Traffic

Traffic in China doesn’t follow the laws or conventions of American roadways, as you might expect.  You see, China is a collectivist society, which means drivers from opposing traffic will share your lane with you.

Driving and walking are dangerous prospects in China (not that driving is especially safe anyplace else).  Sidewalk and street blend into one here, and cars split the street with bicycles, dogs, buses, motorcycles and motorbikes, and plenty of pedestrians.  I often wonder why so many people walk in the street- without seeming to care for their safety- and set out to use the sidewalk, but after weaving through too many food carts, tables, chicken cages, broken concrete and other construction leftovers, and parked bicycles and motorbikes, I end up taking to the street myself.

Here, the drivers honk non-stop.  It’s to alert other motorists and pedestrians of their approach, but the people here are so jaded and used to it that they won’t step aside unless they have to, and only then at the last possible moment.  One of my taxi drivers almost ran down a university student, and I can’t really fault the driver because he had his headlights on, was driving under 5 miles per hour, and had honked steadily at him several times before the young man finally flinched and stepped aside.  Last week, my uncle Jiang and I set out in his car one morning to drive back to the university from the city of Bengbu, normally a 30-minute drive.  The fog that morning was intense, you would’ve tripped over your toes if you didn’t know your heels were behind them.  Almost as thick as the fog outside was the tension inside the car.  I watched wordlessly as my uncle slowly traversed the maze of the once-familiar city streets and grunted and sighed while trying to determine what streets we were on.  Then, insanely, and I don’t use those italics lightly, pedestrians would appear- on the highway, not on the city streets- would appear in front of us, walking the wrong way, when a perfectly usable pathway- flat, smooth, and clear- lie on the other side of a separating barrier.  We would honk and swerve around them, and after surviving our 80-minute odyssey we eventually arrived home.  I often mutter to myself about Chinese drivers’ lack of courtesy and safety in relation to other drivers and especially to pedestrians, but those people walking on the highway, in the fog, were out of their minds in any culture.

Back to the taxi drivers.  Of course, they show the same temerity as taxi drivers the world over.  But here, no one shows respect to the dashes or lines indicating whose lane is whose.  So, when passing, the taxi drivers will honk several times and go left or right- whichever is most convenient, not necessarily a legal or safe driving space- to overtake whatever’s in front of them.  Once, on a four-lane road, we were in the left lane (note: China, like America, drives on the left- theoretically), blocked in front by a tour bus and on the right by a semi.  So, in his impatience, my driver passed the bus in front by going left (we’re driving the wrong way now), which is fairly common for them, but there was another car in front of us, also in the midst of passing the bus by driving into opposing traffic.  Apparently, this fellow scofflaw was too slow for the taxi driver, so he went left around him- we are into the far lane of reverse-direction traffic now.  I don’t remember how long it took to pass both car and bus, or by how little we missed a head-on collision, but if I counted it in breaths, it would have been zero.

They pile them in here, too, at least on the motorbikes.  Every morning, I can count on seeing husband and wife, or daughter and child, doubled-up on a motorbike, and if it’s raining, wearing a parka made to drape over the handlebars, or if it’s cold, using mittens that are fastened to them.  I’ve seen, more times than I can count, father driving the motorbike, mother holding on in the back, and son or daughter standing in the foot rest.  I’ve seen them carrying dogs and chickens on the back, or so many cases of beer that I don’t think I could fit them in the passenger side of my car.  The funniest, most outrageous, motorbike scene I ever saw was a woman trailing one of their motorbike-trucks (motorcycle front with a truck bed attached), and with her extended right leg she was pressing against a stack of plywood, preventing the sheets from sliding during travel.  I guess the rope and bungee cord are Western conveniences.

It’s scary and sadly funny, but too often tragic.  You’ve probably read the in the news about the two-year-old, Yue Yue, who was struck and left in the street as passersby took no notice of her brain-condition.  Or the over-packed van filled with school children that was in a head-on crash.  I heard that news from my mother and told her that awful as it was, I wasn’t surprised.  It’s sadly sobering to say something like that.

And don’t expect to easily negotiate a crosswalk here.  Take a bold mob with you if you expect traffic to yield.  I’ve seen crippled men pushing themselves on a wheeled cart in the middle of a four-way intersection, cars careening past.  Almost as alarming as this sight was the fact that no one else seemed to regard it.  When my aunt noticed my surprise, she laughed at it and basically communicated to me “That’s China for you.”

"Do you think he's handsome?" "YES!"

It was the first day of class and I was walking up the stairway of the local middle school.  “Handsome!  You are handsome!” screamed one of the boys who passed by.

When I meet people here, a lot of them tell me they think I’m handsome.  Yes, as in the example above, even the males say so.  Once, a college student said it, and my fellow foreign teacher, Sue, said, “Men aren’t supposed to tell other men they’re handsome!  It’s just not done.”  And the student just says, “But it’s true!”

When they say so, I tell them thanks, they’re very kind.  It’s out of the ordinary to hear people comment so much on my appearance, and especially to hear them say they think I’m handsome, or the Chinese word for “cool young man.”

The adults and college students sometimes say so when they meet me, and the college students who watch the American show Prison Break tell me that I look like Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller).  I don’t know, I have to take their word for it.  A couple times, I passed by a group of girls, (and usually, when people say something to me, they get a kick out of hollering “Hello!”) but on two occasions some giggly students waited until I was past and blurted out, “I think you are handsome!”

After awhile, it could become easy to believe.  Really, I knew coming in that people would notice me in a crowd and many Americans had already seen their stock rise after coming to Asia.  For most of these people, I’m the only foreigner they’ve ever met.  In an area of a couple million people, I’m one of a handful of white faces.  The only other white people I’ve seen are the Australian couple, Grant and Sue, who live across from me and also teach English at the university.

And even if they say I’m handsome, it’s more like I’m a curiosity- something to look at.  At the middle school, the students like to shout “Hello!” to me, or say my Chinese name “Li Da-Sen!”  At the university, they’ll sometimes do a double-take, and if they’re with a group of friends, they’ll probably say, “Hello” too.  Everything I do is conspicuous here, so occasionally I’ll hear from one of my students that her friend saw me eating noodles in the cafeteria.  Once, a student (not from one of my classes, someone I met on campus) said, “I heard someone say that Dustin has two kids.”  That was the only rumor I’d ever heard, and if they’re all that wild, then hopefully there aren't any more.

Fireworks- Every Day

Driving in from the airport, we transitioned from the highway to the local country road, and almost as immediately, next to my window were bright orange flashes and the loud drum roll of firecrackers.

I asked the obvious.  "Are those firecrackers?"

"Yes, don't you have those in America?" responded Miss Liu, an English teacher at the local middle school who had come with my friend, Fang Zhu, or "Aunt" Fang, to pick me up from the airport.

"Yes, but we don't set them off on the side of the road...in the middle of the afternoon."

I've heard fireworks of firecrackers every single day since I've been here.  I'm not exaggerating, so I don't mean most of the time.  I mean, every morning, before the construction workers begin their work, they supposedly chase the evil spirits away by lighting off a string in front of the work site, when people celebrate anything (wedding, birthday, acceptance to a good school) they set off firecrackers outside the restaurant, and when people feel like being entertained, I suppose, they light off firecrackers wherever or whenever they please.

Someone who was born in China explained the country this way: "There's no freedom of speech, but you can start a fire in the street."  I'm witness to the truth of that statement.  America has written and unwritten rules about certain spaces.  Streets are for cars, sidewalks are for people, you don't spit in a restaurant, you don't smoke in most places anymore, you need a permit to do any activity that would "disturb the peace."  I've never seen these boundaries in China.

When they light their firecrackers in the street, it's not just a packet of Black Cats, either.  It's the pinky-finger-sized red firecrackers that are on a string, and the whole roll covers about two parking spaces.  Then they let loose, and the strangest thing is that no one seems to really notice.  Chinese people take it for granted; firecrackers in the street are as mundane as seeing the mail truck in America.

Once, in my "Aunt's" apartment, she handed me a long stick with a long, thick tip.
"Is this incense?" I asked. No reply.
"In-cense?" I said, louder and slower.  She grabbed a lighter.
"Wait, is this a sparkler?" I asked exasperated.  She flicked the lighter a few times.
"Is this a sparkler- in the house?"  She finally got a flame.  "Is this a sparkler?" I asked again.
The paper fuse took some time, but eventually it caught and she laughed as I twirled the sparkler around a few times before it died.  A few weeks later, I think it was, she pulled a roll of firecrackers out of a drawer and we went out at night and lit them, in the street, just for fun.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Before I came to China, I promised people, maybe casually, half-heartedly, that I'd try to keep up with them by e-mail.  Rather than create an e-mail list, I think this Blog format will be more convenient.  It's easier reading and can be referred to quickly and shared by anyone interested.  Facebook no longer allows blogs to be imported, so I suppose I'll try to copy and paste there for as long as my will holds out.

I'm hesitant to start this, I think blogs can be self-important and vain, and it's one more task calling for my attention every day.  And yet, I've compiled enough stories and small observations that I think it can provide entertainment, insight, connection, and maybe even brighten someone's day, or life.  So, going forward, I'll be mindful not to overindulge and flatter myself or gush about trivial details ("You people in America haven't lived until you've tried the noodles in Anhui province!  You wish you were here!")  Instead, I'll offer brief stories to chronicle my time here and let you know what it's like, if you're interested.

The reasons for my coming here are deep and vast, so I won't try and list them.  You'll pick them up as you read along.  Hopefully, I'll start to understand them as well.