If you want to read a spot-on description of what it’s like to drive on Beijing streets, click on this blog replete with diagrams and minute detail. A lot of Westerners gripe constantly about Chinese driving. I personally find it not so bad. I lived in Colombia before where it was not uncommon to see drivers actually backing up on highways because they’d missed their off ramp. Also, if traffic got too heavy in one direction on a divided highway, cars would slowly pull over to the oncoming side and risk driving headlong into oncoming traffic.

Now that I’ve never seen in China. Nor have I seen street vendors selling six-packs of beer on street corners as was common in Colombia in the mid-1990s.

But the one thing that is unnerving to me in China is how once the light turns green, cars hoping to turn left immediately swerve into oncoming traffic with the intention of blocking traffic and slipping through.

It’s almost like a flanking block in American football, where you stop the on-rushing cars with the hope the fullback behind you can charge through. Only, there is no fullback behind. You’re hoping to bolt through yourself.

Another curious thing to me are the “no-look pedestrians.” They walk on red, not feigning even the slightest glance at oncoming cars knowing well that the weight of the law is on their side.

In most countries I’ve been to, authorities worry about cars being disrespectful of pedestrians. Here, I find the opposite. Pedestrians refuse to obey the traffic laws that bicycles and cars must obey. It’s upside down from the situation in Tokyo, where pedestrians will stand politely at a red light at 3 a.m., even though there is not a car within a two-mile radius.