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6/17/2005

I watched the Pistons rout the Spurs 102-71 in the morning, went to the residence of General Zhang Xueliang and his family in the afternoon, tried various Shenyang foods for dinner and swam 2000 meters in the evening.

I’ve been thinking about why there are so few auto accidents on the road in China while none follows traffic rules. I’ve come to a conclusion that may be surprising. Chinese people are considerate and care about others. You may argue that how could it true since drivers cut in and out lanes without paying much attention to other moving vehicles. The manner by which drivers drive here would have caused uncountable accidents in a country in which people follow rules. True. But if you look at the matter not from the point of view of driver of the vehicle you are in but from other drivers’, you may understand what I mean. A driver would pay attention to other drivers around him and yield the right of way when necessary. In the US when a driver has the right of way he would expect others to respect such a right and shall not yield unless he chooses to. These are two extremes. In China no one follows rules but people create random rules on spot. In US, there are well established rules and most people follow them. It is hard to conclude which one is better than another. Each works well within its cultural boundary.

I noticed another thing in the park. While resting in hanging bed I saw a young boy put a candy into his mouth and threw the plastic wrapper to the ground. I wanted very much to tell him to pick it up but he was with his family. I thought it would be the adults’ responsibility to tell him. None of the family members said anything. I was thinking to myself that if the behavior had been corrected from early on the little boy would perhaps not repeat it.

There are encouraging signs about environment protection. I saw many solar panels on sale and TV commercials for them. Also Jorge from Ecuador in whose home I went dancing tango in Beijing was doing wind energy research in China. He told me that while the current percentage of wind energy was still low the goal was to increase it to 10% in ten years.

posted by Unknown @ 9:06 PM