Monday, 7 September 2009

Today was a very good day for our apartment hunt.

We saw three different options downtown in the “serviced apartment” category. These are a cross between a hotel suite and an apartment. They are frequently located in high rise buildings. The one we liked best of the three is in a neighborhood called “Changning,” but it is just over the border with another somewhat more desirable neighborhood called “Jing An.” (We actually saw an option right in Jing An, but that apartment was a bit cramped, and would have been more expensive, since utilities were not included.) The Jing An neighborhood contains a concentration of trendy restaurants and up-scale shopping. We're still working on a characterization of Changning, but it appears to be one notch more sedate and stately compared to Jing An. We plan to sleep on this tonight, to see if we can think of any reason not to go with the Changning apartment. But, in all likelihood, we'll proceed to take it – and move in – tomorrow, or perhaps Wednesday, at the latest.

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I've been forgetting to write something about Shanghai traffic, so let me do that now. The traffic here is qualitatively and quantitatively unlike anything I've ever seen. Of course, it consists of the usual mix of pedestrians, bicycles, motorized cycles of various kinds, automobiles, and trucks. But they mix in much tighter proximity and in greater volumes than we are used to. Pedestrians, cars and trucks generally obey traffic signals, but bicycles and motorized cycles generally do not. Having said that, it is pretty normal to see the driver of a car proceed into an intersection on a red light – provided the driver is the first in his lane, the transition from green to red is recent, and the feels he has already waited “long enough” at that particular intersection (perhaps he waited patiently for some obstacle to remove itself from his path). Indeed, we have been in a car driven by just such a driver – the real estate broker who was showing us the apartments near Fudan last Friday. He also played the car's radio about as loud as the human ear can take, not even turning the volume down to make (or receive) any of the several cell phone calls he made (or received) during our hour or so together. It is also possible to see pedestrians ignoring signals, if they are in great enough numbers. We saw, for example, a veritable swarm (though nothing as formally organized as a parade) of tens of thousands of high-school-aged students – all dressed in identical polo shirts – migrating past our hotel towards Fudan University en masse. Their collective mass was definitely above the critical point for a totally self-sustaining flouting of all traffic signals. We happened to be in a taxi attempting to return to our hotel when we encountered them, and simply had no other option than to let the swarm pass before we could proceed.

However, I am most impressed with the behavior of the bicyclists and motorized cyclists. They wend their way through traffic with seeming effortlessness. Having been a commuting bicyclist – in the greater Boston area, no less – I can say from experience that it is quite unnerving to see these cyclists managing to make their way without even appearing to be trying. You won't see one, for instance, ever look back behind them to see if something is coming before making any small change to their path. The best I can say is that they already seem to know what's back there without having to look. I'm sure there are traffic accidents that do indeed occur here in Shanghai. But for all the near-misses I've seen – some by as little as fractions of an inch, and at breathtaking speeds – I haven't personally witnessed one.

I'm willing to risk speculating a bit on how all this could possibly work. I think it all comes down to the basic orientation of the individual with respect to society. The individual here isn't used to, or expecting, any great or essential conflict between the individual's trajectory and the trajectories of those nearby. This expectation is probably based on a deeply ingrained social contract of sorts. On the one hand, the individual must not act in such a way as to present an undue burden on those nearby to avoid a collision. In particular, if an individual cyclist needs to stop short, say, to allow a faster-moving car make a turn, or a slower-moving pedestrian complete the crossing of a street, then the cyclist will absolutely stop short. But you more often see the cyclist make a graceful adjustment to their path and avoid slowing down much if at all. On the other hand, those nearby must act as necessary to allow the individual reasonably free passage, and to do what is reasonable (but not more) to avoid collision. Contrast this with the way we are taught in the West to “drive defensively.” Clearly, we have deeply ingrained within us the expectation that the individual trajectory will essentially conflict with the trajectories of those nearby. We expect conflict and, sadly, all too often, that is just what we get. Here they don't expect conflict and, astonishingly, quite consistently manage to avoid it.