Wednesday, October 21

Today we venture out to the fabric market. It is our second lesson in advanced retail negotiation. Holli gives us detailed instructions before we enter the market and serves as our mentor throughout the process. The three grasshoppers are ready now; we make several purchases at substantial reductions in price. Kendall and Veronica picked a Taiwanese restaurant for dinner. We find that in China dinners served in restaurants do not follow any specific order of service. Soup, appetizers, rice, main dishes, dinner plates and utensils come at various times throughout the meal.

Here are some rules of the road that we have learned:

• Traffic lines and lights are just suggestions. We've had taxi drivers that got tired of waiting for a light to change so just proceeded around the cars ahead and went through the light. Lines are painted on the road but no one seems to pay them any mind. What looks like 4 lanes of traffic to us actually holds 5 to 6 cars across, plus scooters and bikes.
• Horns never indicate anger or impatience. They are used to warn that you could be run into (for cars) or over (for bikes and people) if you don't stay out of the way.
• Cutting in is how you move from lane to lane which is how you navigate traffic. The proper way to cut into another lane is to get your fender in front of another car and then you're in.
• Green walk lights don't really mean that the pedestrian has the right of way. Cars and scooters have the right of way. The green walk light means proceed with caution and hurry; your life depends on it.

No one seems to get angry with the constant cutting in and what seems like chaos to us. Amazingly, with the above rules and the huge volume of vehicles we see very few accidents and very few battered and dented cars. There is no road rage.