Though this is being posted much later, the events recounted in this piece took place one week after the Sichuan Earthquake, on 19 May, 2008. On that day the flags were flying at half mast, a three-day ban on public entertainment had begun, and a three-minute moment of silence, beginning at 2:28 in the afternoon, was asked of the entire nation. Those in cars blared their horns with the air raid sirens to symbolize a wail of grief. For more background on that day, please read this.

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It all started with some small talk. I got into a cab at Xidan after the buses had stopped running, and the cabbie, who was the talkative type, decided to make conversation.

“Did you participate in the moment of silence?”

It was a hard question to answer, though it shouldn’t have been. The answer was “No.” Simple as that. But I equivocated. I told him that I was in a mall during the moment of silence and that I saw some people observing it (which was all true), what about you? He said that he was on the street, standing beside his car, honking his horn. I asked him why and he said dismissively that the state had ordered him to.

If he had said that he had lost someone in the quake, I would have let it go. And maybe if he had said that he thought it was the right thing to do, I wouldn’t have pressed him. But from his insouciant answer I thought that maybe he thought the whole forced outpouring of guilt as absurd and inconvenient as I did.

So I said: “I think it’s bullshit that they are closing entertainment venues because of the earthquake.”

“Why?”

“Because KTV and roller coasters have nothing to do with the earthquake. And the government doesn’t have the right to tell me how to mourn. If I want to pray for the victims, then go out and have fun with my friends, I should be able to.”

He glanced at me like, “Are you serious?”

“You can’t have fun while others are suffering. There are mothers, childen—buried. These people don’t have homes anymore!”

“I understand that, but every single day someone is suffering somewhere…”

We were driving north from Xizhimen. On our right flashed the Beijing Film Academy. There were no cars in front or around us so the cabbie hazarded a look in my direction and said, “你是中国人么?” (“Are you Chinese?”) Usually this question is meant as a joke, but that night it seemed less than facetious and more than idle curiosity. It seemed like a veiled threat.

This time I replied honestly: “No. I grew up in America.”

“No wonder.”

I didn’t ask him what he meant by that. In my six months here in China I had never felt so American as I did in that moment. No, I don’t mean “American”—I mean “not Chinese.” I had never felt so un-Chinese as when he asked me that question. But he was right, try as I might, I couldn’t understand the situation from a Chinese perspective. I was connected to China ethnically and could understand it intellectually, but where was my emotional connection, and did I ever have one in the first place? These are all questions I pondered afterward. At the time, I pressed on.

“You’re right. I’m an American. You know about 9/11. We had one national day of mourning but that was it. But after, you could still go to the amusement park if you wanted to.”

“That was terrible, but at least those people had homes they could go back to. There are millions homeless right now.”

“What about the floods in Myanmar? There are many more victims but no moments of silence.”

“But they aren’t Chinese.”

“Chinese people die every year of floods too.”

“But that is a few hundred people at most.”

“So it’s about the numbers?”

The cabbie drove faster and faster, his hands shook on the steering wheel, which caused the car to sway.

“These people are starving! Trucks can’t get through, they can’t find these people, and they are dying!”

“But what about the famines during the cultural revolution? Millions died then.”

He was exasperated. He laughed in the way you laugh when dealing with irrationality.

“Maybe it’s different in America—I don’t know, but in China this is the first time since ’49 that the government has acknowledged tragedy publicly. It shows that they are caring more about regular people. And I’m not talking about me—I’m fine. I’m talking about the peasants.”

“I agree that the government is making changes, and that it is great they are acknowledging the tragedy, but I wonder if they don’t get something out of it.”

“Of course they are. No one talks about Tibet anymore, not even the Western media. The government is instituting these things like the moment of silence and the ban on public recreation. If they didn’t the people would begin to wonder—do they not care about us? But most of this stuff, like the donations, are voluntary. Usually companies will force their employees to donate a certain amount of money but not this time. You give what you want. I’d say—and I’m just guessing, I don’t have the numbers or anything—that 30% are doing it because they have to but 70% are doing it because they want to.”

The conversation continued like a Platonic dialogue. The cabbie was a smart man, I could tell. He might have been thinking up his points on the fly (while trying to keep the car from scraping the median), but he had his information. When we got to my apartment I thanked him for giving me something to think about.

—

It is meaningless to compare human misery. Numerically, culturally, or socially.

I cited 9/11 when I argued with the cabbie but the nature of 9/11 was different. 9/11 was a conscious attack perpetrated by an outsider; the horror of 9/11, other than the casualties, was mostly psychological—it was an attack on American soil that reminded those of us not alive for Pearl Harbor that America is not invulnerable. This is a feeling I don’t expect most of the world to understand, because America is one of the few nations that have not had to fight a war on its own soil (I am talking about America in its fifty-state form and thus discounting the Revolutionary and Civil War).

Likewise, it is hard for me to understand what this government intervention means to Chinese people. How would I have felt if the government halted recreational activities after 9/11? Would I have taken it as concern or a violation of civil liberties?

Perhaps Americans are inoculated against disasters. We give our hurricanes names. We endearingly refer to the places most frequently destroyed by twisters Tornado Alley. We distance ourselves, watching the devastation from a helicopter’s point of view. Or we do what we do best—turn it into a media event, oversaturate the news so that people get tired of hearing about it. Katrina was apparently a big deal but I couldn’t believe Kanye said that shit about Bush.

Or maybe disasters just don’t effect us as much. The worst earthquake in American history was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake which killed about 3,000 people. Ironically, the top 9 events that have claimed the most American lives are all wars, with Iraq inching in on the 10th spot, which is currently held by the deadliest natural disaster in America: the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 which claimed at least 6,000 lives.

But if Americans can be inoculated against disaster through media coverage, so can the Chinese. The Sichuan Earthquake was a great step forward in government transparency (even though, as my colleague Yulin Zhuang argues, the government is using the earthquake as a political tool), and the fact that it claimed so many lives will only help to cement it in the Chinese consciousness. If this openness continues, maybe when the next disasters strike (knock on wood), the outpouring of support will be less and less and the donations fewer and fewer because people will unwittingly make comparisons to this earthquake, and after a while they will become numb.

When I got home I thought about the original question the cab driver had asked me, the one I had lied to. I thought back to 2:28 in the afternoon. I was at the Starbucks in The Place, chatting with a friend when the PA came on reminding everyone about the moment of silence. Some employees, in identical red-and-gold cheongsams, ran past to join the small crowd that had gathered outside to gaze at the large screen broadcasting a montage of the tragedy. My friend and I talked in a hushed whisper. Beside us a young Chinese man was yelling into his cell phone, and behind me three Chinese wives bowed their heads and clasped their hands in prayer. And outside, perhaps incredulous to find the streets empty, a car sped past, its engine roaring, going as fast as it could.