Eric's Beijing Diary

The wait at Junction Number 5 this morning got a little long. It's interesting to watch people. Most of them will wait, because they don't want to get hit by a train. But at some point, the masses will lose patience. It happens at train crossings, and it happens at intersections, like the one in Wudaokou, where the light stays red for a very long time. People just give up and start walking across.

Some time ago, I was watching Dialogue, and they were discussing the tragic fact that many Chinese students are killed every year in accidents in other countries. During the discussion, it came out that in most cases, the students were violating traffic rules. At one point, Yang Rui made the comment that Chinese drivers are more careful to watch out for pedestrians, but drivers in other countries don't have this cultural tradition. I laughed out loud. Chinese drivers careful? But you know, there is a sense in which he is right. Drivers in China do tend to be very aggressive, but pedestrians notoriously ignore traffic signals, so drivers know that they have to watch out for them.

At the Zhongguancun intersection during the traffic rush, there are crossing guards at every corner. Their basic job is to tell pedestrians that the light is green so they can go, or that the light is red, so they really do need to stop. It takes two crossing guards at each corner to enforce obedience to the traffic lights. Students who grow up in this environment sometimes don't realize that drivers in other countries are not expecting to see a pedestrian walk right through a red light in front of oncoming traffic.