No rules in China, more like guidelines

Moderately organized mayhem would describe transit in Chinese cities. Crossing the street - just dodge the cars. Bicycles can go just about anywhere, except Tiananmen Square. And they are like a school of fish - constantly darting and swerving; a success of near misses. Add in the rickshaws and there is even more to the migrating system. Today my rickshaw attempted to take me up the wrong side of the street. Since we were dodging both bicycles and cars, we took it to the sidewalk.

One step up again and we have the motorized bicycles, bicycles with flat beds on the back and scooters. All of these can go in either the car lanes or the bike lanes - whichever is moving faster.

Cars are more limited in where they can go, but they make the most of their designated spaces. Darting from one lane to another. Just honk and pull into a lane. If the driver honks back, he won't be letting you in, but going around you. If he doesn't honk, you're golden.

Left turns are my favorite. No need to wait for traffic to stop, just start nudging your nose out into traffic until they are no longer able to go around you. At lights it is common to jump the green to get 2 or 3 left turns across. Remarkably, I've only seen one accident since being in China and that was one car having rear-ended another.

But the fun doesn't stop with transit mobiles. Walking home from dinner the other night Dave and I spotted a team of men working on telephone or power cables. They just went out into the middle of the street, mind you without cones or lights and leaned a ladder up against the wires and started climbing up.

Forget about neat queues - just mob your way to the front. Once there, reach your hand over the person in front of you to get to the window.