Suicide by Bike?

I did not come to China to die, though, during the turbulent months of the past year, the thought did cross my mind, drawn as it was to the dark irony of arriving with two oversized suitcases and returning home as ash in a small box. Things are better now; life here has fallen into a pattern that makes the present tolerable, and the future has even begun to assume a vague shape. But one simple fact makes me wonder if Thanatos might not still be at work within me: a few days after I arrived in Suzhou, I bought a bike.

Don’t let the photo here fool you; it was taken on the campus of Suzhou University—the one place in this city where the odds of getting killed while riding a bicycle are less than even. The causes of the danger can be simply stated: congestion and chaos. Like almost every place I go in Suzhou, the streets teem with people in motion. Buses and cars speed down the narrow lanes with so many drivers laying on their horns that the sounds merge into a loud irrelevancy. Mothers weave in and out of traffic on their e-bikes (battery-powered mopeds that are nearly as common as their foot-powered cousins) toting their toddlers on handlebars. A few young riders type text messages on their cell phones as they go. And cyclists crossing streets don’t wait for a gap to open in traffic; instead, they create one by rolling forward on the faith that drivers of buses and cars, when pressed by the threat of blood, will ultimately stop.

The chaos doesn’t stem from a lack of rules or infrastructure. The city is flat, and the streets are neatly laid out and nearly all straight and well paved. The traffic lights at every busy intersection include counters that anticipate the next change of light. There’s a general understanding that traffic moves on the right side of the road. And many streets include wide bike lanes that cyclists in the US would figuratively die for; here, they literally do.

No, the problem isn’t with the lack of rules; instead, it’s in the refusal to observe them when doing so becomes slightly inconvenient. Take the bike lanes, for example. Despite the high volume of riders, the lanes would function beautifully if they were used as intended. However, if the sidewalks are too crowded, pedestrians will walk there, and if the roads grind to a halt, taxis and cars will stage a coup and use their bulk to claim the bike lanes for themselves. And one cannot ride for more than thirty seconds without encountering someone on a moped or bike going the wrong way.

So far, I’ve managed to avoid disaster, though I have had a few close calls. The closest came one day when I was riding alone to Jinji Lake. My building manager rode past me on her e-bike and said “ni hao.” Since an exchange of ni haos is the only communication in Chinese that I can participate in with full confidence, I eagerly turned toward her to return the greeting. When I looked back at the road ahead, someone on a e-bike was bearing down straight in front of me, no more than ten feet away. It was a near-run thing, with both of us making reflex swerves that fortunately took us in opposite directions.

And did I mention that no one wears helmets here? The Chinese not only don’t wear helmets; they also have an unhealthy contempt for anyone who does. I recall this summer my friend Liru with her normally kind face contorted into a sneer telling me that she had seen three foreigners ride across campus wearing helmets. There are many ways in which I cannot make myself Chinese, but this I can do something about, so I’ve been riding the Chinese way, with my skull exposed. It may cost me my life, but at least it will spare me some unnecessary derision.

I’ve been thinking about what all of this means with regard to cultural difference. In Columbia, Maryland, the town where I teach in the US, there’s a community initiative to encourage civility. People there have “Choose Civility” bumper stickers on their cars, though I have seen the drivers of some of these cars weaving with maniacal fury on Route 29 and giving the finger to old men who are moving too slow. The advocates of the civility initiative present it as a universal principle, but is that necessarily so? Perhaps in a country like the US that is comparatively under-populated, civility is a nicety we can afford. In China, with its billion-plus filling every nook, a Darwinism of space has taken hold, and not just on the roads. Show any sign of passivity in a line at a store or fast food joint or bank and you’re sure to be standing there all day.

I must admit that I’ve begun to take some pleasure in this socially sanctioned aggression and disregard for the other. In a month, I’ve gone from having my feelings hurt by the guy who bumped me on his moped and didn’t turn back to say duibuqi to cutting people off on my bike with the best of them. And in lines, I simply lean forward and fall to the front, reveling in one of few ways that my freakish size is a decided advantage. I do worry, though, about how such changes will play out once I return to the US, where I am soft-spoken and generally polite. Assuming that I do make it back alive, when you see me again, you’ll have to be patient and give me some time to adjust. For the first couple of months, at least, I have a suggestion that will ensure we don’t come into conflict over this, even if it makes P. M. Forni shudder. Just get the hell out of my way.