As we bounce down the road, one of the company representatives tells us that most of Wen’an’s plastics businesses are located in forty to fifty villages that spill across the rural, unconnected county. The small scrapyard behind us belongs to a village, one of the company men tells us; it’s rumored to manufacture plastic bags from an ugly mix, including industrial-use plastics, which are then passed off as safe for food packaging. As the company men laugh at this, Josh looks at me—and then joins in, ruefully.
