of pedestrians, motorbikes could pull out in front of bicycles, cars could pull out in front of motorbikes, vans could pull out in front of cars, and dirty big ten-tonne trucks could do whatever they liked, whenever they liked, whether their actions caused death and disaster or not. A second crucial rule was this: the only exception to the first rule was when the driver of any vehicle was carrying people wearing uniforms: this raised the weight category of the vehicle by one notch, or two notches if the uniform-wearers were visibly armed. People who did not know these rules did not live long on Chinese roads, and thus neatly removed themselves from the gene pool.
At regular intervals the official road rules clashed with the unwritten rules. For example, the law said that pedestrians had right of way if the green man was shining, and cars turning right had to wait until walkers were off the road. In these instances, the unwritten rules took precedence—cars were heavier than people—and vehicles would simply honk their way through the pedestrians. Foreigners did not know this and could often be seen arguing with pushy drivers while the reflections of the green man flashed across windscreens.
Joyce had been riding on Shanghai streets for six days now, and no longer felt that death was both inevitable and imminent every time she got on the saddle. But being on the roads was still stressful, as one regularly passed crowds which had gathered to stare at the human and vehicular results of traffic accidents. When she cycled past such a scene, she was always tempted to speed up and continue along the road with her eyes tightly shut—another reason why she was poor proof of evolutionary theory.
Her present level of stress should have been increased by the fact that the delivery was running late—but then no one could blame the Shanghai Vegetarian Café Society for that. It was the short-tempered Vega who was really running late, and who had changed the plans at the last minute. Now Vega—he was a question mark, for sure. What would he be like? He had become a legend in the international vegetarian community so quickly. It was interesting that Linyao had unabashed admiration for his work in freeing bears and so on, but then added the comment that he was ‘a bit extreme’. What did that really mean? She pictured a masked, caped crusader—a sort of superhero figure hovering between good and evil: there was something attractively Darcy-ish about the concept.
There was another simple but important reason why she was intrigued by him: he was male and English-speaking. Three-quarters of the vegetarian society in Shanghai were women, and the few men were of the spotty, wimpy sort—not really men at all, in her book. Only two spoke reasonable English, and of those, only Flip had any sense of cool about him. Vega, whatever his faults might be, sounded like a seriously bloke-ish bloke, to use the language of her British mother.
The lights changed to green and Joyce stood heavily on the pedals to get the clunky machine moving again. Murderous fellow road-users aside, she enjoyed cycling—it reminded her of being eleven and pedalling furiously up and down the promenade near the apartment where she and her sister used to live in New York with a nanny and their father, an Australian property developer who travelled for business all the time. But it was a shame the Chinese had such crappy bikes, she said to herself, not for the first time that week. How could a civilisation which took cycling so seriously not have discovered the delights of the titanium-framed, ultra-light mountain bikes which filled the bike parks of New York schools? Here in Shanghai, one did occasionally see colourful imported bikes, but the great majority were still the old, Forever brand models. No longer were Chinese bicycles available only in black, but they were still ponderous old-fashioned models. Whenever one had to ride uphill, it became apparent that they
At regular intervals the official road rules clashed with the unwritten rules. For example, the law said that pedestrians had right of way if the green man was shining, and cars turning right had to wait until walkers were off the road. In these instances, the unwritten rules took precedence—cars were heavier than people—and vehicles would simply honk their way through the pedestrians. Foreigners did not know this and could often be seen arguing with pushy drivers while the reflections of the green man flashed across windscreens.
Joyce had been riding on Shanghai streets for six days now, and no longer felt that death was both inevitable and imminent every time she got on the saddle. But being on the roads was still stressful, as one regularly passed crowds which had gathered to stare at the human and vehicular results of traffic accidents. When she cycled past such a scene, she was always tempted to speed up and continue along the road with her eyes tightly shut—another reason why she was poor proof of evolutionary theory.
Her present level of stress should have been increased by the fact that the delivery was running late—but then no one could blame the Shanghai Vegetarian Café Society for that. It was the short-tempered Vega who was really running late, and who had changed the plans at the last minute. Now Vega—he was a question mark, for sure. What would he be like? He had become a legend in the international vegetarian community so quickly. It was interesting that Linyao had unabashed admiration for his work in freeing bears and so on, but then added the comment that he was ‘a bit extreme’. What did that really mean? She pictured a masked, caped crusader—a sort of superhero figure hovering between good and evil: there was something attractively Darcy-ish about the concept.
There was another simple but important reason why she was intrigued by him: he was male and English-speaking. Three-quarters of the vegetarian society in Shanghai were women, and the few men were of the spotty, wimpy sort—not really men at all, in her book. Only two spoke reasonable English, and of those, only Flip had any sense of cool about him. Vega, whatever his faults might be, sounded like a seriously bloke-ish bloke, to use the language of her British mother.
The lights changed to green and Joyce stood heavily on the pedals to get the clunky machine moving again. Murderous fellow road-users aside, she enjoyed cycling—it reminded her of being eleven and pedalling furiously up and down the promenade near the apartment where she and her sister used to live in New York with a nanny and their father, an Australian property developer who travelled for business all the time. But it was a shame the Chinese had such crappy bikes, she said to herself, not for the first time that week. How could a civilisation which took cycling so seriously not have discovered the delights of the titanium-framed, ultra-light mountain bikes which filled the bike parks of New York schools? Here in Shanghai, one did occasionally see colourful imported bikes, but the great majority were still the old, Forever brand models. No longer were Chinese bicycles available only in black, but they were still ponderous old-fashioned models. Whenever one had to ride uphill, it became apparent that they
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