Stupid Morals...

I walked into my apartment, and my motorcycle helmet was out on the couch, mocking me. I endured its eyeless gaze as I as I bagged it up and hid it and it’s accusatory visor away. But I couldn’t hate it. I could only agree.

It seems that Beibei is filled with motorcycles. More poignantly, filled with people whose constant quest for a cheap and crappy second-hand motorcycle haven’t been frustrated at every turn. Beibei seems filled with the very objects of my obsession, but they have remained resolutely just beyond my grasp. It’s like craving a twinkie at fat camp. You know they’re there, but you just can’t find the stash.

About a week ago, I thought that Lady Luck might have looked upon me with her green-eyed gaze. I passed a motorcycle repair shop while walking around the city and, as has become my custom, I went and inquired if they knew of any second-handers. In fact, they themselves had three (1). One of them was perfect. It was beautiful. It was a 125cc Honda sportbike that was classically styled with a round headlight. Exactly what I wanted. It was also only 3 years old. They quoted the price to at 3,000 RMB, which I figured could be bargained down into the 2,000 – 2,500 range (between 300 and 400 USD). I got in contact with a student who knew about motorcycles, who came to check it out and help me bargain. Skipping a lot of painful deals, the owner wouldn’t come below 3,800 RMB, and the bike was actually 7 years old. I was heartbroken, but wasn’t going to even attempt to do business with a liar and a cheat.

Tragedy two: The very next day, my student found a motorcycle on the school’s Craigslist, and said he would scout it out ahead of time to avoid the waiguoren markup. He found something, and we arranged a meet. It would be 2,200 RMB, but only a year old, and beautiful. It was. As soon as I saw it, I lusted after it, after the picture of myself proudly zipping through the Beibei traffic, but mostly after the idea of not having to spend 30 minutes just to get a meal. I was tired of being thwarted, and here it was, the shiny red James Dean-esque reward for my patience.

There was a catch. It didn’t have a license plate. I wasn’t worried because most of the motorcycles on campus don’t have them (private property, I guess), and that’s where I’d be doing 90% of my driving. The other 10%, well, I know the police. I wasn’t worried about it. But. It also meant that it might be (2) stolen.

I tried so many mental gymnastics to rationalize that motorcycle. The thing is, I’ve always said that I would never buy something ‘hot,’ but what I meant was that I would just avoid purchasing things in back alleys or clandestinely handing someone money in a bathroom stall. This was… open, and accepted. I knew that I could buy it without repercussion, because, let’s be honest, who’s going to stop a waiguoren? I could probably stack dead bodies on the back of my stolen motorcycle and drive through downtown Beibei, and people would just chalk it up to another waiguoren oddity (3).

‘How is this different from the pirated DVDs you buy,’ I asked myself. DVDs are something I’ve just become uncomfortably comfortable with, especially after I found them sold at WalMart (4), putting another arrow into a quiver already bursting with rationalization. But the motorcycle is different, because there might be someone out there who was looking for their motorcycle, and I didn’t want to be the person to take it from them.

So I turned it down. I’m ashamed to say how hard it was, but I said no and walked past the motorcycle, walked past the realization of one of my dreams, walked past the possibility of not having to walk all the way home. Also, depending on who you talk to, possibly walking past eternal damnation, as well. Either way, I walked home.

I wish I could say that I was buoyed home on wings of angels, or that I began to notice the small things along my walk that had long since become mundane. But the only thing that buoyed me home were my legs, and all I noticed when I got there was how sore they were.

(1) This was groundbreaking. A quirk that I have discovered is that most people in China have a pretty narrow focus. While on a previous quest for bamboo (maybe another story all together), I walked all over our fair city to no avail. Please remember, this is China. Bamboo is EVERYWHERE, and EVERYONE has it. But apparently no one knows where to buy it. Not even the storeowner around the corner from the shop whose sole product was … bamboo. Back to the topic, every other motorcycle mechanic, who spends his entire life up to his elbows in dilapidated motorcycles, doesn’t know where you can buy one. How they ever invented gunpowder, I don’t know…
(2) Definitely was
(3) I’ve been watching way too much ‘Dexter.’ Although, this is old hat. I already figured that out when my first desire towards the lying cheat mechanic was to burn down his workshop. No more ‘Dexter’ for a while.
(4) Admittedly, not a paragon of business ethics, but something that I would assume is strictly regulated.