China Driving
Oct. 15th, 2016 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morgainaJenny said that a Chinese National who is her colleague told her that every child in China is told "You are the most important person in the world, you are number 1, but you have to fight to get what you deserve." (This may be a result of the One Child policy). This is probably very hard to deal with when a child starts school, and they start early.
So often, I have seen friendliness and courtesy in shops, etc. that it doesn't seem to have a lasting effect....except standing in queues, in which the Chinese will get ahead of you and push, plus other such behaviors. The other is driving. For being a society that follows rules so assiduously, they drop all pretense of civilization when driving. Stop lights are not stopped at, unless forced to by the car ahead, speeds are ignored, following the car ahead of you, bumper to bumper, driving with a tire on either side of the lane, never-ever stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks, creating an extra lane where there is none. But the very worst is merging, cars force their bumpers in a space of about 3 feet in front of the car in the lane they want to merge into, and continuing to do that when the car behind is just as determined not to let them. They never purposefully let a car merge in front of them, just when they are moments from a collision. Friday night where we wanted to turn, so many cars from the far side of the highway to the closest to the turn, going both North and South all tried to turn, would not let anyone go in front of them, or would not back up a little to undo the knot of cars until there were 20 cars at a standstill. The center car had cars holding it in the center from front, back, and both sides. Then they all started screaming at each other. Wow! If each car had cooperated, by backing up or letting another car go before they did, it would have been solved. But they didn't and we ended up driving perhaps 20 miles out of our way to find another, less crazy, place to turn.
Jenny drives a bubble car, basically a tuk tuk. It is not powerful. The front can go all the way down so that it looks bubble like. There are bicycle lanes she drives in, but sometimes had to go on the highway.
Jenny said "I really need to get braver about going through intersections. I begged her: "No No, caution!!!!"
So often, I have seen friendliness and courtesy in shops, etc. that it doesn't seem to have a lasting effect....except standing in queues, in which the Chinese will get ahead of you and push, plus other such behaviors. The other is driving. For being a society that follows rules so assiduously, they drop all pretense of civilization when driving. Stop lights are not stopped at, unless forced to by the car ahead, speeds are ignored, following the car ahead of you, bumper to bumper, driving with a tire on either side of the lane, never-ever stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks, creating an extra lane where there is none. But the very worst is merging, cars force their bumpers in a space of about 3 feet in front of the car in the lane they want to merge into, and continuing to do that when the car behind is just as determined not to let them. They never purposefully let a car merge in front of them, just when they are moments from a collision. Friday night where we wanted to turn, so many cars from the far side of the highway to the closest to the turn, going both North and South all tried to turn, would not let anyone go in front of them, or would not back up a little to undo the knot of cars until there were 20 cars at a standstill. The center car had cars holding it in the center from front, back, and both sides. Then they all started screaming at each other. Wow! If each car had cooperated, by backing up or letting another car go before they did, it would have been solved. But they didn't and we ended up driving perhaps 20 miles out of our way to find another, less crazy, place to turn.
Jenny drives a bubble car, basically a tuk tuk. It is not powerful. The front can go all the way down so that it looks bubble like. There are bicycle lanes she drives in, but sometimes had to go on the highway.
Jenny said "I really need to get braver about going through intersections. I begged her: "No No, caution!!!!"
