Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams [73]
In China, you gradually realise, the sound means something else entirely. It doesn’t mean, “Get out of my way, asshole,” it just means a cheerful “Here I am.” Or rather it means, “Here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am …,” because it is continuous.
It occurred to me as we threaded our way through the crowded, noisy streets looking for condoms that perhaps Chinese cyclists also navigated by a form of echolocation.
“What do you think?” I asked Mark.
“I think you’ve been having some very strange ideas since we came to China.”
“Yes, but if you’re weaving along in a pack of cyclists, and everyone’s ringing their bells, you probably get a very clear spatial perception of where everybody is. You notice that none of them have lights on their bicycles?”
“Yes …”
“I read somewhere that the writer James Fenton tried riding a bike with a light on it in China one night and the police stopped him and told him to take it off. They said, ‘How would it be if everyone went around with lights on their bicycles?’ So I think they must navigate by sound. The other thing that’s extraordinary about cyclists is their inner peace.”
“What?”
“Well, I don’t know what else it can be. It’s the extraordinary, easy unconcern with which a cyclist will set off directly across the path of an oncoming bus. They just miss a collision which, let’s face it, would not harm the bus very much, and though they only miss by about an inch, the cyclist doesn’t appear even to notice.”
“What is there to notice? The bus missed him.”
“But only just.”
“But it missed him. That’s the point. I think that we get alarmed by close scrapes because they’re an invasion of space as much as anything else. The Chinese don’t worry about privacy or personal space. They probably think we’re neurotic about it.”
The Friendship Store seemed like a promising place to buy condoms, but we had a certain amount of difficulty in getting the idea across. We passed from one counter to another in the large open-plan department store, which consists of many different individual booths, stalls, and counters, but no one was able to help us.
We started at the stalls that looked as if they sold medical supplies, but had no luck. By the time we had got to the stalls that sold bookends and chopsticks, we knew we were on to a loser, but at least we found a young shop assistant who spoke English.
We tried to explain to her what it was we wanted, but seemed to reach the limit of her vocabulary pretty quickly. I got out my notebook and drew a condom very carefully, including the little extra balloon on the end.
She frowned at it, but still didn’t get the idea. She brought us a wooden spoon, a candle, a sort of paper knife, and, surprisingly enough, a small porcelain model of the Eiffel Tower and then at last lapsed into a posture of defeat.
Some other girls from the stall gathered round to help, but they were also defeated by our picture. At last I plucked up the bravado to perform a delicate little mime and at last the penny dropped.
“Ah!” the first girl said, suddenly wreathed in smiles. “Ah yes!”
They all beamed delightedly at us as they got the idea.
“You do understand?” I asked.
“Yes! Yes, I understand.”
“Do you have any?”
“No,” she said. “Not have.”
“Oh.”
“But, but, but …”
“Yes?”
“I say you where you go, okay?”
“Thank you very much. Thank you.”
“You go 616 Nanjing Road. Okay. Have there. You ask ‘rubberover.’ Okay?”
“Rubberover?”
“Rubberover. You ask. They have. Okay. Have nice day.” She giggled happily about this with her hand over her mouth.
We thanked them again, profusely, and left with much waving and smiling. The news seemed to have spread very quickly around the store, and everybody waved at us. They seemed terribly pleased to have been asked.
When we reached 616 Nanjing Road, which turned out to be another, smaller department store, and not a knocking shop as we had been half-suspecting, our pronunciation of “rubberover” seemed to let us down and produce another wave of baffled incomprehension.
This time I went straight for the mime that had served