storyboard

welcome to china:

how to navigate an empire

from A to B

If you live in China you will have to learn how to navigate. Navigation skills of course are essential to big city life, but they are indispensable in China. By navigation I mean managing the logistics of moving from point A to B. By logistics I mean the complex maneuvers required for moving from point A to B among 16 million Chinese, which is the approximate population of Shanghai. At all times keep in mind that these 16 million urban dwellers are not necessarily comparable to urban dwellers in Western European cities. A large number of city dwellers in China are transplanted peasants, looking for a better life. What is the difference you say?

The use of the term peasants is not meant pejoratively. Westerners who come to China easily forget that modern ie post-industrialization, urban living in China is a novelty. Office life and the various behavioral codes that go with it are new to China. In other words, most of the 16 million Chinese you will be confronted with on a daily basis are not particularly concerned with how to get from point A to B; they will chose the shortest route, which may or may not entail simply running you over. Because we are talking about fighting through masses of determined Chinese, navigation skills are short of essential to how long you will survive here.

The complete lack of modern navigation standards in a culture that has endured for 5000 years and frequently dwarfed Western Europe in sophistication and progress can come as a surprise. But until very recently, only a small elite was able to enjoy a life of individually determined pursuits, let alone a life of leisurely socializing. And that educated, sophisticated and very small elite was rather effectively eliminated in 1949. True, it was replaced by another elite, with similar trappings of wealth and power, but the new guard of 1949 was largely of humble origins. The crop of leaders who managed to kick out Chiang Kai Shek, General Stilwell, the Japanese and the rest of the foreign devils trying to encroach on Chinese sovereignty, had not exactly been the beneficiaries of the cultural and artistic refinement achieved in 5000 years of elitism - which is of course why they started a proletarian (or more accurately, agrarian) revolution. And that is in turn why little of the national patrimony in refinement has survived, or rather, it has survived only in a negligible percent of the population. Hence the lack of behavioral sophistication in china's urban transit logistics.

As a former New Yorker I have come to have a singular appreciation for civilized navigation. I tend to judge the sophistication and evolutionary status of entire nations by the navigation etiquette found in the streets, and by that standard China is a Third World Country. In China getting from A to B is still an existentialist problem - it is not just about going to the office. More pointedly, it is about fighting for your position in life, getting ahead of others who are just waiting to snag your place, and ultimately about ensuring a better future for yourself and your offspring. In this environment, who has time to worry about etiquette, and who has the time to wonder why there isn't any? After all, few Chinese have had the opportunity to go abroad and discover that things can be done differently at least. All things considered, the Chinese are doing astonishingly well, but it might help newly arrived westerners understand that no one is trying to be intentionally rude or cut their lives short, on the contrary. Most Chinese are too busy to be rude to foreigners.

The particularities of China's modern history offers a plausible explanation for certain phenomena you will observe in Shanghai: why no one will cede an inch of sidewalk, why supermarkets are high risk zones and why generally there are no rules governing such sensitive proceedings as entering and exiting elevators, buildings, cars and offices.  People will elbow you of their way, jump into on your lap while you are still sitting in a taxi, and slam doors in your face without hesitation. Standing in line is for westerners only. Of course there are rules in apparent chaos as well, and in Shanghai's case the rules often coincide with what Hobbes I believe termed "the state of nature" - everyone for him/herself, and while you're at it, try to be faster, pushier and more inconsiderate than everyone else. It definitely works. And for those of shy away from such tactics, there is always the option of waiting another decade before visiting China.