin, and died. So Little Jie was careful: he only swallowed 19 rubbers at a time. Each trip earned him $430. He tried other jobs, too, like starring in a vcd called Grace Hong Kong Gay Boys. But he always returned to dealing. "I am only 27 years old," says Little Jie. "But I feel like I'm 50."
One rainy night last year in the central city of Chengdu, Little Jie was out pushing. It was muggy, and things didn't feel quite right. When the cops came, he was able to throw most of his stash onto the street, where it dissolved in puddles. If they had found the 50 grams on him, he could have faced the death penalty. Instead, he was sentenced to just one year in jail. Little Jie spent that time in a 50-sq-m cell, sharing the fetid space with 50 others. Skin diseases were so bad that inmates took turns burning one other with cigarettes to take their minds off the sores. Little Jie passed the time by keeping a diary on paper smuggled in by his mother, and by indulging his taste for drugs. Veteran prisoners collected cash from other inmates and scored from the jail guards. Convicts who were to be executed the next day had first dibs on the stash. Little Jie helped send off five people by providing them with a final smoke.
Today, Little Jie has been out of prison for just five days, and his eyes have not yet adjusted to the sunlight. He is wearing a new gray suit, too big in the shoulders for a man still shrunk by prison. At a local nightclub, he weaves past the prostitutes to sing one song for old time's sake. The crowd stares at him curiously, wondering who this man with the prison crew cut and ill-fitting suit might be. After he finishes, Little Jie bows and clasps his shaking hands around a beer. He doesn't know what he will do tomorrow or the day after. But the lure of drugs is already tugging at him. "I am a man who takes risks," he says, his eyes darting around the club. "If there is a chance to make money, I will go for it. I'll take every chance there is."
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