So I hope I didn’t cause too much concern with my first post. I LOVED Shanghai. It felt like the New York of China: fashion, art, culture, gentrified, ultramod, industrial, fusion, all at once. The energy of the city is palpable. One of the side effects of the “one child per couple” policy is that everyone is pushing for themselves, often with their whole family behind them. That creates velocity. Career velocity, social standing velocity, growth, and inertia. It seems, with the Chinese educational system focused on hard sciences and exams that it must be very difficult to be creative in Shanghai. I think we’ll see a surge in the “creative class” in China in the next 10 years. This will be an exciting time. I could live in Shanghai. I’d love to live in Shanghai, but I’d need to focus a LOT on language skills first and reading would be very difficult for me.
Ok, so the next big observation from me is that everyone drives a stick. That is, they all have manual transmissions: cars, buses, trucks. In the US, I don’t know anyone who drives a stick, unless they own a Porsche or a wee VW Golf. It means cars “leap off the line” faster than the US. This leads me to another curious observation: most of the cars started off in second gear. That thunking noise a car makes when it’s in too high a gear for “take off”. That’s the noise all cars make in China. I can drive a stick, but I don’t (typical lazy American I guess). I was always taught to work my way comfortably up through the gear box, focusing on creating the smoothest ride for my passengers. I suspect that in China it’s about keeping rpm low and conserving a little gas by starting in 2nd.
Sometimes in the US, I am very frustrated by the arrogant, selfish, pushy a$$wipes who push in front of people during a zipper merge. You know who you are, the people who push in at the head of the queue, instead of “waiting your turn”. Many people do it, but many people don’t. It’s not polite. In China, it’s the opposite. I wonder if it’s a side effect of the only child policy again. When the light changes you go, you push towards the oncoming traffic, if you can inch in front, then you win. The only thing is that EVERYONE is doing the same. The result: it works. It is NOT how I expect traffic or people to behave, but gosh darn it, if everyone is pushing, selfish people, then it just works.
An example, I have been patiently awaiting the cross signal at an intersection. The wee green man appears and I begin to cross, past half way, almost to the other side and a bus appears, with it’s indicator on. It is going to make the “right turn on red”. In my brain, the equation is simple: I have the green man, the bus has a red light, the bus will stop and give way to the pedestrian. In Shanghai however, my instincts couldn’t be more wrong. The bus HONKS at me and my son. Not slowing from 40kph it attacks the corner expecting people to scatter out of it’s way. Which of course we do. And then it dawns on me. I was probably a split second later than everyone else in the cross walk, but I did it, I got out of the way. It works, I’m ok, rattled, but ok. The bus remains on time, and the world keeps on turning, turning, into the future. It’s a shift of my perception that is required. In the 2 weeks I was there I had already made the shift. I was no longer surprised by mopeds, bikes, or buses crashing red lights. I just dealt with it.
Another great example is when the light turn. The traffic lights warn you that they are going to change. The orange appears to let you know the green is coming as well as the red. This means people can start sooner, and push into the intersection. In the US, when 4 lanes of straight through traffic are lined up and someon is turning across traffic, they might be cheeky enough to push one car in front of them. In Shanghai, 12 cars pushed through the four lanes of oncoming traffic, all as a perfect zipper, first a turning car weaves itself through, then 4 oncoming cars, etc … people honked all the time, but really to say “here I am watch out”, not “get the frick out of my way you moron”.
The final thought on zippers and second gear is this: In the US and most of the western world, the horn is for admonishment. When we toot, we are saying “you idiot!”, in Shanghai, the horn is to announce your presence. Like the “firing a gun at every intersection” of the early days of the horseless carriage.
Filed under: china , china, creative, driving, shanghai, transmission, zipper merge
Veronica was fantastic, showed us all around, opened her home to us, stayed to help us make wontons and cook them up for a feast the first night (one feast of many!). Her house was not really a home as I would have defined it. They lived in this apartment during the week, basically just eating, sleeping, and doing homework. During the weekends they go to live with their parents, in a much nicer, homelier apartment a bit further out of the city. According to my ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=92856c53-ca37-460b-895b-3668b5ac0d76)
