Come buy a new car--but read into it carefully first

Chinese people moving to the States always take American first names, while we invariably keep our old ones when studying foreign tongues at home or even when moving East to start a new life in Boddhidharma's footsteps. We rename our Asian friends, of course, for our own convenience-because we cannot wrap our tongues around handles like "Xiaofeng" or "Hsiu-Chuan," though they have little difficulty pronouncing "Kevin" or "Victor."

All the same, when you go to China there is good reason to acquire a new moniker: vanity. "Paul," for instance, works out in Chinese to "Fish Package," as I recently learned. In a society that gives its children names with such poetic meanings as "Morning Mountain," a stranger introducing himself as "Fish Package" must, I think, invite suspicion, however much he may pose as a friend.

It is the kind of name that makes mothers pull their children out of the street when they hear it. And if this foreigner also cheerfully claims to drink a concoction called "Bite the Wax Tadpole"-the original and inspired name of Coca Cola when first introduced in China-well, you could hardly blame the East for marvelling at the Yankee obsession with the piscine. Mao Tse Tung, by the way, is supposed to mean "Bringer of Light to the East," while his latest successor Jiang Zemin says his name means "Bringer of Light to the People"--a coincidence, I'm told, that all hinges on the penultimate syllable.

Call me a scrutable occidental, but this synergy sounds like a tremendous stroke of good luck for Zemin. It would be like our electing a president named Ike Lincoln. Heck, if you've got it, flaunt it. And speaking of Lincoln, that brings me to the real reason for this column: I have a 1990 Lincoln Continental that I desperately want to sell, but I haven't got the price of an advertisement and my Chinese friends are too astute to bite the tadpole. This despite my repeated assurances that all the finer big American cars make that same loud whining sound and bottom out in the Biscuitville driveway. Now before you turn away in disgust at what may seem an unethical attempt to arrogate this space to a mercenary aim, consider.

If the fruits of deconstruction and postmodernist theory have brought us no other light, they have at least established that there's no such thing as objective prose. Every journalist, every writer has an agenda, an angle, some kind of snake-oil he's out to sell. Every piece is an ad, longer or shorter. Most writers try to hide their agenda, but not me. Have I ever lied to you-or anyway, can you prove it? "Continental": the very sound makes your heart beat faster, doesn't it?

Think of transcontinental journeys in air-conditioned splendor, interrupted only by frequent stops for gas. Think of Fred and Ginger dancing The Continental as they sweep across the balcony in "The Gay Divorcee": elegance, champagne, tails and top hats. And only a cad could object to anything named after Honest Abe Lincoln, who, though a martyr to his country, also played the more enduring role of lending his name to used-car dealers the length and breadth of our democracy.

When my car was new, to be sure, the police would have bagged me before I got within 10 paces of it, it being a high ticket item that belonged to someone else and me dressing the way I do; no, we knew each other later in life. But I can attest that its repairs have been high ticket items, too. Why, I remember when she had no more than 50,000 miles on her, and the door molding peeled off on the passenger side. "How bad could it be?" we laughed, but $250 and six months later, the new piece peeled off again, and we stopped laughing.

Today the remains of the sticky stuff along the door, black with road dirt, testify to my callous indifference to the importance of moldings in making a good first impression on auto mechanics. Alert service people understand by this outward and visible sign that there is an inner and invisible corruption in an owner who just doesn't care for his vehicle the way Henry Ford's heirs might wish.