Country Driving [107]
It took another five months for him to get the driver’s license. He waited until the end of the harvest and the fall tourist season, and then he signed up for a driving course in Shunyi, a small city not far from Huairou. Tuition was costly—nearly five hundred American dollars—and this indoctrination was just as mysterious as the Communist Party membership. For one thing, Shunyi-trained drivers were expected to begin every maneuver in the second gear. The coach was adamant on this point, and I asked Wei Ziqi why it was so important.
“It’s harder in second gear,” he said. “The coach says it will make us better with the clutch if we drive in second.”
One day not long after he received his license, I rented a Jetta and drove out to the village. About an hour after I arrived, Wei Ziqi stopped by and asked me to move the car, because somebody needed to mix cement in the lot at the end of the road. Nowadays there was always activity out there, because of the construction boom; it seemed that every time I visited, I had to move the car. In the past I never would have imagined that parking in Sancha would become a problem.
That morning, I was writing at my desk, and Wei Ziqi offered to move the Jetta for me. I had let him drive a few times in the past, but only under close observation; he still wasn’t capable of driving alone, despite having spent fifty-eight hours learning how to start a truck in second gear. This time, though, I figured it was harmless—my car needed to be moved only a few feet. I gave him the keys and went back to work.
Half an hour later Wei Ziqi returned. He stood in the doorway for a while without saying anything. Finally I asked if everything was all right.
“There’s a problem with the car,” he said slowly. He was smiling, but it was a tight Chinese grin of embarrassment. Whenever I saw that expression I felt my pulse quicken.
“What kind of problem?” I said.
“I think you should come see it.”
In the lot, a couple of villagers had gathered around the car; they were grinning, too. The front bumper had been knocked completely off. It lay on the road, leaving the Jetta’s grille gaping, like a child who’s lost three teeth and can’t stop smiling. Why did everybody look so goddamn happy?
“I forgot about the front end,” Wei Ziqi said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not used to driving something with a front end,” he explained. “During my course, we only drove Liberation trucks. They’re flat in front.”
I had parked parallel to the fake Great Wall that bordered the village lot. Wei Ziqi had backed up and turned the wheel sharply, not realizing that the front end would swing in the opposite direction, toward the barrier. Last year, when the villagers built the tiny Great Wall, I thought it looked ridiculous, but now I realized that from a defensive point of view it served exactly one purpose. The crenellations were at the perfect height to tear the bumper off a Volkswagen Jetta. Kneeling in the lot, I inspected the metal—it was hopelessly bent.
“What do you think the rental company is going to say?” Wei Ziqi asked me.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I’ve never done something like this before.”
I was still renting from Mr. Wang at Capital Motors. In the past I had never reached the bottom of his patience, although I certainly plumbed the depths. I had broken virtually every company rule: I took Jettas onto dirt roads; I drove Jeeps onto dried-up creekbeds; I did unspeakable