The situation was like this:
This evening, after finishing my English exam at 8:30 and coming back from school, there was a drizzling rain, wet pavement, dim streetlights……
I rode my bike to the intersection of Zhongguancun Avenue and the Fourth Ring Road; the light was basically green. As I rode to the middle of the road, a car coming toward me, either making a U-turn or turning, suddenly appeared. I stopped, preparing to turn aside and go around it, but it lurched forward (it seemed to accelerate) and hit the front of my bike head-on, after which I was thrown to the ground.
Since the turning car was not moving that fast to begin with, and since it hit the front of my bike, and since I landed on my back first, in short there was no serious injury. The bicycle was damaged; I left it by the roadside, and I’ll check the exact extent of the damage another day. My left arm has a slight abrasion, my right hand a slight contusion, and both legs were pressed under the fallen bicycle, but basically there’s nothing to worry about.
The other party was clearly a young white-collar worker, and after getting out of the car his attitude was still fairly polite and reasonable. So I didn’t pursue anything at all, patted my backside, and left; I nearly thanked him.
Logically speaking, of course he should have paid compensation. I remember that back in the day, did some classmate surnamed Fei get five hundred yuan plus some medicinal herbs? But this is mainly a matter of mood. If you’re not short of money and your mood is good, then of course it’s better to keep the good mood.
What matters is that after being hit, my mood really was quite good. Especially after the various knots and anxieties left over from the English exam, one crash and all of that was sent flying beyond the Ninth Heaven. Thus I finally discovered the existence of the drizzle and the cool breeze; and on the way home afterward, limping along, I savored a kind of wondrous feeling I had never experienced before. If I had argued with him over compensation, or asked him to take me to the hospital for a checkup, or at the very least asked him to take me home, then I would probably not have had time to savor that marvelous mood, would I?
When I realized that car was not stopping but instead surging forward, when that instant came of car front colliding with car front, I thought to myself: this is dangerous! In fact, it really was a dangerous matter. Although that crash itself was not fatal, in that chaotic intersection, if another car had happened to come crushing over from behind, the consequences would have been unthinkable. Fortunately, it was a scare without disaster; after I hit the ground, no one harmed me..
The flight lasted only an instant; by the time I became conscious, I was already lying on the ground. I was carrying my backpack, so when I landed on my back there wasn’t much actual contact, and half my cheek was lightly kissed by the ground. How the abrasion on my left arm and the contusion on my right hand came about, I don’t know; the pain in both legs probably came from being pressed down by the fallen bicycle, but I’m not too sure, because I also forgot how I got up.
When I first hit the ground, I lay motionless, and the feeling was very subtle. My basic thought was: hmm, I seem to still be alive. Lying in the middle of the main road and looking at the surrounding cars and high-rises was a first for me, and it felt very strange; however, I can no longer reconstruct the scene as it appeared to my eyes at the time. A little later I felt the car owner open the door and get out, so I hurriedly stood up—on the one hand to put his mind at ease, and on the other to put my own mind at ease. Because lying there, I couldn’t make sense of my own condition; there was a bit of pain all over my body, but it seemed that nothing important was damaged. After standing up and testing myself, I found that my arms and legs were still under my control, and the pain in various places was also subsiding, so I thought probably I was fine. I casually muttered to the car owner, “You actually accelerated…” The car owner seemed to argue, saying, “No… I was turning…” (Everybody knows you were turning…) But I stopped there; there was no need for further explanation or argument. As long as the person was fine, that was enough. The front wheel of the bicycle was somewhat deformed, the rear wheel also had a bit of a problem, and the front of the car had some damage as well; the license plate was crooked too. I said that since the person was fine, any damage to our vehicles was a small matter. He gave me a business card, and so I was even less likely to pursue anything with him.
The final essay question on the English exam was to write about life and death, and I actually didn’t even have time to write it (in fact there was plenty of time, I simply underestimated how difficult translation would be and wasted too much time being tangled up on the earlier parts); this collision, however, turned out to be an addition to that essay. Life always carries the possibility of death at every moment; simply being alive is itself a kind of good fortune. There are so many things worth being grateful for—how could one possibly have the time to complain?
June 8, 2009
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- Chu Jing 2009-06-12 10:57:32 Anonymous 59.66.219.36
“Life always carries the possibility of death at every moment; simply being alive is itself a kind of good fortune. There are so many things worth being grateful for—how could one possibly have the time to complain?”
Well said~~
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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