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:
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.
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