And They Shall Call Me "Captain Cross Walk"

I have a confession, America.  I am a superhero.  Shocker, I know – it was news to me too, but only by coming to China, have I uncovered my superhuman ability to jaywalk and dodge bicycles.  If you’ve seen any pictures of Chinese streets, you’ve probably noticed a sea of bikers, maybe with a few cars.  Well these days, it’s pretty much the same (the bikes have become mopeds and scooters) but there are just as many bikes with ten times as many cars.  The streets are simply unsafe and sidewalks are merely temporarily vacant parking lots.

A certain stereotype says that Chinese drivers are awful, and I’m here to sponsor that idea wholeheartedly.  I’ve witnessed several wrecks, and I myself, have partaken in a bus wreck.  When we heard the vehicles coming to jerking halt and the grinding of metal upon metal, a massive groan rang throughout the bus in such a startling synchronization that we couldn’t help but look at each other with a little bit of pride and a telepathic tossing around of the idea of starting a K-Pop boy band.  But this was not a groan of fear or bewilderment.  It was one of simple frustration; this was just some nuisance that was to be expected.  No one was surprised by a bus wreck – we were just annoyed.

But that’s just the way the roads work.  You don’t really wait your turn, or for the car in front of you to go, or even for the lights to change, in some cases.  You just go whenever you can.  It’s a dog-eat-dog world and apparently China’s the alpha and leading the pack.  I guess this comes as a shock to me because I always pinned collectivist cultures as a mutual understanding of putting the group before the self.  But when the group is in line at the supermarket, the self can get to the front if he’s quick enough and who cares if you hit that old grandma with your cart?  She’s just going to spit on you in the street tomorrow, anyways…

The difference between collectivism and individualism isn’t the goal of each particular person.  It’s how you obtain it.  In America, while we might road rage pretty heavily, we hold open doors for people, we pick up something dropped for someone with their hands full – in general, if it’s not too inconvenient we’ll help somebody.  Maybe this stems from trying to prop ourselves up as caring individuals, to begin relationships on a positive note, make good impressions, etc., but in China, it’s all about what I want, and when I want it, almost as if everyone has come to the same conclusion that there are just too many people to hold open every door, too many people to go out of your way for small acts of kindness. People disregard others not out of selfishness, but because it’s literally too exhausting to apologize for every toe stepped on and every shoulder bumped into. My first week in China saw me saying “Sorry,” more times than I can count.  And the reactions I got were the weirdest looks that I’ve received in all my experience here. So you stop trying and you let the next person catch the door; someone else can clean up your litter.  The problem is that this turns into (not so) controlled chaos in any public setting.

My favorite instance of such chaos is the immovable object-unstoppable force conundrum: just because I’m going down a one-way street and you’re going up that same one-way street, doesn’t mean either one of us should have to back up to let the other through - why would we do that when we can just honk at each other?

Perhaps I’m being unfair.  Perhaps I just don’t fully understand the rules of China.  I should probably keep an open mind, right?  Then again, an open mind isn’t the Chinese way. 

Thanks for reading. 

P.S. Dr. Seus knows his stuff: