Absurdity, Allegory and China

Hoons on Parade

Here is a typical shot from ‘Lay a Patch with a Mercedes Day,’ an event that is becoming a quite popular weekend activity in my neighborhood. Mostly young men with locally reasonable wardrobes (no countryside migrant workers in this bunch) step into one of two Mercedes – “the new C-Series” stenciled on the door – along with an official riding shotgun for safety. They wiggle themselves down into just the right spot as they eagerly paw the racing wheel, before screaming off (automatic, no clutches here; they know better than that), balls to the wall, gas pedal buried in the floor, for all of about fifty (50) meters (metres), whereupon they sharply cut the wheel left, setting the tires screaming as they jam on the very good brakes. Everyone for blocks around can hear it, screeching from hell too breakfast. Then they slowly roll back to the start/finish line, powerfully overblown up as they hop out – all that testosterone expressing through their very inner being, not missing the least little chip of a corner – and hug their girl friends/wives, who have been patiently waiting for their men behind the imagined safety of an imagined start/finish line.

Invariably, the dutiful women wear strangely high, dragon boat-ish heels with exaggeratedly long, pointy and slightly upturned empty bows that extend far beyond the pinched point where even the most delicate of toes could possibly squeeze (I always have to wonder how they wear those things? There’s not enough room for a real foot. I guess they try their best to keep them small. And then they set the heel of it way up on a very thin peg? I just want to tell them, “You know, you’re not supposed to do that to feet. Especially women’s feet. And here in China, for Christ’s sake!” But I think I’d pretty much be ignored. I mean, these aren’t the Future Farmers anymore. Or at least not for the next few years. And I think the response, if spoken from their hearts, would roll out something like, “Stupid white-haired old man, you don’t know a thing. Here you got to grab the good stuff while you have a chance, because this may be as good as it ever gets. That’s what history has said, over and over, and this time we’re getting to ride the wave for awhile instead of watching as it crashes over our head. Dammit! So, if I want to wear my f***ing shoes sharp as god-damn wheat hooks, that ain’t none of your friggin’business!?” All of this in Chinese, of course. And I’d smile and agree with it all. But still I’d wonder, even worry a little, about their clamped cramped feet.), designer winter camping clothes that wouldn’t know a camp stove from a carburetor, with some of the better-connected ones in deep, warm furs. Some of the racier ladies even smoke as their men leave black pigtail-ish patches in the parking lot, catty-corner from the Everbright Bank. I guess it’s good fun if you have the money. But don’t any of you migrant workers try to get in this line. They can spot you coming from a mile. Y’all just have to be satisfied leaving patches on the sidewalks with all those stolen Flying Pigeons.

The Confucian scholar/philosopher Mencius (Mengzi, 380–289 BCE), nailed it 2,300+ years ago when he wrote: “For things to be unequal is the natural tendency of things…. For the master to try to make them the same would bring chaos to the world. If large shoes were the same price as small shoes, who would make them.”

And if large bikes were the same price as German imports? Well, who knows what the crime stats would be. But what we do know is that once Mercedes comes to town, bets and good sense are all suspended, since there’s no figuring where the game’s heading. But somehow I get the feeling that it’ll all come back to shoes. Who’s got ‘em, and who’s don’t. And who’s standing around in the black cotton slippers watching and listening to all that imported Bavarian muscle and screech.

- Tianjin Olympic Stadium - November 25, 2007