Wuxi High School for Exceptional Students campus. Five amphetamine-swallowing counselors and one cook served as Zhao’s staff.
Zhao floated through days one and two of camp like a tycoon in a dream. The campers exercised. The counselors encouraged. The cook steamed vegetables. But Zhao was born under an inauspicious moon. The first days passed easily—too easily—and he felt an acidic burn in his gut, and he knew that his luck would not last.
Day one of Fat People Fat Camp, and Kelly, wearing her new Lululemon yoga pants and slurping down a healthy breakfast smoothie, bounded out to the waiting Audi. She’d packed an overnight bag with a few changes of clothes in case she needed to stay on the campus. She tossed it into the backseat and climbed in. Thirty minutes of stop-and-go traffic later, her driver located the outskirts-of-town address the officials had given her: not a bustling camp, but an open field.
A few spins around the adjacent dusty roads later, Kelly realized she’d been had. She dialed the official, who apologized profusely and insincerely, and who, over an odd ringing sound (which reminded Kelly an awful lot of slot machines she’d unprofitably played in Vegas all alone on her twenty-first birthday), gave her the “new” address, which of course also turned out to be a sham—another empty field. This wild-goose chase continued for two days, leading Kelly and her driver on a thorough and exhaustive tour of Wuxi and its surrounding areas, until, over the squeals of either an aroused woman or an ailing pig, the annoyed official gave Kelly the address of what turned out to be a chicken farm.
The chicken farmer, a crinkly old man with rascally eyes, informed Kelly that two days before a busload of fat kids had indeed turned up at his farm, but that they were then promptly bused to another top secret location. If any of their parents knew where the children were, he painstakingly explained, they’d inevitably send care packages full of contraband or perhaps even attempt to tunnel under the ground using Democratic People’s Republic of Korea–patented techniques to deliver to their children the snacks they so craved, and such parental meddling could completely derail all weight-loss efforts.
The farmer then proudly announced he had been given fifty yuan by a government official for use of his land and address as a “confusion point.” Kelly, reading between the lines, stuffed a red hundred in the farmer’s hand. The farmer promptly pulled from his pants pocket a thin stack of folded and sweaty photocopied papers, including the administrator’s résumé and a document that listed another address (Wuxi High School for Exceptional Students, a nonoperational school that famously lost its funding halfway through construction when its wealthy underwriter was killed in a paragliding accident in Hawaii [some suspected foul play] and his widow [a B-list Korean actress] refused to pay the bribes necessary to continue the school’s construction).
With some useful information finally in hand, Kelly and her driver sped off, leaving the farmer in a cloud of dust, happily clutching his hundred-yuan note. In the backseat with the air conditioner on full-blast, Kelly read and reread Zhao’s résumé. This, she stewed, this was the man they’d deemed worthy to be in charge of this project?! A man with an associate’s degree from some third-tier city’s unaccredited no-name university? A man whose only real professional experience was working as a low-level assistant for years and years without any promotion in a crap fitness equipment company that she was pretty sure was a pyramid scheme? The small head shot that accompanied the résumé showed a man who verged on hideous: eyes too close together, cheeks too fleshy, mouth big and meaty, skin pocked—but maybe it was just a bad Xerox. Either way, she thought as she stole a look in the side view mirror at her own face (symmetrical enough to be a spokesmodel, if not beautiful enough to be a supermodel), this? This was the face of the war on obesity?
Her car slowed and soon stopped. Through the tinted and shut windows Kelly heard the unmistakable shouting and grunting of fat children. She thanked the driver and told him she’d call when she was ready to be picked up. She grabbed her bag and marched into the half-finished school, with its roofless hallways and exposed pipes, and located a small office—the only room with its door open—where the man who must have been Zhao sat playing solitaire on his computer.
“Excuse me,” she said. She dropped her bag on the floor and placed her hands on her hips.
Zhao frantically clicked out of his game and spun around. He was as terrible looking in person as he was in his photo. Worse maybe. “Oh, hello,” he said in a voice that could turn off Helen Keller. He looked Kelly up and down with lascivious eyes. “Not a camper then?”
Refusing to acknowledge this, she furrowed her brow. “My name is Kelly Hui, and I am a representative of the Bashful Goose Snack Company.”
Zhao squinted at her, clearly taken aback by her authoritative tone. He stood up slowly, leaning his body away from her. “Um, okay. Is there something I can help you with?”
This was one question (and she’d played over many in her head in the past few days driving in and around Wuxi) that she didn’t have an answer to. She hesitated awkwardly and then said, “No, I’m here to help you.” She remembered one of the lines she’d rehearsed in her head. “Bashful Goose Snack Company believes that obesity is a most dire problem for China’s youth. At this camp, we aren’t just saving calories, we’re saving lives.”
Zhao screwed up his face. “Huh? Sorry, who are you exactly?”
“I’m Kelly Hui, head of corporate social responsibility at Bashful Goose Snack Company.”
Zhao grimaced—or maybe that was just his unfortunate default facial expression—and shook his head.
She dropped her arms to her side. “The company that’s sponsoring this camp?”
He shook his head again.
Hopeless, incredibly and undeniably hopeless this one was. “Never mind. I looked over your résumé, and your, shall we say, lacking qualifications speak to the need of some corporate management intervention. I’m here to help you.”
Zhao squinted, squirmed, and then his eyes finally lit up in recognition. “The company that makes Watermelon Wigglers?” He shimmied his chest and burst into song, one of many of the company’s commercial jingles. Bashful Goose snacks, eat ’em right up / They’re so delicious, they’ll make you fall in love!
Kelly nodded. Zhao snapped his fingers loudly—Kelly, startled, jumped back. “Yes,” he said. “Ah, yes. Now, sorry, why’d you say they sent someone from Bashful Goose here?”
She inhaled deeply. “Bashful Goose put up the funds to sponsor this camp. We are the sole financial backer.”
“Oh,” Zhao snorted, and took on a sarcastic tone. “I understand.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t mean to suggest that I’m not doing well with what I’ve been given. You’d just think a big company like that would’ve been a bit more generous is all.”
Kelly tried to hide her disgust. This, she thought, this is exactly why I hate this country. Give a little, give a lot, it doesn’t matter; they want it all and then some. “If three million yuan isn’t generous, isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what is, and—”
“Look,” Zhao said, jamming his index finger knuckle-deep into his nostril. “I don’t know what three million you’re talking about. I’m working with a very small budget.” He pointed at the same computer monitor he’d been playing games on only a moment before. He motioned for her to sit down at the desk and take a look for herself. Careful not to touch this booger picker’s mouse or keyboard, she studied the spreadsheet he’d opened, the numbers contained therein.
She pointed to the figure in the “total budget” column. “That’s it?” she asked. A tremor started in her arms, making its way down to her fingertips. Her forehead popped with sweat. “That’s your total budget?”
“And they said if I could do it for less, it’d be better.”
“We gave three million,” she said. “You were supposed to have three million. So where did that