I had an observation the last couple times I was in Beijing about traffic. Where I live, traffic, even when congested, is still relatively orderly. For the most part, people stay in lanes. But in China, traffic flows like those images you see of capillaries and veins...everything is going the same direction, but all jumbled, no queueing, no patience really. Cab drivers practice a kind of martial art. It's the same way you get on the subways. Even if you line up, when the door opens, everyone just bumbles in and out like those corpuscles. This image from Beijing 2007 seems pretty orderly, but I remember riding bicycles and seeing horse-drawn carts on these same roads.
I was thinking about this because my doctor just told me my cholesterol is a bit high, my blood pressure a bit high, so I need diet and exercise. (So what else is new...all the other tests, ultrasounds and colonoscopies and liver scans are fine.) It's just traffic. (Isn't it interesting that the French word for traffic is "la circulation"?) And when congested, another word for stress. I was doing much better in Wudang, patiently climbing stairs, eating tofu and practicing qigong and meditation.
