The ride of your life

Certainly my most exhilarating experience yet has been my afternoon bike ride through rush hour. A streaming flow of rickshaws, bicycles, motorbikes, Vespas, trucks, cars, buses and carts pours through the roads as all types of people pack up and head home for the day. This picture is meant to demonstrate the diversity, not the density, of Shanghai's traffic flow.

At first glance, this chaotic mass of traffic was the first cultural difference to strike me while we traveled from the airport to the University. Yet somehow, through this entropic nightmare, gilded with strategic honking, one feels remarkably secure, despite the fact that a single miscalculation would end my life. And you also get the feeling that nobody would slow down to remove your body from the road.

But yes, there is a majestic quality to the way people transport themselves. Because it is so amazingly chaotic and dangerous, everyone gives their full attention to the road, averting mishaps when the must be avoided, but otherwise charging straight ahead. Furthermore, people can't ride bikes and talk on cellphones at the same time, and of course most of the vehicles are much smaller.

So far, Shanghai's most interesting activity from my perspective is to sit for a few minutes at an intersection and watch the various kinds of people going by. Some antediluvian men haul large cartloads of trash and preppy business women in expensive clothes scooter by wearing masks and white gloves. And the most interesting part is that the natives don't think anything of it.