On your mark, get set, GO!!!

The traffic activity was amazing to see.  At all times it looked like there are many people risking their lives, with cars, bicyles, scooters and pedestrians, all challenging each other for every inch of road. But it was encouraging to find their disposition to all of it seems much better than in the US.   The difference in attitude is that when you're in China and you quickly decide to "cut in" to the 5 feet of available road surface, they will beep the horn at you a couple times but then completely accept it and move on without any ill feelings towards that one in 1.3 billionth person.  Whereas that same move, that we saw maybe 100 times while we were there for two weeks, would cause someone to literally come "unglued" in the US.  In the US you'd be fingered, cursed and possibly hunted. In China it seemed just accepted that that's what everyone there should do to get their place in traffic.

So there is a LOT of horn work being done but it's an understanding horn, if you will.  I told Ran that it would be such great fun if they put a horn in the backseat of the taxi or guide car, so we could play the game too.  I'd be happy as a lark, beaping at every bike, every car or any one of the crazy bastards...that's what they do. Maybe it's the "traffic of the future". Something we'll see in the US someday??

I kept trying to get pictures of the traffic and realized that if I were to do a coffee book with pictures from China (ya know, a coffee book) it would be of all the different bikes in traffic.  There were people from many different generations and many different social classes but all Chinese.  Not one American on a bike in the crowd. And every bike seemed different than the other.  Most had some degree of a homemade customization done to them.  Some looked like the make/brand of the bike should be that person's family name, with maybe just a surviving generation number for the model.  If we lived there, I imagine the "Kelley1" transportation vehicle lookin something like this, with Randi pimpin it out with leopard skin curtains.





We even ran across like a 'cycle rickshaw depot'.  I imagined this is where the advanced cyclists graduate to.







I like this sign, we saw there at many intersections.  I think it says "Don't walk.  RUN!, you crazy bastards, RUN!!"