Wo Shi Frogger

Traffic here is … special. Crossing the street is like a study in attrition, where the goal is to get out far enough into the street so that the oncoming car is forced to go around your back (a nice way of saying ‘swerve.’) Adding to the fun is the four-lane road that we cross several times daily, because it runs along the campus, in between it and anything else. Nothing says “Good morning” like dodging cars at 7:30 in the morning.

A favorite game is trying to find the ‘Perfect Cross.’ A Perfect Cross is one where you walk straight across the road at a constant speed without having to change direction or stop to avoid certain death. A Poor Cross gets you a silver medal, while a Failure to Cross is considered losing, but at that point you should probably pay attention to what the doctor is asking you rather than bemoan your failure.

Car rides are entertaining, but mostly when viewed from an American perspective. The fun gets taken away when you begin to share the Chinese casual disregard for the lines of the road. White, yellow, they’re mostly just suggestions. So it is not uncommon to find yourself speeding down the road, looking straight at the front of another car, as the distance between you shrinks from ‘acceptable,’ where there is a lot of open space between you, to ‘curious and thought-provoking,’ typified by uncomfortable memories of that video that they show you in Driver’s Ed, to ‘distressing,’ where all rational thought is superceded by the instinctual repetition of unsavory words. Then you tuck into a space that magically appears beside you, or the oncoming car swerves a bit, and the danger passes – at least until your taxi driver decides that the car in front of him is going too slow.

I think that may be one of the things I like best in China. It is a believer in natural consequences. There are no fines for jaywalking, but the penalty for walking across the street without looking might be getting squished. At least for a foreigner, it feels like there are fewer restrictions, but there is also less of a buffer if something goes wrong. It seems somehow … right. The problem with civilization is that we civilize ourselves right out of the world. Consequence gives meaning, and so a world without consequence is a world without meaning. Or a world where money is the consequence is also a world where money is the meaning. China is an opportunity to get away from that, to step out – at least for a short time –from under the expectant burden of my own wealth and comfortable civilization and live a little more simply.