

Li also uses props: three two-inch-long 3D car models from the Pixar film “Cars,” in red, blue and brown, to demonstrate reversing, turning, blind spots, and the three-second rule for keeping a safe following distance. Good job.” It’s what I hear as one of his students. Instead, his mantra for students has become, “Good job. Nowadays, he says, he fishes regularly and never gets angry.

Yelling, however, only made students more nervous, so Li had to change his approach. “I found myself screaming at them,” said Li, even though he considers himself a generally quiet, subdued person. Other times, Chinese drivers, trained to be mindful of cyclists, would slow down at intersections and end up blocking traffic. When he first started six years ago, his students’ mistakes unnerved him: stop signs, rare in China, meant his students either ignored them or stopped too sharply. The fish is a testament to how Li has managed to teach more than 1,000 immigrant students to drive.
