Chiese Style Crossing the Street

550 Words3 Pages
Chinese-style of crossing the street——possible causes Recently, a thread titled “Chinese-style street crossing” became popular on the Internet, and absorbed much attention from Chinese media. The phenomenon “We Chinese do not care about traffic lights. We run red lights in groups.” strikes a responsive and resonant chord among many Chinese. It goes without saying that people have been habituated to this style of crossing streets: They usually ignore traffic lights and rather gather on corners with others and cross together after traffic clears. How was the “collectively walk the red light” phenomenon developed? I think, the reason can be listed as follows. First of all, most of Chinese people tend to be unprincipled in the daily routine, which is clearly demonstrated in details of people’s demeanor. When throwing litter, trampling flowers and plants, or running a red light, people know that it is not right to do so, but they still choose to act in line with their own principles of conduct that lead to the best consequences. And even if they are caught doing that, the consequences are not serious at all. In addition, transportation planning is also to blame in some situations. Some lights turn to read too quickly for people to walk across the street. There is also an exaggeration that people have to dash across the intersections. Meanwhile, some red lights last for quite a long time, which makes people keep waiting. For convenience’s sake, people have to conduct “Chinese-style crossing streets” to save time. To make things worse, at some places such as schools, housing estates, there are even no traffic lights. And people have to stand on the crossing line on the jig, watching vehicles come and go. (To be frank, I usually stand helplessly at the gate of my neighborhood and struggle through the street.) What’s more, the lack of social

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