Friday, December 13, 2013

Zelig in a Mule Cart




There is no end to the number of Beijing cab stories one could tell.  I’ve certainly had well over a thousand rides, in my day.  I seem to recall things were more talkative in years gone buy.  Fewer cell phones, more novelty to a foreigner who could speak.  And of course more interest, on my part to communicate.  These days the process is so routinized.  I am anxious to get work done.  And I wall myself off from too much chat. There's no need to pretend. 

Coming back from down town most cabs are happy to have a fare that will be up near 100RMB and get them close to the airport so they can get in line for the return trip.  Conversely, getting a ride from the airport over here is often a hassle. Guys have waited for hours to get this high ticket fare and you tell em you’re going somewhere close.  They get to get a stub that lets them cut right back in the line, but still it isn’t always upbeat or welcoming. 



A lot of drivers in Beijing, cab drivers or otherwise, drive cars as if they learned to do most of their driving on bicycles.  They have the sensibilities of people who have lived their entire lives in a densely populated area, where you need to assert a right of way and necessarily bring things right up to the edge of hitting someone while never actually making contact.  The guy I had last night on the way home, must have learned to drive driving a mule cart.  He whipped the car, accelerating quickly to the next light and then yanked on the bridle to force an abrupt stop.  Usually you assert that you know where you’re going, give clear directions:
“Now go forward to the fifth traffic light and make a left.  I’ll let you know when we get there.” 

But with this guy, I knew we'd have a pointless exchange:

“The fifth?” 
“Yes.  The Fifth.” 
“This one?” 
“No.  This is the first.” 
“Not this one?” 
“No.  Nor the next three either. The fifth.”
“Up there? “
“No.  You can’t see it yet.  It is beyond your field of vision.”

It’s a thankless life, driving people around Beijing.  And I told the mule wagoner to keep the change, even though he was slow witted and drove abruptly.   Some day cabs here will be just as expensive as Tokyo and it will be hard to remember when it was this easy to go from here to there in a cab. 

I’ve some lovely Phineas Newborn Jr. on keys with Oscar Pettiford on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums from a 1956 album called “This is Phineas.”  It sounds bit like the aggressive speed of Art Tatum or Oscar Petersen.  I seem to recall a debate as to whether the man from Tennessee’s name is properly pronounced as ‘fin eee us” or “fine ass.”  You’d need to be very confident to pull off the later.  Apparently the Jazz Foundation of America, whose mandate is to help with medical and financial needs of retired jazz musicians, was formed in part as a response to Mr. Newborn's rapid demise in 1989 from lung cancer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Newborn,_Jr.

Speaking of pointless exchanges, I know its not funny, but then again it is kind of funny that an impersonator with no apparent skills of sign language whatsoever, and a fairly colorful criminal record, was able to fake his way up on to the world stage at Mandela’s funeral and pretend to sign in front of Obama, Cameron, Putin while broadcast to the entire world.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StEFnh18zRk&feature=c4-overview&list=UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ

How does someone like that get through the process and what does one think when one is repeatedly making nonsense gestures that look like your taking cookies from a cookie jar with two fingers?  Thamsanqa Jantjie tried to 掩人耳目[1], but as the commentator suggested, he wasn’t even close.   Apparently Mr. Jahtjie was from a school for the deaf and became overwhelmed by the English that he couldn’t keep up with.  He said later that he had an incident and that he saw angels flying into the auditorium.  Indeed.  



I think the story is funny or at least intriguing, because anyone can imagine choking in a moment like that on the world stage.  Everyone's wondered how far you could fake something.  I’ve been in my share of meetings where I’m on point for translation and something was said quickly where you have to make some assumptions about what you’ve heard.  Sometimes you get it.  Sometimes you don’t.  Sometimes someone corrects you and there’s nothing to do but be humble.  But if you were on the world stage?  Similarly we can all think of those big presentation moments where it has to be right.  And usually you manage somehow.  But the precipice is always there.  What if you didn’t.  Ambition often forces us out of our comfort zone.  We all pretend to be things that at some stage we’re only really trying on for size.  Everyone wonders about what it would be like to Zelig and molt properly into any new situation as whoever you thought it was that the others wanted you to be.  






[1] yǎnrén'ěrmù:  to fool people (idiom) / to pull the wool over people's eyes

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