Word: cars
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Strange, surely, but about the only truly odd tradition I encounter during five weeks in China. By plane, train and car, from the prospering coastal provinces to the country's heartland, where the agricultural reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping ten years ago began a miraculous economic transformation, to Beijing and a village not far from the capital that is infinitely poorer than towns a thousand miles farther inland, I find little that is charming or especially exotic. Just a mostly drab and dusty country, a perfect backdrop for the tedious and too often unrewarding nature of daily life. Still...
...which two bunk beds actually sport linen, are reserved for foreigners and high party and government officials. I could understand her hating such preferential treatment, but then again, she and her colleagues do pretty well because of it. For notwithstanding my status as a foreigner, the "soft sleeper" car was "sold out" until a kind official laid a carton of cigarettes and a small cash "bonus" on the ticket agent. "Funny to you, isn't it?" said the official. "Here I am from one bureau of the government, and I have to help you pay off another bureau...
...Love your car!" The young woman, who is quite pretty, has skipped across the main street of my New Hampshire town to say this. "Thanks," I tell her modestly, wondering if it would be all right to twirl my mustache. I borrowed this Mazda MX-5 Miata three days ago. People edge away when I park my usual vehicle, a large black four-wheel-drive Ford plow truck with red pinstriping and air horns. But the Miata gets passersby smiling and talking: teenagers, old couples, a fellow dressed in muscles and a camouflage shirt at a tire store, bicyclists...
...down, says the voice of reason. Have a nice cup of decaf tea. Try to remember that a car is not a puppy. True, the dreamer muses, but if adult automobiles bred and had young, the result might be a Miata: short nosed, rounded and soft looking; mischievous, with a funny, not quite serious growl...
Finally she seemed to understand what she needed to do, and she began slowly scribbling the answers on the tired-looking paper, while her four-year-old brother weaved his Matchbox car in and out between our legs. The television blasted the soundtrack of a black-and-white Spanish movie that her stepfather was watching, and I tried to stifle my unruly thoughts...