Bike Incident No. 6

Samuel on a ride with “Lucky Lánsè” (Lánsè is the Chinese word for “blue”) and his new GIANT bike lock the day after Bike Incident No. 6. This is actually our street, about two miles due east of our apartment in the midst of vast stretches of new construction.

I'm sure that all (four) of you must be worried about my recent lack of postings. Many of you (okay--just one of you) have written wondering what's up. The truth is that the last couple weeks have been really crazy. My mom arrived, we went to Datong for Golden Week (more later), my mom got sick, Grace got sick to the extent that I spent one night considering ways to get her home quickly (see Arienne's blog), and I also resumed teaching faculty seminars this week, along with my English classes. In short, we've been in survival mode for about a week now, and travel-mode before that. There has been little time to write and reflect.

Things are just beginning to settle down. My Mom left on Wednesday, Grace is still not feeling well but we think she's on the mend (still having stomach problems though). We are now trying to recapture our boring old routine. Our experiences over the last couple weeks--touristing in Datong, my Mom getting sick on a hard sleeper train, our visit to the hospital with Grace (an experience I would have preferred not to have), have given me ample fodder for the broad, unsubstantiated generalizations that I so love to make (see below!), but I just haven't had time to write them down lately. As I told my friend in an email this week, it would be perfect to have a one-hour “experience” everyday, leaving time to reflect, write, as well as teach, exercise, eat, sleep, socialize, etc…. But I guess it doesn’t work that way. The experiences come in exhausting marathon-length episodes, following by stretches of mundane life. Frankly, we relish our mundane lives (all but Samuel, who will have to return to "school" on Monday after a two-week hiatus).

So what about the bike incident?

Two nights ago Samuel and I went on a bike ride. It was already 7:30 pm. By then we usually have the kids bedded down for the night and listening to stories. But with Grace’s sickness our normal routine is broken, so that night Samuel and I jumped on our bikes to ride up to a Chinese bakery that sells European style breads and pastries so that I could get sliced-bread for my classes because, against my better judgment, I was giving a narrated cooking demonstration for my students the next day (making peanut-butter and banana sandwiches, in fact, and singing Elvis—high-powered intellectual stuff).

It was exciting to be riding at night. Bikers were pouring through the streets towards home or more exciting destinations, women sitting sideways on the rear racks of their boyfriends' bikes. Samuel has never ridden at night and he was thrilled. "I like Hohhot better at night, Dad," he said as we turned onto a well-lit bike lane and passed cars that were piled bumper to bumper in a tangled mess.

I was telling him about how my buddies and I used to ride bikes at night in Los Angeles during graduate school. It was great fun to ride in Los Angeles, a city that most people suppose is downright hostile towards anything but automobiles. Although there were no bike lanes, we cut bike routes through the urban wilderness. But this was just as fun, with bike lanes, crazy traffic, street vendors, neon lights, and thousands of two-wheeling compatriots with whom to share the road.

While we were riding, Samuel asked me if I rode the same mountain bike in Los Angeles that I ride now in Richland. I explained that my first mountain bike had been stolen while I was at a movie theatre in LA. It was a prescient question. Minutes later, as we were exiting the bakery, Samuel pointed and hollered, "Dad, someone's stealing my bike!" Sure enough, a thug in a black leather jacket had just finished breaking Samuel's bike lock and was about to make off with his bike, but we arrived just in time, and the would-be larcenist blended back into the crowd.

Samuel was absolutely shocked and completely undone. And so was I--to the point of losing it right there on the crowded street. What bothered me most was the fact that a bunch of people had stood and watched as the thief busted the lock, and they would have kept watching quietly as he rode away on Samuel's bike if we hadn't arrived in time. Someone might have simply hollered something to us in the bakery (everyone had seen us pull up with our fancy bikes and colorful helmets). But no one did anything.

It was a cultural moment. The American lost it. Knowing that no one would understand, I screamed at the bystanders and vented my frustration with their apathy. "Were you just going to watch as he stole our bikes?!!!" I yelled, along with some other things that can't be recorded here. People just stood and stared, most smiling and laughing at the foreigner who had lost his temper.

"Come on Samuel, let's get out of here." As we were about to leave, one of the acquiescent bystanders, part of a group of leather-jacketed young men who had front row seats for the lock-breaking show, walked over and handed me the broken carcass of Samuel's lock, which I viciously (and stupidly) flung onto the sidewalk. We jumped on our bikes and rode home.

On the way, I tried to explain to Samuel, who was holding back tears and wails (which he finally released when we got back to our apartment) that thieves reside everywhere in the world, including the good ole USA. "Remember the story about my mountain bike in Los Angeles?" I reminded him. "We're lucky that we have your bike back, and your Dad shouldn't have yelled like that back there--it never helps to lose your temper in situations like that." Stung by the hot-glowing injustice of witnessing someone trying to steal his beloved bike, Samuel would have none of this "all's well that ends well" appeasement. "You should have gone after him, Dad. HE WAS TRYING TO STEAL MY BIKE!"

In fact, two weeks earlier, I had gone after two guys who heisted Arienne and Grace's helmets from Arienne's bike, which was locked up in a crowded city square next to a Buddhist Temple. Our high-tech import helmets (the only decent ones we could find) actually cost about half as much as our bikes. I was blinded by dollar bills, not justice, when I jumped on Arienne's bike and managed to sweep in quickly and surprise the culprits enough to simply grab the two helmets from their hands and pedal off.

That time, there were no bothersome "cultural issues." If anything, it made me think that Chinese criminals were not very hardened if they allowed history teachers--even foreign ones--to grab the stolen goods right from their hands. But this time I felt a burning animosity towards the crowd (not the criminal) that quickly flourished into a sweeping nationalist critique of Chinese culture. "In America," I kept thinking, "people wouldn't just sit and watch as someone stole a bike in plain view on a crowded city street!" "In America, people would intervene, stand-up against injustice!" Even as I was having them, I realized such thoughts were highly suspect.

And yet I couldn't shake the feeling that the inaction of this particular crowd was not simply "human," but distinctively Chinese (brilliant deduction, you say, since they were all in fact Chinese people on a Chinese street corner). The Chinese are extremely hospitable to their guests and absolutely devoted to their families and friends, but they do not have a civic culture that encourages participation in matters that do not directly involve them. It is ironic that in a society professedly devoted to collectivism, the collective thread (beyond friends and family) is rather thin. People just don't get involved outside their own private networks and kin groups. Why? Part of the reason is that the notion of "collectivism" has been rendered nearly meaningless by a government that preserves the rights and privileges of an elite few at the expense of the many. Part of the reason is that the legal system discourages entangling oneself in any kind of affair that may leave one vulnerable to arbitrary authority. Finally, action in Chinese society usually comes with responsibilities, financial or otherwise, and many people just don't act for fear that they will become responsible for a situation that was not of their own making (especially if that responsibility comes with a financial obligation or penalty, which most Chinese can't afford to pay). For all these reasons, it is easier to simply stay out of other people's business and stay out of harm’s way. (I guess I could have just said: remember Tiananmen Square?)

*{Note: I realize the above paragraph is packed with over-broad generalizations. My only defense is that they are mostly not my own: they come from books (like Peter Hessler's "River Town," among others) and from conversations with friends and students here.}

I understand Chinese reticence about getting involved, but the brash American in me values individual action against injustice. The righteous American in me sees the world with perfect moral clarity--there is only right and wrong, good and evil, black and white, with no shades or colors in between. (I'm sure that George Bush would agree with me that those bystanders who silently watched the criminal break Samuel's lock were aiding and abetting "Evil Doers”!). And yet, most of the rest of the world does not have the privilege of seeing the world in such certain terms. Although Americans might prefer moral certitude, the real world operates in many shades of grey, with far more subtlety and complexity.

I have more to say on this, but I guess I'll end there for now.

Thanks for reading.

Dave