Part 8 (1/2)
All this gives me the sensation that we are living in a fantastic fictional world, in a city called Coca-Colaville whose sidewalks have been taken over by market stalls, where people shuttle nimbly through the gaps left by rapidly moving vehicles like characters in a kung fu movie. Landmarks are differentiated with incongruous names like Black Sister Toothpaste Street, Sixth Sense Condom Bridge, Sanlu Milk Powder Square, and AB Underwear District-every brand in China leaving its mark on the city landscape, from things you eat and wear and use, to furniture and automobiles, lovemaking accessories and paraphernalia for new parents. Street numbers are in random order; every venture down an avenue is like a walk in a labyrinth. Here, where everything is tinged with the mysterious logic of absurdist fiction, Kafka or Borges might feel quite at home. Perhaps one day I'll write such a story myself. Bamboozletown might be its t.i.tle.
There is really no end to these stories of fraud and chicanery, for ”bamboozle” has already insinuated itself into every aspect of our lives. If a foreign leader visits China, people will say he's ”come to bamboozle,” and if a Chinese leader travels abroad, people will say he's ”gone to bamboozle those foreigners.” When a businessman heads out to negotiate a deal, he'll say he's ”off to bamboozle,” and when a professor goes to deliver a lecture, he'll say the same thing. Social interactions and romantic partners.h.i.+ps fall under this heading, too: ”I bamboozled him into being my friend,” you might hear someone say, or ”I bamboozled her into falling for me.” Even Zhao Benshan, the G.o.dfather of bamboozling, has become its casualty. A couple of years ago a text message appeared on many millions of Chinese cell phones: Got access to a television? Be sure to turn on CCTV-Zhao Benshan has been killed by a bomb, and the police have sealed off the Northeast. 19 people dead, 11 missing, 1 bamboozled!
The one bamboozled, of course, was the person reading the message.
A friend and I once traveled together to a speaking engagement. Last thing at night he asked me for a couple of sleeping pills. He wasn't planning to take them, he said, but simply to place them next to his bed as a form of subliminal tranquilizer. ”They'll bamboozle me into falling asleep,” he said with a laugh.
Bamboozlement can also give a new gloss to literary works. There's a famous line by the Tang poet Li Bai: ”White hair falling thirty thousand feet.” It used to be seen as the quintessence of the Chinese literary imagination, but people's commentary now takes a different form. ”That Li Bai sure knew how to bamboozle,” they scoff.
Bamboozling has practically become an essential fas.h.i.+on accessory. In the last couple of years schoolchildren have developed a new fad: buying so-called bamboozle cards, which are the same size as drivers' licenses. You see vendors hawking them on city streets and pedestrian bridges: ”Bamboozle cards-one yuan each! With bamboozle card in hand or purse, bamboozle the world for all it's worth!”
”Hereby it is certified,” the cards read, ”that Comrade So-and-so possesses distinctive technique and rich experience in bamboozling; few are they who can avoid being duped.” The bamboozle card is embossed with a round, official-looking stamp just like other Chinese ident.i.ty cards; its issuing authority is the National Bamboozle Commission. Schoolchildren greet each other by pulling out their cards and waving them in each other's faces, like FBI agents flas.h.i.+ng their ID in a Hollywood movie-the ultimate in school-age cool.
The rapid rise in popularity of the word ”bamboozle,” like that of ”copycat,” demonstrates to me a breakdown of social morality and a confusion in the value system in China today; it is an aftereffect of our uneven development these past thirty years. If anything, bamboozling is even more widespread in social terms than the copycat phenomenon, and when bamboozling gains such wide acceptance, it goes to show that we live in a frivolous society, one that doesn't set much store by matters of principle.
My concern is that when bamboozling unabashedly becomes a way of life, then everyone from the individual to the population at large can become its victim. For a bamboozler is quite likely to end up bamboozling himself or-in Chinese parlance-to pick up a big stone only to drop it on his own foot.
I imagine everyone has probably had this kind of experience: you try to bamboozle someone, only to end up bamboozling yourself. I am certainly no exception, for when I look back at my own career, I find many such examples. What follows is one such case.
If I remember correctly, my father was the target of my first scam. When I didn't want to do something he wanted me to do, or if he was about to punish me for doing something I shouldn't have done, I often resorted to my own form of leverage: feigned illness. It would have been called deception then, but now we'd call it bamboozling.
It's in every child's nature, I daresay, to try to deceive or bamboozle his or her parents. I was in elementary school by then and aware that there was something wonderful about my relations.h.i.+p with my father. We were kith and kin, in other words, and even if I did something outrageous, I would be unlikely to suffer fatal consequences. I have forgotten exactly what led me to feign illness that first time; all I know is that I was antic.i.p.ating some form of punishment, and I wanted if at all possible to avoid it. Pretending to be racked by fever, I shuffled with faltering steps toward my incensed father.
After listening to my tale of woe, my father reacted instinctively: he reached out a hand and planted it on my forehead. Only then did I realize what a colossal mistake I had made-I'd forgotten that he was a doctor. Now I'm in for it, I thought: not only would I not escape punishment for my original misdemeanor, but I would surely incur further punishment for this new offense.
Miraculously, my bamboozle managed to slip in under the wire. When my father's discerning hand established that I didn't have the slightest temperature, it didn't seem to occur to him that I was trying to pull the wool over his eyes. He simply expressed outrage that I had not engaged in any healthy exercise that day. I received a stern dressing-down: no longer would I be permitted to loll about the house-I needed to run around outside, even if it was just to get a bit of sun. There was absolutely nothing wrong with me, my father declared; my only problem was that I was so averse to activity. Then he told me to get out of the house. I could do whatever I pleased, but I was not to show my face again for at least two hours.
Out of concern for my health my father's anger had suddenly changed direction, making him forget my transgression of a few minutes earlier and the punishment he originally had planned for me, and allowing me unexpectedly to get off scot-free. I ran out the door and kept going until I had reached a safe distance; there I stood and reflected tensely on my narrow escape. I must never again pretend to have a fever, I concluded, no matter how desperate the situation.
Thereafter my acting performances revolved more around internal disorders. There was a year or two, for example, when I often pretended to have a stomachache, something I was able to carry off quite convincingly. Because as a child I was very picky about food, I often suffered from constipation, and this helped provide a plausible pretext for my stomachaches. If I did something wrong, I'd feel a stab of pain in my belly as soon as I saw my father's face darkening.
At the beginning I was fully aware that I was simply pretending to be ill, but later it became a conditioned reflex. All it took for me to have a stomachache was for my father to get angry, and soon I found it impossible to work out whether the pain was genuine or imaginary. However, to me that was a minor point; the main thing was my father's reaction, for his anger would at once s.h.i.+ft to questions of diet and what I chose to eat or not eat, and he would warn me that if I persisted with my food phobias, I wouldn't just suffer from constipation; my physical growth and intellectual development would be compromised as well. Once again his health concerns made him forget the punishment he should have administered; even if he was now even more furious than before, I accepted his rage with equanimity, knowing it would not result in any disciplinary action.
As time went on I resorted to ruses and subterfuges even more often, no longer feigning illness simply to deflect punishment but also to get out of household ch.o.r.es like sweeping or mopping the floor. Once, however, I was too smart for my own good. When I announced that I had a stomachache, my father clapped his hand on a spot in my midriff. ”Is this where it hurts?” he asked. I nodded. ”Did the pain start higher up, here in the pit of your stomach?” he asked. Again I nodded. My father continued his line of questioning, trying to establish whether my symptoms corresponded with those of appendicitis, and I simply kept nodding to his every question. Actually, by this point I couldn't tell whether it really hurt or not; it just seemed to me that I felt a pain wherever my father's strong hand pressed, just as surely as I would answer whenever he called my name.
Next thing I knew, my father was carrying me piggyback out the door. I lay slumped over his shoulders, disconcerted by this turn of events and utterly in the dark as to what was going to happen next. It was not until my father entered the hospital surgery that I realized things were not looking at all good. At that point I was in a welter of confusion: my father's look of determination made me feel that I perhaps did have appendicitis, but I was aware that when it all started I was just pretending to be in pain, even if it really did feel a bit sore later when my father's probing hand was pressing down on me. My head was spinning; I had no idea what to do. As my father laid me on the operating table, I managed only a feeble demurral. ”It doesn't hurt anymore,” I said.