Left, Right, Left...

It's a gross understatement to say that I have a bad memory.  Just ask my wife if you need convincing.  My memory gets even worse the further back in time you go, but there are things from my past that I do have vivid memories about.  For example, I can remember sitting in my living room and my Mom teaching me how to tie my shoes, and no, I'm not talking about last year.  I can also remember my Dad teaching me how to hit a baseball and my grandpa teaching me how to fish.  And perhaps one of the most important things, though unbeknownst to me at the time, I remember learning is how to properly cross the street.

I know this sounds simple enough.  And at the time i thought the same thing.  How hard can it be?  Just put one foot in front of the other and stay out of the way of things that are bigger than you.  It's not exactly rocket science.  As a five year old I remember thinking to myself "isn't this unnecessary."  And then I moved to China and found that it was.  Now I thank my parents every day for teaching me this most valuable lesson.  I can't tell you how many people I see each day who come within inches , or should I say millimeters, of losing their life.  And most of them are totally unaware of their near death experiences.

Before moving to China I heard some crazy statistic about four people dying each day in Beijing just by crossing the street.  At the time that number seemed high, and even caused a little apprehension about my first road crossing encounter.  But now that I've lived here for four years i think that number, if anything, is too low.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, in Beijing follows the street crossing rule my parents instilled in me those many years ago.  It was a simple rule, only three words: left, right, left.  Not only was the rule simple, but it was also easy to follow.  Look to your left to see if anything is coming.  Look to your right to see if anything is coming.  And then look to your left once again.  It requires no more than a few turns of the head.  And a few extra seconds out of your life seems a small price to pay to insure that you're not dead at the end of the day.   But apparently this is something that Chinese parents do not pass down to their children.  Or at least one that was never truly learned.

Forget the left, right, left principle, I'd settle for just the look left!  Every day I see people step into the bike paths without ever looking left.  I see cyclists and sanlunche's zip past busses trying to make a left turn.  I've even had to completely stop my car once on Third Ring Road because some genius decided to play human frogger.  If you've never been to Beijing and witnessed it first hand you truly can't appreciate the gravity of the situation.

I ran bumped into a pedestrian the other day on my bike, I had the green light, he had the red.  And yet he still had the audacity to genuinely be shocked that he was hit, as if it were all my fault.  Of course I didn't stop and see how he was.  As a laowai, no matter who's really to blame, I'd be the one at fault.  So instead I hollered back at him, while pointing to the RED crossing signal, "you have the red light, I have the green one, Paco.   I'm not so sure Paco translated correctly in Chinese.  But I am sure he got the point.  Although I doubt this incident deterred him in the least from stepping back into traffic, at his next intersection, without ever looking. 

If you've read this hoping to glean some insight into the Chinese way of thinking, then you've read in vain.  If you're read this article hoping to learn the much needed secret to crossing the streets of Beijing...sorry, you won't find it here.  I just needed to vent some frustration.  That's why this blog entry is categorized under the "rantings" section.

小心行事，



托马斯