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Asia
Buzz:
Country Drive
The
car, some say, is the mirror of the soul
By
TERRY McCARTHY
March
15, 2000
Web posted at 3p.m. Hong Kong time, 4a.m. EST
Take a moment, dear reader, to ponder the relationship between national
character (assuming you can bear to contemplate such culturalist reductionisms)
and driving technique. The car, some would claim, is the mirror of
the soul. Italians drive with multi-decibelled volume through impossibly
narrow streets to achieve maximum drama, French apply elan and grand
vitesse along their boulevards, and the idiosyncratic English drive
on the wrong side of the road down country lanes to watch sheepdog
trials. Americans drive around a block rather than cross the road.
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Japanese drive in large comforting traffic jams so that the average
speed on the Tokyo expressway is less than 2 km an hour. Thais drive
with images of Buddha dangling from their rearview mirrors--and bottles
of the caffeine-laced stimulant Kratin Daeng on the dashboard to stay
awake when the air-con crashes and even Buddha might have dozed off
in his protecting role. Singaporeans drive with inbuilt bells to gently
but persistently warn them when they are exceeding the prudent speed
limit. Malaysians are trying to work out how to drive with one hand
on their heart to show how friendly they are trying to be to foreigners
(orders from Doctor Mahathir, himself a well-known font of fondness
for all types of outsiders).
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Filipinos, who wear everything on their sleeves, drive jeepneys with
religious mottoes emblazoned all over them. Cambodians, who wear little
on their sleeve unless it has ballistic potential, drive cars like
siege vehicles with darkened windows and the promise of serious weaponry
inside.
But in China, driving is an art all to itself, an act of multiple
competing willpowers all acting on a complex series of congestion
points negotiated with careless insouciance that borders on the reckless
and frequently leads to the regrettable. Which goes to show how complicated
the Chinese soul really is.
Essentially, driving in China reflects the social pattern of the less
powerful yielding to the more powerful, the slower yielding to the
faster, the endless ebb and flow of power that is most neatly expressed
in the yin-yang duality. If yin is a Volkswagen taxi taking a passenger
to work, yang is a concrete mixer on its way to a building site.
Turning left is not a matter of indicating and waiting for a break
in the traffic before making a 90 degree turn--it is more a 15 degree
penetration technique from some distance before the actual turn, as
the driver dares oncoming traffic into a head-on before sliding by
their front fenders into the required side street. Such defiant bluffing
tactics are also demonstrated in the showdown with Taiwan--I destroy
you, or you let me have my way.
So we can reveal in this column that Jiang Zemin's cross-strait policy
was dreamed up during a taxi ride across Beijing, when the leader
of the world's largest nation saw what defiance could achieve on the
highway of life. Now he is spitting blood at the possibility of Chen
Shui-bian (opposition presidential candidate) winning the elections,
and wondering how much more he has to turn up the volume, increase
the speed, and aim right between the oncoming headlights.
The Taiwanese, of course, have their own way of driving too--maximum
speed, maximum zippiness, as they nip in and out of lanes, overtaking
on the inside, doing whatever it takes to get to their destination
43 seconds ahead of time and stay ahead of the competition. Along
the side of the roads in Taiwan are betel nut stands, all lit up brightly
at night with attractive young ladies dispensing the chewing appurtenance
to drivers of trucks who then spit red betel nut juice all the way
from Taipei to Kaohsiung. Taiwanese are not too freaked out by the
oncoming traffic--they know a good bluff when they see one. Or so
they think.
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