They don’t obey the driving laws very well. They will cross the yellow line in the city and pass a slow driver or a bus as long as no one is coming at them. From my experience of being there, they may do that even when someone is coming at them. The person doing the passing may drive on the yellow line and the person coming at them may move over a little. That’s just how they drive there. It all works out, you can only understand it when you are there and see it.
I was told by another foreigner that when you ride in a taxi it is kind of scary. Maybe it is a worse experience sitting in the front seat. I didn’t have any trouble with that. Even though it isn’t like how we drive here, I figured the taxi drivers knew what they were doing. That is their job and they drive everyday so they should know what they are doing. It was still better than if I was driving. That would be scary.
One story I was told about was a friend of theirs was driving in Luoyang and they made a left turn across the two lanes where cars were coming at them. The driver got partly across and there was another car in front of them and the driver had to stop in the road to wait for the other car to continue on. The oncoming cars didn't honk, they just got around the car that was sitting in the road and everything was fine. Everyone is used to it there and take it in stride.
Here in the US, we learn to drive when we are young. In China, they will learn at an older age. They don’t have the opportunity to learn how to drive when they are young like we do here. Many of my friends didn’t learn until they were in their late twenties or older. A lot of people want to get their driver’s license so they may have to sign up and wait at the driving schools. If a person fails, then they go through the lessons again.
When I left Luoyang in 2004, most of my friends didn’t drive. When I went back there in 2010, most of them had cars and were driving.
You have to learn how to cross the street when you first get to China. It’s not like here in the US where the pedestrian has the right of way. It’s kind of whoever has the biggest vehicle has the right of way. When the light turns green, you don’t start walking across the intersection. If you do, you may not make it across. You look both directions and keep looking both directions as you cross the street.
Some of the intersections are so wide that I had to walk fast trying to get to the other side before the light changed. Sometimes people don’t make it across so they have to stand in the middle of the crosswalk until the traffic slows or the light changes. Because of so many people there, if you waited you’d never get across the road, you’d be standing there all day.
There are cars, motorbikes, electric bikes, bicycles, buses, taxis and people. You have to continuously watch so you don’t get hit by something. Those people grow up with that so they are used to it. For us foreigners, we have to learn how to get across the street and get to the other side. I’m sure when they come here they have to learn how to cross our streets. They are not used to having the right of way and cars waiting for them to cross.
Just because there are traffic lights at an intersection doesn’t mean that when the light turns green you can go. Traffic is a big problem in China. Drivers are not known for waiting their turn, they just go. I would never drive in China. It is so different there than in the US. If there is an opening on the street in China, someone will probably try to sneak through, even if it is in the wrong lane.
From my classroom, I was on the sixth floor, I could see the intersection below. It could be very busy at noon but more so later in the afternoon. There were some big traffic jams. Buses and cars were intertwined; it was quite a site. The intersection would really get backed up.
In the fall of 2012, stop lights were put in at the corner a block from where I lived. That is nice as long as people obeyed them, but that isn’t always the case. If I was going to cross the road and I had the green light, I shouldn’t have to worry about the traffic. But if there isn’t any traffic going the same direction as I was, the motorbikes and electric bikes would run the light and I would have to watch both ways to the right and left so I wouldn’t get hit.
Rarely would I ever cross the intersection when the light was red. Here in the US we can do that because we don’t have as much traffic. The Chinese people would cross against a red light. I would stand on the corner and wait for the green light and I’m sure people would wonder why the foreigner was standing there and waiting.
These pictures were taken in the months of January and February. As you look at these pictures, you will see it’s the same intersection. I lived four blocks from here. Take time and look closely at the vehicles and the people in the pictures and see where everything is at.
You can see how the people walk out into the street and sometimes they have to wait for the cars and sometimes the cars have to wait for them. To us from the US, this looks like it is a total mess and very unorganized. I guess it is. You learn how to deal with it, you learn how to navigate and not get hit-hopefully. Somehow, it all works out and the cars get going and the people make it across. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that in real life-work together and somehow it all works out.
There is a video on YouTube that I happened to see that an American University student took while she was living in China and it showed a couple of people trying to cross a street in some city and I really like what the girl taking the video had to say. “After two weeks in China, I decided that if you can cross the streets in China without fear, you can do anything.”
Where these bikes are is not the road. It is part of the parking area at the mall. They are leaving and going across this parking area on their way to the side street where the bikes travel. The people further out are waiting to cross the street.
For that first picture above, I was standing where you see these people are in this picture. For these pictures, I am standing on the 2nd floor of the shopping mall Xin Du Hui and right behind me is the Dairy Queen. It is a very busy area.
You can see the people are moving out into the traffic against the red light. There is a police officer by the white car in the street. On the lower right is a red and blue bus, that will go out and pick up people, bring them to the mall to shop and take them back home. This is not much traffic right now, it can be much worse.
The cross traffic, going right and left, has stopped. Cars are making a left turn at this time. Notice how the people are moving further out into the street getting ready to cross. As people move into the street, then the cars have to be careful not to hit someone so everything slows down and gets back up. This is common everywhere.
Here the people are crossing and the other way is making left turns. As you can see, there are people in different parts of the intersection mixed in with the cars. This is also common. I don’t think this would work in the US.
Now the other traffic is going straight through. In the intersection is a black car waiting to make a left turn. The light must have changed before he got through from the other direction. He will wait there for an opening or until the light changes for him.
See the red and blue bus in the right side of the picture, on the other side of it is a man on the ground. There is a man in a maroon colored coat in front of him. The man on the ground is a beggar asking for money or he may be selling something.
This is looking at the area to the right of that intersection. You can see the parking area for part of this mall area. You can see the traffic on the street and the cars parked across the street in front of the buildings. This is what it is like everywhere. There are other pictures throughout this journal so you can see what parking is like.
Notice the vans in the parking lot. They are smaller than the ones here in the US. My friends told me that they are called mian bao che 面包车-bread van. That’s because these little vans look like a loaf of bread.
In China, there is what is called “Chinese-style street crossing”. A group of people, however big that group was, all crossed together when the light was red and the cars couldn’t go. I heard that eventually the police would hand out tickets and that was supposed to try to stop that. The articles below tell about this kind of crossing.
Recently, some internet users on Weibo said, “Chinese-style street crossing" is just gathering enough people together and then crossing, no matter whether it’s a red or green light.”
Why ‘Chinese style road crossing’ occurs (from People's Daily Online December 28, 2012)
Today, the design of the traffic lights in metropolitan cities is friendlier to automobiles. Green lights for cars are generally longer than for pedestrians. As roads become wider, many elderly and children cannot cross them even if they run all the way. Therefore, if they don’t run the red light when crossing the road without a pedestrian island, they will be stuck in the middle.
I will add this. The last paragraph is true. Some of the streets are so wide that there were times that even I could not get across on the green light even though I am a fast walker. The green light needs to be on longer so people can make it.
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