A Connecticut Yankee...
in King Xi's Court, Part the Seventh (The Angry Dwarf Returns... Cue the Empire Strikes Back Theme)
AKA “All It Takes is Repeated Attempts on My Life - and Cutting Me in Line for Coffee - and I'll Hate Any People.”
Greetings, My Patriotic American Friends!
I feel like this should be a companion to my last dispatch, so that you are not left with the wrong impression of what has happened to me here in China. I know it’s disconcerting to read even the suggestion that the ChiComs may be ‘freer’ in the anonymity of such mass humanity and because they have less government up their ass in economic matters, but this shouldn’t be news to any one of you given the time of year. If you’re like me, you had to file your taxes recently and so you should have been recently reminded of just how free you aren’t.
A Reminder About Your Own Serfdom
I believe the current “Tax Freedom Day” - the date at which the US as a whole will have paid all of its income taxes - is right around the corner (April 24th as of 2015, according to the Tax Foundation). Which means that (on average) working stiffs in the US work for almost four full months without getting paid. Yes, that’s what that means. So you were only a slave for 4 months of the year. This is, of course, just a different way of thinking about a national average of 31.6% taxation, as compared to the 5.0% your grandparents enjoyed back in 1910 - but you’ll have to forgive me as I’ve just finished reading Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, to which I have previously cited - and he makes special mention of the galling nature of having to hand over his wages to a person who had done nothing to earn any portion of it. He was writing in 1841, of course, and there was no federal government “right” to tax your income at that time, so I suppose it hit me acutely at tax time.
You should not, however, interpret this to mean that I think all is roses here in China. Deng Xiaoping may well have saved his people by reversing economic course of his predecessor - Mao Zedong - but not until after ~70 million Chinese people had paid for Mao’s economic stupidity with their lives. And Deng’s crackdown on people like ‘Tank Man’ in Tianamen Square in 1989 will be something he’ll have attached to his legacy forever. Regardless of economics or politics, anyone who knows me should have known that it would only be a matter of time before I would lose my shit with the Chinese over how they drive... let me ‘splain.
Are the Chinese Such Awful Drivers? Yes. Why?
Okay, I went right to the seemingly lacist trope about the Chinese specifically (the verdict is out for me on Asians more broadly).1 I have just completed [ed. note - April 2017] a 7 city trip of most of the major cities in southern and mid-western China. It started with flying to Chengdu, famed for being the gateway to the interior of China, as well as the home to world’s largest panda sanctuary, followed by a relatively short high-speed train ride to Chongqing, what I grew up learning as “Chung-king.”
The driving in Chongqing was downright scary. I genuinely tried to chalk up how bad the driving was to the fact that Chongqing is one of the most populous places on Earth - by some metrics, it is the largest metropolitan sea of humanity at 46 million.
Population alone, however, cannot account for how badly the Chinese drive. I learned how to drive in New York City in 1986. I got my license in RI in 1987. And I lived in Massachusetts for many, many years, driving right in and around Bawston during the “Big Dig.”
The Chinese seemed intent on trying to kill me and each other, however, the way they drove. They’ll admit to 63,000 traffic fatalities annually, according to Statista. Not that the WHO should be trusted unilaterally, but just for comparison, they estimate China’s traffic fatalities for 2017 at 254,000, with men making up 190k and women 63k. [ed. note: I had read something while in country that suggested ~200,000 fatalities every year, with about 10% being pedestrians.] The numbers of pedestrians being killed in these auto accidents was significant enough that there had been some protests and agitation to the government because of how many kids - during one-policy times - were dying. In any event, whatever the actual number is, I believe I have a working hypothesis why the Chinese are such bad drivers. It’s two related factors: (1) the Chinese are criminally impatient; and (2) the car-driving population contains the largest ever generation of “only children” in human history. (Again - 1 & 2 are not unrelated).
Wherein I Admit to Being a Bad Chinese Driver
Now I know my mother is going to read #1 line and started laughing: “HA! YOU’RE COMPLAINING ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE'S IMPATIENCE!” (Ma, I’m trying to tell a story here. Don’t ruin it.) I confess that I certainly do not suffer fools gladly, but I didn’t survive flying attack helicopters in the Marine Corps and riding motorcycles all over California by being impatient when I operate engine-driven, fast-moving steel, rubber, and composite vehicles. In fact, I should note that I no longer own a car and haven’t for several years - a big part of that was an incident that caused me to realize I also had a problem with patience. [ed. note - part about cars is no longer true, but was in 2017 when this was written. The patience part is a work in progress.]
Flashback to the 2000’s - the late Aughts - and I was a very busy solo attorney. One day I was on I-90 Westbound - the Mass Turnpike that goes from East Coast to West Coast and is the Nation’s longest road, I believe - in stop and go traffic. Like too many Americans, I was checking my cell phone. I had an instantaneous sense I had been looking down too long. I looked up and sure enough, the guy in front of me had hit his brakes and there was no way the physics was going to work out in my favor. Isaac Newton let us all in on the secret that momentum is mass multiplied by velocity (p = mv). Fortunately, I had a bail-out option and, as I started to hit my (anti-lock) brakes, I swerved into the breakdown lane. When I finally came to a stop, my window was exactly even with the window of the car in front of me. i.e. I was alongside the car “in front” of me - and sheepishly looking over at a couple, who were wide-eyed and glaring. We both knew (a) I would have caved in the back end of their car, and (b) it was because I was looking down at my cell phone.
Not long after that incident I moved to California and I caught myself doing it in a car again. Not as close, but not good. When I got the chance to buy a friend’s motorcycle - a glorious Honda CBR 954 - I took it for a lot of reasons, but among them was the fact that I knew I had to get off of my cell phone while driving. It worked perfectly and I feel 10 times safer when I’m on my bike than I do in a car. You know why? Because the concrete highway ground is rushing by just a foot underneath my feet at 80 mph and there is no doubt in my mind about what the consequences are of being cavalier on that machine. I am (also) hyper-focused when on my motorcycle in order to: keep (you) idiots in cars from killing me. The end result is that I have become a much, much more patient driver. It may sound crazy, but I go by people on “The Five” in Southern and Northern California and because I am sitting up on my bike, I am looking right in their windows. So I can see the girl posting to Facebook while doing 85 on the highway in traffic, or the guy reading the Wall Street Journal while in clumped-up 65 MPH bumper-to-bumper traffic, or the chick taking a duck-face selfie... I usually get even with them and then pull in the clutch and rev my engine a bit, just to let them know I’m there and watching. I’ve done it in all three of the above cases and watched the people look up and over at me and I just shake my head and accelerate away.
Which Almost Brings Us Back to Chinese Drivers… but a brief moment of glory for the Neapolitans.
Incredibly, however, after just two months in China, those people wouldn't even make the Top 20 list of STUPIDEST SHIT I'VE EVER SEEN PEOPLE DO WHILE DRIVING. After observing this - every day - I kept wondering: how could the people who are raised on Confucianism and the Tao, who have the second highest average IQ of any ethnic group on the planet, as well as being several generations into communism, be so effing self-absorbed while driving? What aspect of culture makes them ignore all of the laws of physics and just blow into every intersection without stopping - or even LOOKING AT ONCOMING TRAFFIC!?!?
I should note that given the sophistication of my readers, someone will inevitably say, “Oh, you should see how they drive in Naples!!”
I have.
In fact, in 1995 while on deployment aboard the USS Kearsarge, I lost rock-paper-scissors against my 3 roommates when we pulled into Naples for a port call. Loser had to sit in the front seat of a Naples cab while my roommates got the back seat, cackling drunk the whole time. My favorite moment? Our cabbie shouting and shaking his fist out the window, swearing in Italian, at the cars honking at us while he is driving the wrong way - against traffic - in a f***king tunnel.
A+ for bravado and machismo, my friend. You managed to scare four drunk U.S. Marine helicopter pilots with that move.
So, yes, I’ve seen insane driving, but let me be clear - that kind of driving is at least intentional. My cabbie may have been breaking all of the rules of both traffic and rational behavior, but he did so intentionally. AT LEAST HE’S LOOKING WHERE HE’S GOING.
The Chinese, by comparison, are worse. It truly is mind-boggling. This was something that was on my mind on a DAILY basis, I promise you. And I saw it EVERYWHERE I went in China - it wasn’t isolated to just one particular city or region. After a while, I started to wonder how this could possibly be the state of affairs. Being both a scientist and bit of an amatuer anthropologist, I started hypothesizing…
China is only a very recent car-driving society. By comparison, the US is one of the very few societies that did not have a prolonged period of use with the bicycle as a means of transportation. We went (basically) from the horse to the car, while most other (older) cultures have had prolonged use of bikes and scooters. So, relatively speaking, we’re 100 years plus as a “car-based” society. Many young people in China, however, told me that relatively few people owned automobiles at all as recently as the 1990s. (That link above from Statista mentions possible causes and includes this very point about how car ownership has exploded in only the last 25 years in China). But inexperience alone didn’t quite explain it because I’m also watching people on bikes here - in China - drive like complete dipshits. I can’t tell you how many cops I’ve watched on scooters with their head down while texting or looking at their cell phone as they blithely cruise through busy intersections of pedestrians, other scooters, bikes, cars turning in a variety of directions, etc.
And that’s just here in Hangzhou (only the 52nd most populous city on the planet). I have driven in all but 4 states in the US, including home to some of the most infamously bad drivers in our beloved ‘Murica... New York cabbies would shit their pants in the back of a cab here in China.
It just didn’t make sense to me and I couldn’t figure out why I was seeing what I was seeing...until this last trip a number of events and conversations conspired.
We took a flight from Chongqing to Guangzhou, another massive Tier I city in the south of China. We got a rental car and I offered to drive but Liang insisted since his name as on the rental, I don’t have a Chinese license, and - best of all - his assertion that I “couldn't handle” driving in China. My helo pilot ego winced, but okay. I just nodded my head and said, “Mm.”
On the way out of the airport, we were making our way from the rental car lot to the main thoroughfare and came to an intersection without any light. I looked left to watch the oncoming traffic. There was a cluster of cars for a perhaps 10 - 15 seconds worth, and then an obvious end to it, and we could pull out across the two lanes and make a left. I watched Liang as the traffic had us hemmed in and I could see he was chafing and trying to see if somehow he could get in front of this line of cars. He kept trying to edge out where there was nowhere to go. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It reminded me of watching a toddler trying to jam a square peg into a round hole and getting frustrated at the obvious results.
“I can’t believe there’s no light here,” he bemoaned. Traffic passed and he pulled out.
“I know!” I said with mock sympathy. “We had to wait an entire 12 seconds before we could go. An outrage.” I try to make sure I lay the sarcasm on pretty thick so it’s not lost across cultural gaps. He knows me well enough to pick up on it and just laughed.
Not five miles down the road, I watched him create his own near-death accident because the Chinese have seemingly no sense of anticipation when driving - of maneuvering a vehicle amongst others. Once something is behind them, they do not acknowledge it as existing. That is to say, they assume that someone behind them will have to avoid whatever they do, so they are constantly swerving in and out of lanes, or riding in between lanes, all to somehow get a car or two ahead. For anyone who has ever seen the 70s classic Gumball Rally car movie (not the equally fun “Cannonball Run”), reminds me of Raul Julia’s character at the start of the Rally:
The GPS is telling us that in 1 kilometer - 10 football fields, or just a little over half a mile, we would need to make a right. We were in the left lane. At that moment, we were in between clumps of cars and could have easily slid over to the right. I kept watching as traffic behind us started to close the gap. Would he get over now? Nope. 600m and traffic closing in behind us, cutting off his ability to move over... still nothing, staring ahead, implacably. 300m and now he's got two more seconds to get over before we’re boxed in. Nothing. 150m and now we’re stuck and he just blithely cuts over two or three lanes in a merge and causes a near pile-up, all without the slightest indication or acknowledgment that HE’S THE CAUSE OF IT.
(Let me add parenthetically if you haven’t already picked it up, this guy is one of the nicest people I know. He’s an amazingly kind and Taoist soul. In other words, there’s not an ounce of personality trait or character defect that can account for his driving behavior.)
I just shake my head as cars veer around and beep their horns and chaos ensues, but we make it to the hotel without dying...barely. Driving in Guangzhou was three days of the same and the roads there are not exactly easy to navigate. At one point, we were about 15 minutes from our hotel and “on the fastest route” according to the GPS... until we came upon some rush hour traffic. Again, I could see Liang chafing. He can’t STAND sitting in traffic for more than a minute. So he takes a side street and we wind up driving through narrow alleyways clustered with carts, jeepneys, scooters, pedestrians, livestock, you name it. Liang continues to drive around and we are stuck in an endless loop as he keeps trying to avoid even the slightest delay, we are now 25 minutes into his “detours.” Finally, in utter exasperation, I say: “You know at this rate you’ll keep avoiding traffic and we’ll get home at midnight.”
“Okay, okay” he smiles and laughs. It takes us almost 40 minutes total in avoiding traffic to get to the hotel.
One Child Policy Enters the Chat:
Now, let me take a moment to discuss a seemingly unrelated political and social issue in China. As the father of multiple children, I had wondered what kinds of non-obvious side effects I might see from China’s long-standing (but recently lifted) “One Child” policy.2 My generation is really the first American generation - Gen X, kids of Boomers - to largely be raised right at “replacement levels” of children/family: 2.. It has been my experience that “only children” do not *always* turn out to be spoiled, self-centered d-bags... just that they seem to do so at higher rates than kids with siblings close enough in age to take up some of mom and dad’s attention from a very early age. (I should note to any of you who were only children - congratulations! You turned out fine.)3 But what could it do to a society to have two to three generations of people who have only one child? I kept looking for signs of it and the Chinese people I’ve been around have all been generally cool that I figured, “Hunh. I guess when everyone’s an only child, it somehow nullifies or at least muffles the effects...”
We drove south out of Guangzhou to visit a couple of CrossFit Affiliates in some ‘satellite cities’ en route to the “Chinese Riviera,” a place on the ocean at the junction with the Pearl River Delta, called Zhuhai. Zhuhai is right between Macau to its southwest and Hong Kong to its northeast. The Delta makes it really hard to get to Zhuhai, so the government decided to build one of the world’s longest causeways/bridges connecting all three cities - the HKZM Bridge. It’s an unreal construction project and will open in December [2017]. At 31 miles spanning the ocean, it is one of the largest in the world and I attached the best picture I could of it below.
The drive was downright peaceful because of the remote area and lack of traffic until the end near Macau, so I indulged myself with a little nap. We stopped to grab a coffee at a Starbucks and I had an incident with a slightly older Chinese gentleman with that “important businessman right here” demeanor conspicuously cutting me in line.
I mentioned to Liang once that Chinese drivers seemed impatient to me - my not-so-subtle way of telling him his impatience as a driver was making me uncomfortable. He drives like his daughter is in the back seat and needs to go to the hospital - except we’re on our way to the gym and have no specific time to be there. He owns the gym and we can work out whenever we want. His response is what stuck with me:
“Chinese people are taught, and feel… like they are always fighting for resources...” At the time I thought it seemed not quite right given the massive cities around here. They do not lack for food, amenities, or... anything.
After the Starbucks, we made the rest of the drive uneventfully past Macau and were just about to pull into our hotel in Zhuhai. It was a left turn across traffic and there was a stop light just behind us. Zhuhai is only about one million people and it really comes off like West Palm Beach or something like that. Money but not ostentatiousness. Very relaxed pace of life because the beaches and ocean are right there. Not much traffic at all.
So... here we are waiting to turn left and a few cars are coming. Liang starts putting the nose of our car across the left lane of oncoming traffic. There is a car in the far right of three lanes and we can’t make it before him. There is a box truck coming in the left lane. I can see the entire time-space matrix unfolding... surely Liang isn’t going to try to split between the back end of that car and this truck approaching the intersection...? I mean, there’s only one car behind the truck and then it’s empty space - nothing - no traffic at all.
I watch as he keeps nosing out until he has essentially taken away the left lane from the truck, which also (of course) is being driven by another (equally impatient Chinese) driver, who is accelerating... to get to or through the stop light just behind us. I start saying to Liang:
"No... No. NO - THE TRUCK ISN’T GOING TO FUCKING STOP!!!"
Liang slams on the brakes, but he’s by now cut off 1.5 lanes and the truck manages to veer around the front end of our car. Then he curses AT THE TRUCK DRIVER and says, “sorry about that” rather sheepishly to me.
I shrugged and said, “he was never going to stop for you.”
(Now, Mom, I believe that the fact that I did not grab Liang's head and smack his face off of the steering wheel two or three times or scream with bulging veins at him is all the proof I need to show just how patient I have become. Because I can tell you I really, really, really thought about both of those possibilities as we pulled up to the hotel and parked for the evening.)
The Chinese are implacably self-centered and impatient. It’s bizarre. It manifests itself with an absolute relentless forward pursuit of whatever they want at that moment. If you’re in line and it’s taking too long, they’ll start talking directly to the cashier. At airports, they’re constantly changing lanes to try to move faster through security. They crowd the head of the lines, although they don’t reach the level of being like some Arab nations I’ve been in where the “queue” concept does not even exist.4
In China, there is all of this other overlay with Confucianism, Taoism, and Socialism's demands of “the State/the community” over the individual, yet the Chinese lavish attention on their spoiled, bratty little kids is evident everywhere. When I’m shopping and in line at the checkout, I have to look away. I watch little boys terrorize their mothers, and grandmothers, and fathers for candy and whatever else they want, throwing shit-fits until the parents (inevitably, inexorably) cave in to make the child stop. They buy them candy, treats, toys - whatever the kid’s eyes happen to alight upon and decide he (or even she) wants at that moment. I’m glad I don't speak enough Mandarin yet or I might be tempted to say a word or two to Li'l Chiang Junior and tell him to cut the shit, get off the floor - oh, and lay off the candy. There are 500 million Chinese who are pre-diabetic and they’ve passed even the United States for diabetes rates. They’ve got some impulse control issues, at least equally as bad as we do.
So, there you have it. Some of the Bad with the Good. After these last two novels, you'll be glad to know I won't be sending one for a while as... I will be spending most of the next month in the Good Ol' U S of A!!! ('Murrica). I am returning to visit some of you, report in to work, and - God and weather willing - get on my motorcycle and enjoy some of that California coastline before coming back out here. I look forward to seeing and talking with some of you while I'm back, but my love and thanks to all of you. I'll be having the Mexican food while I'm back, in case anyone's wondering.
Much love from China,
Dale
P.S. Playoff hockey is starting, so Go Bruins!
While I lived on Okinawa for a year in the Marine Corps and drove quite a bit out in town, only the driving on the wrong side of the road and the right side of the car stands out. You could always tell new folks on base who would flip on their wipers instead of a blinker at intersections until they got used to the controls of the car also being in the opposite side. But the Okinawans weren’t notably bad drivers. I didn’t have a ton of driving experience on mainland (Hokkaido) Japan.
I’m not talking about all of the well-discussed demographic problems that have been recently written about with regard to China’s “One Child Policy” - including the generation of lost daughters, and possible - or inevitable, depending upon how dire the expert is who’s writing about it - demographic collapse of China. Those are different effects outside the scope of the psychology I’m discussing.
This stereotypical phenomenon is rather like the one for Naval Academy grads and lawyers: neither of these institutions HAS to turn out d-bags and, in point of fact, I know many fine members in both of those communities... it's just that when you meet one of these people and observe that they’re very cool, laid back, unassuming, etc. and it slips out that they are either lawyers or “Canoe U” guys, you immediately make note of the EXCEPTIONAL nature of those character traits as distinct from what you expect for members of those institutions.
I had to fly into Iraq once during the war - on a civilian airliner from Amman, Jordan. “Immigration” consisted of a group of men crowding around - and shouting at - the official at the passport counter. Whomever was most demanding got their passport seen first - not an exaggeration.
Loved this one Dale. Lol. Love you .mom