In Australia we have an old joke. What would happen if all the cars in Australia were lined up end to end? Answer? Some silly fool would try to pass them!
On Christmas Eve I finished my class and took my usual bus for home. Twenty minutes later I should have been stepping off onto my local street. Not so. The journey took two hours. Luckily I had as my companion a jocund economics teacher with a lovely command of English and perspectives well beyond the limitations of most of his countrymen. It is rare to find a Chinese citizen who can laugh and joke on par with a Celt but God gave me this gift to help me endure the traffic jam.
We twisted and turned through a series of back streets and came out on one of the major streets that formed an arm of a major crossroads. As soon as we came onto the major street the bus stopped and for over an hour as we approached the crossroads our pace never reached a walk in the small intervals of movement we achieved. The street had six lanes divided by a central grassed strip. The grassed strip was raised by a ten inch kerb so it was impossible for vehicles to mount it. Our bus was on the left, next to the strip and my seat was also on the left. After about fifteen minutes I jolted to attention, noticing that there was another line of vehicles to my left, going in our direction on the other side of the median strip. It was made up of buses and trucks, mainly, asserting their right as ‘heavies’ to pass anything that got in the way. As we ‘progressed’ I saw that, characteristically, to the left of the heavies a line had built of another sort of heavy, more expensive looking cars, usually black. Cars of this sort in China seem to believe they can do anything they want. Isn’t it lovely how we speak of cars doing anything they want rather than the driver they personify?
I sat wondering where the police were? They were nowhere to be seen and they were making no attempt to stop the insane disobedience of the heavies. We continued toward the nexus of this phenomenon, my companion and I exchanging snide remarks and chuckling occasionally. I looked to my right and noticed that another extra line of cars, perhaps two, were progressing along the service road and footpath! Eventually, we got to the intersection where the police were feebly trying to move people in a way that gave a modicum of progress. As we crossed the intersection at a snail’s pace I looked around me and saw that each arm of the crossroads had six or sometimes seven lanes of converging traffic and only one outlet lane. The Police were doing nothing at all to deal with the problem at its source by preventing the six to one phenomenon.
It is a characteristic of Wuhan driving that it runs on the principle of every man for himself. The Police lend validity to this rule of driving by taking no action whatsoever when someone does something outrageously against the written rule of the road. If no one is knocked over it is likely that a driver can get away with breaking any rule he/she feels like breaking.
The behaviour of ‘going round the obstacle’ is standard. If you have two lanes on your side of the centre line and they are blocked ahead of you, you can try going onto the other side of the road to pass them. In fact if you don’t the people behind you will think you are a silly fool. Oh, the oncoming cars? Don’t worry about them, it’s bad manners for them to object to what you are doing. Therefore a common peak hour sight is a road with four lanes in one direction and two in the other, on a four lane road.
It is this behaviour that built up to the situation of six to seven lanes entering that intersection on Christmas Eve from each arm of the hub, while only one lane was left free on each arm for traffic to exit by. How could people be so stupid? No, I don’t apologise for my ill-mannered assessment. It is only logical. Simple, really.
The old joke? Don’t bother telling it in China. No one will understand except my jocular companion. I thank God for him. He saved me from apoplexy by laughing with me.