The above picture comes via George Ding of the Beijinger (you might remember him as our first Three Shots guest). He writes:
If the cars going west hadn’t initially blocked the intersection, this wouldn’t have happened. Had the cars going north and south not rushed in and just waited one cycle for the intersection to clear, this wouldn’t have happened. Had the cars going east not rushed in to be blocked by the cars going north, this wouldn’t have happened. And had the cars going west not rushed in only to be blocked by the cars going south, well, you get the idea.
Yeah, we get the idea all too well. Fucking traffic, man. Fucking fuck.
CORRECTION, 7/10, 4:01 pm: I was just made aware that, contrary to the Beijinger’s photo citation –
– this picture was not taken by George Ding, but was pulled from Google, and may or may not even be from China. Sorry, folks.
Fucking traffic? NO.
Those vehicles do NOT drive themselves, nor are they maneuvered by their own choices.
This is China.
This is the culture.
Other people are nothing but obstacles to be gotten around or taken advantage of.
Get out in that intersection first!
Take what you want! Take it fast! Before others do!
If you wait, other people will take advantage of you!
Waiting because the intersection is full, or because the light is red is for FOOLS!
After a decade in China, I’m really glad to live in a place where the culture is different.
amen! My life, health and happiness increased by a huge factor when I moved out of China this year. I love to see these news and laugh at their stupidity, yet there are people trying to explain their behavior.
GREED, GREED RUNS CHINA!
Even something as international as a traffic jam can be turned into anti-Chinese rhetoric by culture shocked expats.
Jay probably thinks missing the toilet seat and Randian philosophy is something uniquely Chinese.
I have no respect for Ayn Rand.
Traffic jams….. 30 years of living in the vicinity of Seattle (almost always in the top 10 cities for worst traffic in the USA) and I have never seen a traffic jam in an intersection like that, not even once. Slow traffic because of congestion – yes. Complete gridlock in an intersection because people refused to wait for their turn – no.
10 years of living in Beijing / Tianjin – I saw and was trapped in such traffic jams in intersections… about once a week. Sometimes 4 times in a week. All because somebody refused to wait for their turn.
It’s the difference between a culture that values the rule of law and a culture that claims to, but doesn’t.
I experienced something similar in Shanghai. A flooded walkway in a busy area of the city meant pedestrians on both sides needed to cross a passage on narrow wood plank. The north side took the initiative, and when there was time for the south side to get across, a single woman ran up from the north side and met in the middle of the plank, refusing to back down and aggressively verbally abusing us on the south side, hoping to bully her way across. The standoff lasted at least five minutes, with nobody able to move. All for the same reasons listed above. It was a culture shock to see such behavior. And not surprisingly, the bully woman eventually won, never yielding until her path was cleared.
It’s because in America there are actually REAL traffic laws being enforced by REAL cops. Truth is if they start taking away people’s licences plates most of Beijing would probably shit its pants, minding the speed limit and stop letting their kids drive their cars. Sad thing is, China actually needs more law enforcement and compared to local law enforcements in ACTUAL FIRST WORLD NATIONS WITH HISTORIES OF ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STABILITY China is pretty much an anarchic state ruled by a bunch of guys who decide to dole out justice only when they feel like it.
Truth is without proper traffic laws, punishments, and asshole cops who won’t give you 1 extra minute of parking so you can pay your check, everyone would be Ayn Rand out on the road.
With the exception of Canadians. Because we’re just better than everyone else on Earth.
Yes you are exactly right. First world nations have police who do their jobs (for the most part, of course there is a lot of bs as well). Traffic runs well not because they manage traffic actively.
Maybe its because politicians will lose their jobs if people get unsatisfied with basic shit like keeping traffic orderly. Maybe its because officials in China are either busy avoiding political danger like shuang gui or enjoying the fruits of their corrupt power with girls, drugs, travel or whatever. Or maybe its that these first-world societies have made a collective decision that good administration benefits everyone.
Still, the blame for this is clearly on the government. That is one of the most basic functions of local government! And BJ gov’t apparently gets a “F”.
Hey Seahorse, here is an article on the traditional superiority complex of the Canadians toward Americans/the rest of the world, you might find it interesting (the url title is a little misleading):
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/canadians-hate-america
OMG we have HTML tags now! That’s great, I just noticed!
“It’s because in America there are actually REAL traffic laws being enforced by REAL cops”
Eh, the veneer of legal structure in China is a punchline, I’ll grant you. I don’t really blame the cops for this, I blame the people for being narcissists. When you see people pissing/shitting/littering in the street or on the subway (gag), you get a sense of what locals think about ‘the system’…
Sadly, because the people have been so royally F’d over and lied to by their government in so many ways, there is a national distrust of anything authoritarian and, well, emanating from Beijing. By that I mean politicians and police, and the law itself. You can’t really blame them. Sadly, when you see this kind of thing, it shows you what ‘Chinese society’ really is: a mass of ants pushing/shoving, and absolutely zero ‘system thinking’.
By the way, I think some of our friends from Los Angeles would like to have a crack at the ‘worst traffic on Earth’ title.
Yes, it’s very strange why people from every nation, even dogs, cats and horses, dislike the behaviour of the Chinese, who in reality are the most altruistic, generous, idealistic, polite, cosmopolitan people on earth.
Agree completely. Now shall we exchange numbers so we can set up a play date for our unicorns in one of those flower dotted fields that have not even one discarded styrofoam lunch box?
It’s not just among drivers where you see this type of behavior. The me-first attitude is just as prevalent getting on/off subway cars and elevators too.
Maybe that’s what happens when you create two entire generations of only children who are spoiled to death by their parents and grandparents, raised in a hyper-competitive educational system, and therefore learn always to think of themselves first.
Speaking of hyper-competitive Education systems, is there a class dedicated to ‘Traffic Lights’…? Whose job is it to explain this stuff?
Dump of a selfish country, got out last month and never returning.
Based on a quick Google Image search, I would say this photo is from Brazil. At the attached link can be found an earlier version of this traffic jam, before it was quite as bad as the image above. It’s clearly the same junction.
http://expatbrazil.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/cities-sao-paulo-one-gringos-day-in-sao-paulo/