China: Part Three (Crossing the Road)

     On my daily walk to South-West University for Nationalities in Chengdu, I had to cross a particularly tricky crossroads where rush-hour traffic filtered from several different directions. Even though there were traffic-lights at this intersection, they didn't seem (to me, at least) to offer a predictable system of traffic flow.  Just as you were attempting to cross the road, cars would appear from nowhere at high speed and bicycles would shadow you to the other side. For the first week or so, I was very defensive when I approached this particular interesection.  I looked left, stepped out, looked right, stopped, shuffled forward a bit more, stopped, looked left, and continued to shamble like this until reaching safety on the other side. I thought I was being super-cautious and ensuring safety by pursuing such a defensive strategy.  In actual fact, by stopping every five yards and looking around, I was creating an ideal condition for an accident.

      An American friend who had lived in China for six years told me one day, "The thing about the traffic is that it always flows. The worst thing you can do is to stop in your tracks.  You simply have to plunge in and keep going." Once I understood this, I began to lose my inhibitions and became more emboldened to stride across the road (without even bothering to look left or right). In fact, my friend also told me, "The Chinese will never crash into you. They want to save face. So, that's why you will see a lot of close calls but rarely see a major accident or collision."

     The more I thought about this, the more I realized it was rather like my experience of learning the Mandarin language.  At first, there semed to be no system or way of understanding the seemingly random flow of words and characters, but gradually I saw a shape and method in the structure of the language. I simply had to plunge in and experiment with the sound of words as if I were crossing the road. Don't stop every time you see a crazy motorist heading towards you at 55 mph, I reminded myself.  Likewise, don't give up every time you come across a character or grammatical item that makes no sense. Just keep walking. Eventually, you'll get to the other side of the road--preferably, in one piece.