ENTERTAINMENT / Hot Pot Column
Faith moves mountains, crazy cabbies
By Graham Bond (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-01-23 17:08
I made a grave mistake last week. I mentioned the word "crash" while
riding in a taxi, which was speeding along the wrong side of the road, on
a darkened highway.
Of course, I didn't suggest we were going to crash.
I was attempting to offer an explanation for why I was desperately trying
to tug the seatbelt strapped out of a hitherto undiscovered fissure
between seat and door.
"No, No, No. There's no need to do that," exclaimed the embarrassed
driver. My new friend was clearly struggling to cope with the magnitude
of the insult that was unfolding (or unfurling, at least) within the holy
confines of his cab.
"Oh, I'm sure you won't crash," I said calmly, while plunging the
seatbelt buckle into the socket with the break-neck speed of an Amazonian
spear fisherman. "It's just how to say? my habit."
The driver's countenance immediately turned cloudy and troubled.
"Please don't speak like that," he replied in hushed tones. "This is your
foreign way. In China, you mustn't be so direct. What you should say is:
'I trust your driving skills'."
Now I can lie, but the possibility of configuring the words "I", "trust",
"driving skills", and "your", into a single sentence while in the company
of a man who, in defiance of the inky black night, had neglected to turn
on his headlights, seemed beyond the limits of language.
Nevertheless, I apologized profusely for my injurious comment and passed
the rest of the 30-minute journey in a kind of tranquil stupor that one
can only enjoy after every last drop of blood has drained from the face
and knuckle regions.
Back home, my wife expressed surprise that I wasn't immediately ejected
from the vehicle for making such a faux pas.
Crashes in themselves may be part of life a very entertaining part
judging by the mobs that stare quizzically at car wrecks or felled
pedestrians but to actually utter the word "crash" before a crash has
actually taken place is not on.
Apparently, the logic has it that if you think about crashing, you will
crash and so it was that in one single moment, several of my biggest
confusions about life in China were instantly laid to rest.
I suddenly realized why it was that drivers rarely look before joining
traffic on a main road, or why pedestrians tend to stare straight and
true while crossing busy streets.
To even entertain the idea of ill-fortune is to invite it. Cheerful
optimism and steely confidence can override all dangers. In the words of
George Michael, you gotta have faith.
Which is, of course, an admirable attitude to life that looks all the
more impressive to someone from the cynical and paranoid Western world
(George Michael excepted).
However, next time I go to cross the road, I am going to have a problem.
For how exactly can I have faith when I know there are lunatics driving
around on the wrong side of the road with no headlights on?
(China Daily 01/23/2007 page20)
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