We’ve all been hooted at by cars and motorbikes. Sometimes this happens when you are only a lowly pedestrian. All the commuting equipment I have in the world is my legs and shoes.
But it’s a unique experience – the first hundred or so times in China – when you are walking on a sidewalk and you get hooted at because a car or motor scooter wants to get past you — and his vehicle’s on the same bloody pavement.
Given my less than gentle Irish-Scots temperament, I would at first tell the bewildered gentleman to take a sexual hike. This is, after all, a sidewalk for us humble pedestrians. Early on in my stay in China I got my Chinese friends to teach me the Chinese phrase for “go take a f- hike”.
It doesn’t work. They stare at me in mild surprise, wondering why I can’t just courteously step aside onto the road (which is where I thought they belonged) so they can get past me on the pavement in their vehicle.
The bumbling, bungling traffic at road intersections in China is like watching clothing in tumble driers. The scooters drift in every direction, unnervingly skittering around hurtling busses which are not seen as threatening, unguided missiles. The riders don’t ever wear helmets. Sometimes Mom and Dad will be on the scooter, with the one-child-policy kid crammed in between them, dodging around trucks and taxis – and no helmets.
And yet some Chinese parents and teachers are worried if I have balloons or Prestick (blu-tack) in my classes because they think those educational aids might be dangerous for their child. And I am not kidding.
In Shaoxing, where we lived for a year, taxis love to go into the oncoming lane for several hundred metres to get around trucks while you, with your eyes craning from their sockets, gape at the oncoming traffic.
Cyclists would rocket across the road in Shaoxing, look at our oncoming taxi and decide this is a perfect time to dismount – in front of the oncoming taxi. The taxi’s brakes get yet another taste of screeching abuse. The taxi driver barely notices. I am breathing deeply and counting backwards from forty in case I have a cardiac arrest.
I am convinced ABS brakes were inspired by the Chinese approach to driving, which has more to do with flying blind or proving the Chaos theory.
Several times I have seen cyclists (there are herds of them here instead of cars) dinging taxis, both driver and rider at fault. Both just blink at each other while the cyclist gets back on her bicycle, the cabbie’s mind completely elsewhere. My taxi driver re-starts his stalled car, more interested in the talk show on the radio than the fresh scratch on his battered vehicle. Oh, so I banged your car. By the way, have you got the latest update on the UK football matches?
But there is no road rage.
I was in sales in Jo’burg for many years. Sure, Jo’burgers (not the taxis) were good at sticking to the rules, except for two: speed and temper, temper! I saw motorists spitting at other motorists, then roaring off into the safety of being half a kilometre away before the phlegm has even dried on the tarmac. I don’t need to bore readers with details of abuse and violent assaults in South Africa due to road rage.
But the same phenomenon is, of course, in the blogging world.
I am amazed at the puerile, uncalled-for vehemence I sometimes see in the commentaries.
I think the commentator Phillipa summed it up perfectly in her response to commentator Jon on a Trapido blog -when she writes “Jon: whoever you are, you just had to mention Mbeki’s name. I am sick of these cyber cowards who spew vitriol for absolutely no reason and try to escape their own miserable little lives by saying (wholly unsolicited) bad things about those entrusted with public office.”
In other words, like the safety of the speeding-away metal shell of a car, you can say what you like and take little responsibility for it in the blogsphere.
When I lampoon the daft behaviour of some Chinese, I am surprised to find my readers feeling I was “politically incorrect”. My response to that has been to lampoon anyone, including myself. The problem with the politically correct is that they are not honest with themselves, don’t take risks, and need to get over themselves and their puffed-up sense of self-importance. They are always pointing fingers at others.
On the other hand, when I portray as respectfully as I can the poverty of many Chinese people, I may get a black person scorning my portrayal of the struggles of the poor in China. This is surely a gratuitous, irresponsible comment coming from anyone, never mind a black person who I assume grew up in apartheid South Africa and therefore … You fill in the dots.
And what the hell does politically incorrect mean? It’s a question of when you said it (or drew it as per Zapiro), in line with the thinking of the time, and which context. I far more admire someone who has the guts to voice her own standpoint. That is light-years ahead of that sad subspecies, the anal-retentive politically correct. Eugene Terre’blanche is politically correct, as far as he is concerned.
When I wrote “Zapiro and the cliché of violence” I mentioned that my wife was nearly raped and killed in Randburg. One reader responded by saying the majority of people do not care about my wife. The callous response horrified me and I refused to respond.
The Ryland Fisher blogs on blacks, and then whites, being more racist really brought out the road rage. But then I am inclined to think he spat through the car window first, roared off and never came back.
However, needless to say, if the blog is on boring, safe ground, there’s no road rage. Take Mike Trapido’s recent blog on Mugabe, which starts off with “Forget new elections; Mugabe needs to learn integrity. If ever a man deserves the oblivion that a new election in Zimbabwe would bring then that man is President Robert Mugabe”. Sure, a blog that starts off like that is hardly likely to incite any verbal abuse. But what Traps writes are excruciating clichés – who is he trying to insult, the readers or himself with his boring truisms about Mugabe? So why not just write, “The Pope is a Catholic. Desmond Tutu is an Anglican. Homer Simpson is not religious at all; he is a cartoon character with yellow skin”?
It has been implicitly suggested that the likes of TL blogger Michael Frances should go back to Canada and he has no place commenting on this country. It has also been suggested that the likes of Sarah Britten and me should not comment on South Africa because we have left the country, though perhaps not forever.
I am inclined to think that people’s (responsible, informed) views when they come from another country or are SA ex-pats, should be welcomed as they may bring a fresh perspective. I have certainly started to see life very differently having now lived for nearly four years in a culture which is poles apart from my upbringing – yep, as far away as the East is from the West.
It must be challenging for the Thought Leadership editors to draw a line as to what commentaries they should allow. They want to ensure there is a healthy, growing readership, not turn them away, and of course there is more than one meaning to the word healthy that needs to be considered. However, in the past few months I have noticed a far, far better standard of commentary – or have I become calloused to the spit that is spat?
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