Traffic calming

You're going to love this one.

Tonight is the opening ceremony of the 24th Winter Universiade or student winter games (sort of like a mini winter Olympics for, obviously, students) which is being held in Harbin. China is keen to make a success of this in the hope that it will help them win the bid for the proper Winter Olympics in 2014. (They bid for 2010 and I think maybe 2002 as well but lost out.)

I'm quite excited about this as I love winter sports. Watching them, that is - daring to walk along an icy pavement is about as close as I'll ever come to actually doing any winter sports. I have no idea why I suddenly developed this interest, which began in January 1992 when I was an unemployed new graduate with nothing better to do than watch the Winter Olympics on TV. Prior to that my sport-watching had been pretty much confined to Wimbledon and occasionally as a child bonding with my Dad over cricket or snooker or some such thing. Oh and the infamous Seb Coe- and Imran Khan-fancying phases of 1983-4, but the least said about those, the better! Gimme a break, I was 15.

So anyway, I was hoping to go and see a few things, but a lot of it is actually happening at the ski resort a long way from Harbin, plus we have to go the Shanghai again next week so will miss most of it. Sadly my favourite event, the luge (the thing where someone slides head-first round a bobsleigh track very very fast on what looks like a tea-tray - utterly insane) doesn't seem to be included. So I might go and see some skating, which is possibly the least interesting but involves the least effort on my part.

Both the skating and the opening ceremony are taking place at the conference centre which happens to be about 10 minutes walk from our flat. Right next to the supermarket where we do our shopping, in fact. And like I said, the opening shenanigans is tonight. The authorities, no doubt rightly, anticipate a greatly increased volume of traffic on the roads.

Now stop a minute to think what would happen in the UK in this instance. They'd close a few roads for a few hours, wouldn't they? Inconvenient, possibly, but equally so for everyone, and largely avoidable if you know when and where not to go.

Here's what they've decided to do here.

Today, cars are only allowed onto the streets of Harbin if their registration ends in an even number. (Mr Li's ends in an odd number, hence he's unable to pick Peter up from the airport tonight.)

Can you imagine how that would go down in Edinburgh?

I'm weeping with mirth just thinking about it.

Remember the Green Cross Code?

Yeah, well, if you come to China you may as well forget it. I tell you, if Dave Prowse hadn’t got that George Lucas gig he’d have had plenty of work here to see him into ripe old age.

Forget Look Right, Look Left etc. Here it’s more a case of, Look Left, Look Right, Look Left Again, Look Around Wildly in All Directions, Panic, Start to Cross, Realise That Cars Are Still Coming Even Though Green Man is Showing, Run Back to Pavement, Repeat Process Several Times, Give Up If Want to Stay Alive, Wait For An Eternity, See a Chinese Person Crossing and Stick Very Close Behind Them While Being Prepared to Dodge Rapidly Moving Taxis Which Will Stop For No Man. Doesn’t really trip off the tongue, does it?

Actually, they have a very sensible system for traffic lights which show how many seconds there are to count down until they change to green and the red man comes on. There’s no way for pedestrians to control the red & green men, but the lights change with sufficient frequency to make this not a problem. Except that the green man doesn’t actually mean ‘It’s safe to cross now’. It means, as far as I can deduce, ‘You probably have about a 50% less chance of being killed if you go now than if you wait until the lights change again’. This is because a red traffic light DOESN’T apply to traffic turning right OR left (!), or to bikes & scooters, which have their own lane in Harbin (a minor improvement on Shanghai where the bike & scooter lane doubles as, er, the pavement). And as the roads here are nearly all huge, wide, four-lane boulevards which have to be crossed in stages, it can be challenging to say the least.

The other thing is the car horns. They are incessant, and seem to indicate, ‘I have no intention of stopping, so if you [be you a pedestrian, cyclist or other driver] don’t want to die, get out of my way’. There’s no lane discipline as we understand it; they use the American system where undertaking (never has a word been more apt!) is allowed as well as overtaking, and at roundabouts everyone just sort of pushes forward optimistically, blasting their horns until someone lets them through. It’s kind of traffic Darwinism.

Getting in a car or taxi is a white-knuckle ride, compounded by the fact that many don’t have functioning seatbelts except for the driver, who never wears his anyway. But then the Chinese attitude towards protective clothing and safety gear seems ambiguous. In Shanghai, anyone who has to work, cycle, or even walk in close proximity to traffic wears a surgical mask to protect them from exhaust fumes. Pedestrians carry umbrellas to shield them from the sun. Scooter-riders and cyclists wear sun visors, and weird detachable cotton sleeves, elasticated at the top & bottom, to cover their arms if they’re wearing a short-sleeved shirt. The thing absolutely no-one wears is a helmet. But at least if they get knocked down and mangled to pieces by the relentless, high-speed, multi-directional traffic, they’ll have nice clean lungs and their arms won’t be sunburnt. So that’s ok.

If you want to read further thoughts on Chinese driving, as well as many other aspects of what it’s like to be a British woman living in China, do check out my fellow blogger at http://livingthehailife.blogspot.com/.
What she has to say about culture shock, Chinese food, Chinese sleeping habits, Chinglish, shopping, Tampax and the unavailability thereof in China – to name but a few – I simply cannot improve upon or add to. It’s exactly as she describes it. Her recent description of the visa medical which I mentioned last week is accurate too, though I was fortunate enough not to have had any intimate surgery to have to explain to Chinese doctors.

Incidentally, you may like to know that according to my medical results I ‘Be in basically normal health status’, but that a UK size 14 is considered ‘Obese’ here. I’m still fuming every time I think about it.