Country Driving [133]
I knew he had no business driving. The last time I’d allowed him to operate a vehicle unattended, he destroyed the bumper of my rented Jetta, but something about today’s situation made me reluctant to take the keys. Mostly it was mianzi, or face—this was an important moment for Wei Ziqi, the first automobile in his life, the fledgling businessman dealing with established entrepreneurs. Every foreigner who lives in China learns about the cultural importance of mianzi, and the fear of losing it; but sometimes the outsider overcompensates. In fact Wei Ziqi had an intense awareness of his own limitations, like many rural Chinese. He was a proud man but he wasn’t stupid, and now he wanted me to drive. But I misinterpreted his glance, and I failed to take the keys.
With a nervous expression, Wei Ziqi settled into the driver’s seat. He asked the dealer which gear was reverse—not a good sign—and then he turned the ignition. The rest of us stood nearby, watching. He popped the emergency brake, put it into gear, slammed the gas to the floor, and opened the clutch. He didn’t want to stall the thing but he had no idea it would move so fast. The engine roared and the tires spun; it sped backward through a huge puddle of dirty water, spraying a cement-colored arc of crap across the lot; and then the car headed directly toward a telephone pole. By this point Wei Ziqi wasn’t even attempting to look where he was going. He had his head down, studying the floor, searching desperately for the foot brake. At the last possible moment he found it—the car stopped less than three feet from the pole. My heart pounded in my chest; my mianzi must have been white. Once my voice returned, I said, “OK, I’ll drive.”
I went for a test run with Wei Ziqi in the passenger’s seat. I wasn’t sure how to evaluate this vehicle, or where to set expectations—it was, after all, a Chinese version of a South Korean subcompact called the Charade. The last time I had been involved in the purchase of a used automobile, I was a high school student in Missouri, where I bought a 1974 Dodge Dart for seven hundred bucks. In many ways the Xiali reminded me of that Dart. There was very little power and the brakes were soft. The body looked like hell. But the engine sounded decent—no pings, no knocks. There was even a spare tire and jack. After driving with Wei Ziqi for a few miles, I said the same thing my father had said about the Dart back in 1986: “I think it’s OK.”
At the garage Wei Ziqi handed out a round of Red Plum Blossoms. The cigarettes put the dealer in a magnanimous mood, and he said he’d throw in the sweat-stained bamboo seat covers for free. “Usually I’d sell this car for sixteen thousand yuan,” the man said. “But I’ll sell it for fifteen because you’re a friend of Yuan’s.”
“Could you go cheaper?” Wei Ziqi said. “Maybe two hundred yuan cheaper?”
The man agreed: twenty-five dollars less. “Is there anything else you’d look at?” Wei Ziqi said to me.
“What’s the mileage?” I asked.
“You can check,” the dealer said with a shrug. I poked my head inside: 14,255 kilometers. The odometer only had five digits, and there was no telling how many times it had rolled over: the total could have been 14,255 kilometers or 114,255 kilometers or 1,014,255 kilometers. There was no repair history, no mechanic’s approval. We knew nothing about how the Xiali had been used, or what role it had played in the demise of the Beijing Shanqili Guest Services Company. The dealer wouldn’t even write out a contract. “My calligraphy is bad,” he said. “Let Mr. Yuan write it.”
He gave Mr. Yuan a preprinted form with the heading “Contract.” Mr. Yuan began filling out blanks—buyer, seller, date—and stopped. “My calligraphy is bad, too,” he said. Finally Wei Ziqi wrote the whole thing. The dealer convinced him to leave out the price. (“It’s simpler that way.”) The dealer also refused to sign his name. (“You can write it for me. My calligraphy’s really bad!”) Wei Ziqi hesitated but eventually signed both names. After it was over, and the cash had