Beijing traffic

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Do you possess the speed of a cheetah. The wariness of a gazelle at a watering hole. The eyesight of a hawk. If so, then you are ideally equipped for the life of a pedestrian in Beijing.

Beijing is built the way most socialist states built their cities. Big. Big buildings and especially big, wide, and very straight roads and avenues. Down these racetracks careen an increasing volume of traffic. And they stop for nobody, especially lowly humans.

Do not be deceived by the veneer of modernity given by the presence of traffic and pedestrian lights, traffic lanes, traffic assistants etc. We naively assumed that when you saw the green man, well then, you could cross the road. Wrong. The first few days we were almost run down by every type of mechanical conveyance known to man, from 40 seat coaches to cars. They would blast through red lights, blaring their horns, forcing groups of Chinese to scatter, or the occassional tourist to freeze in terror.

The traffic assistants deserve special mention. These were people with red flags who stood as crossings. We never quite worked out what their function was, but I suspect it was a form of care in the community for psychriatic patients. We were waiting to cross a wide road one day, along with a large group of Chinese, with one of these assistants holding us all back. Suddenly, she started to shout, go,go,go, pushing us all forward with her flag. As the pedestrian light was red, we hung back. She physically pushed us unto the road, shouting go,go,go. We assumed that she know the light sequence and that they were probably about to go green. So we started crossing. Big mistake. We found ourselves in the middle of a six lane highway, a very busy 6 lane highway. We had to dodge bicycles, motorbikes, cars, trucks buses etc. From that point onwards we choose to ignore traffic assistants and left them to their daily task of trying to make in dent in Chinas over population problem.

The ironic thing is that Beijing did not lack for police. There were police on every corner. Uniformed, obvious plains-clothes police and presumably non obvious plains-clothes police. They were very fond of randonly stopping people and searching their bags but it was obvious that their remit to preserve peace and stability did not extend off the sidewalk.

Beijing was not unique. Every city in China has been the same. We have only seen some traffic enforcement in Shanghai. On several occassions there we have seen uniformed police stopping cyclists. Only cyclists. Presumably if you can afford a car in China you either have money, connections or both. As George Orwell observed, all citizens are equal but some are more equal than others.

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