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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