ABSTRACT
On a warm summer evening in 2005, four middle-aged men drove a silver Volkswagen Jetta out of their city and into the Chinese countryside. Two of them were managers in foreign joint-venture factories. Another worked for the government. One was a middle-school administrator. Before they left town, they called their wives and told them they would be tied up all evening with meetings. They canied cigarettes in their shirt pockets, and rolls of pink hundred yuan bills. A couple bottles of distilled liquor rode between two of the men in the back seat. They drove to the village of White Crane Fort not far from the city. It nestled alongside a stream with lush rice fields on one side and wooded hills on the other - a beautiful and serene setting. The sound of a thousand croaking frogs greeted them as they opened their doors and stepped out of the car into the damp coolness of the rural evening. White Crane Fort was a tourist site for urban white-collars like them. A harmer hung over the entrance, proclaiming it a state-level cultural heritage preservation site.
