Because I don’t think, I know, that if I drove in China something terrible would happen I do a lot of walking. Part of walking is crossing the street to the shore of the next block. This seemingly pedestrian task (all puns intended) is what separates the men from the boys and the locals from the foreigners. The sheer amount of mopeds and bicycles here is astounding. This creates two rivers on every street, one on each side, the middle is reserved for things of four wheels or more.
My first strategy in crossing the street is to just pick an Asian that appears to have positioned themselves in a manner that would suggest that they too want to risk life and limb to want to walk on the greener pastures of concrete of the next block, and I follow them; however, this is not always an option. These scenarios are what I like to call game time. It starts with one step. Obviously I wait till it is the appropriate red light setting to minimize car risk; unfortunately, all traffic laws are NOT laws but suggestions (I have seen people in the face of a traffic jam drive into on-coming traffic of the freeway, seriously). Usually I wait till the nearer stream of two-wheeled things is ebbing not flowing. Once I clear that I am practically half way there, half way to the next block where my pirated DVDs await.
Things I have learned through this process: you will most certainly have to alter the course of the stream of bikes on the far side, and under no circumstances do you make eye contact with these people unless you are ready to dance and maybe make that person wreck. The trick is to pick a line, keep your head down, and keep a steady pace because once you do this the oncoming bikes know that they will go around you but if you make eye contact with them it is like meeting somebody in a hallway. You start to go one way around them and they simultaneously are correcting in the same manner and you both end up looking stupid because you look like you’re trying to juke the other out and carry a football past them for a score; Except it’s not like that at all because there are fast moving metal vehicles that depend on balance involved. Thing number two that I have learned: don’t get distracted by the Chinese version of a crosswalk go and stop icon. In America we have a green person midstride that lights up when its time to walk. Here it is a green person that moves. I can only assume they are intended to look like they are walking, but they don’t. They look like they have just lost all composure and are doing an Irish jig in the middle of the street.
If you don’t get stalled by laughter in the middle of the street by this image, and you take a walk of faith through mopeds, one should make it to the promise land. “What if you have to walk more than one block?” you may ask. Then I would pray… or just get a cab.
My first strategy in crossing the street is to just pick an Asian that appears to have positioned themselves in a manner that would suggest that they too want to risk life and limb to want to walk on the greener pastures of concrete of the next block, and I follow them; however, this is not always an option. These scenarios are what I like to call game time. It starts with one step. Obviously I wait till it is the appropriate red light setting to minimize car risk; unfortunately, all traffic laws are NOT laws but suggestions (I have seen people in the face of a traffic jam drive into on-coming traffic of the freeway, seriously). Usually I wait till the nearer stream of two-wheeled things is ebbing not flowing. Once I clear that I am practically half way there, half way to the next block where my pirated DVDs await.
Things I have learned through this process: you will most certainly have to alter the course of the stream of bikes on the far side, and under no circumstances do you make eye contact with these people unless you are ready to dance and maybe make that person wreck. The trick is to pick a line, keep your head down, and keep a steady pace because once you do this the oncoming bikes know that they will go around you but if you make eye contact with them it is like meeting somebody in a hallway. You start to go one way around them and they simultaneously are correcting in the same manner and you both end up looking stupid because you look like you’re trying to juke the other out and carry a football past them for a score; Except it’s not like that at all because there are fast moving metal vehicles that depend on balance involved. Thing number two that I have learned: don’t get distracted by the Chinese version of a crosswalk go and stop icon. In America we have a green person midstride that lights up when its time to walk. Here it is a green person that moves. I can only assume they are intended to look like they are walking, but they don’t. They look like they have just lost all composure and are doing an Irish jig in the middle of the street.
If you don’t get stalled by laughter in the middle of the street by this image, and you take a walk of faith through mopeds, one should make it to the promise land. “What if you have to walk more than one block?” you may ask. Then I would pray… or just get a cab.
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