zimatravels

It was just another unusual, interesting day in China in January of 1998.  The following is an excerpt from my book,  Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.

When I’d make the motion to put on my seatbelt in a taxi, my friends would assure me I didn’t need it because the driver was skillful.  I didn’t agree that driving dangerously and then avoiding an accident could be classified as “skillful” driving.  I had, in fact, witnessed a few accidents, although far fewer than I expected.  I had seen an enclosed motorized bike cab roll over in slow motion after being hit by a taxi on a rainy Shanghai street.  The silence and ominous stillness inside the enclosed bike as it lay on its side lingered in my mind.  Each time I got into a taxi in China, I had a fleeting moment of wondering if we’d make it safely to our destination.  I truly believed there were no rules for drivers, but last night I learned that there were, indeed, some unwritten rules.

Late last night, I had been initially suspicious when I got into a taxi with two people in the front.  However, this was happening more and more as the taxi drivers feared being robbed, especially late at night.  I wasn’t sure what it meant when the driver suddenly stopped the taxi, jumped out, and the other man got out and switched into the driver’s seat.  It quickly became apparent when the new driver couldn’t shift into gear that I was a paying participant in a driving lesson.

I have to admit some sympathy for the new driver.  I thought back to how I learned to drive in high school with classroom lessons and then sitting in a car equipped with dual equipment.  This man was driving a falling apart wreck of a car with one weak headlight and only one rear light, sitting next to a man yelling and berating his every move.

In a country where the best driver has ten near misses within a few minutes, and where drivers, bicyclists, pedicab drivers, and pedestrians are apt to do just about anything, I wondered just how anyone could learn to drive here.  How can one prepare adequately for mayhem from all directions?  And, if one managed to see the danger, how to react and avoid disaster seemed mere chance or luck.

One difference I saw between this new driver and experienced drivers was that he hesitated in dangerous circumstances, whereas experienced drivers seemed to respond with multi-directional antennae that provided warnings.  Slowing down was rarely an option used by “real” drivers, but even they somehow knew when to give way.  When the driver-in-training stopped less than one inch short of hitting a bicyclist, the “teacher” let loose with a torrent of verbal abuse, as though the driver should have known this was a case where the taxi had to stop.

As he careened down the roads with his bright lights on, blinded by the bright lights of everyone else, I wished I could understand his “teacher’s” advice.  I’m sure it differed from the preventive, defensive driving my teacher had taught me.  But I also knew that I would fail dismally as a driver in China.

I thanked my lucky star for getting us back to my hotel. I quickly got out of the dimly lit taxi — and left behind my wonderful raincoat that had faithfully accompanied me around the world several times.

To my sleepy surprise, a hotel attendant awakened me at 6:27 a.m. to give me back my raincoat.

Vietnam surprised me in many ways during my visit in 1998.

In general, my experiences in Vietnam have been unusual.  In hot, steamy Saigon, I saw my first exhibition of huge ice sculptures in a tented enclosure where we donned warm down jackets and boots.  I rode down the famous Mekong River, spoke at length to a South Vietnamese soldier who had worked with the Americans, watched a ritual in a temple whose religion does defy description, and saw a portion of the 200-kilometer network of tunnels that had survived literally under the noses of the American soldiers.  It was chilling to go through a sparsely wooded area with trees all about the same size and realize that this spot was denuded with napalm during the war.

I went to the War Remnants Museum before leaving Vietnam.  The name was poignantly appropriate.  I expected it would sadden me by introducing the reality of the terrible war that in many ways seems to have been forgotten by the Vietnamese in preference to pursuing a better future.  It was a rather straightforward remembrance of the war, not adorned with the aesthetic, artistic rendition of sorrow such as the war museum in Israel.   As a photographer, I wondered how anyone could take pictures while others writhe and bleed and die.  And yet, because they did take them, we can “see” the horror instead of simply imagining it.

The museum made it easier to understand how “our boys” resorted to drugs, were haunted by nightmares, and never recovered from the war as depicted in numerous post-Vietnam War movies and books.  One photo shows the stark, undiluted terror on the face of a young girl surrounded by other women and children just an instant before she was massacred with all the rest.   Another is of a bleeding very young child trying to put his body over his younger brother.

Being a child of the sixties tied me to Vietnam even before coming here.  Being here has only made the tie stronger.  If  I had to sum up today’s Vietnam in one word, it would be “energy.”

The following is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006. Feb. 18, 1998 I'm hard pressed to adequately describe my surroundings now.  I can hear monkeys and look upward from my bed to see the stars ... [Continue reading this entry]

I've only been robbed twice in my many years of travel.  The first time was while I was writing in my journal while sitting under the huge picture of Mao in Tiananmen Square.  The other time was in Saigon in ... [Continue reading this entry]