Things the Chinese don't do so well...

Not that the Reynolds' are jaded already, but in our short time her in the Far East we have made some observations of the people around us. There are a few things that the Chinese could use a few lessons for...
1. Driving! They stink at it. There are seemingly no rules for driving here, it all comes down to how big the vehicle you are driving is. The bigger you are, like a bus, the more you get away with. This could be everything from running over pedestrians, to running through red lights whenever you feel like it. You meerly need to give a few honks, and the other drivers are supposed to cower before yuo and get the heck out of your way!! Unless they seem to think that they are bigger, in which case they will honk ceaselessly at you until you surrender to what they want. Here is the pecking order of the mean streets of Suzhou, China...
~as stated before, buses can do whatever the heck they want, then it's the giant, chugging, smoke belching blue worker trucks. These trucks carry everything from tons of bagged rice tilting at a terrifying angle(of course nothing is held down in any way) to workers wrestling around in the back. We like to call it "gong ren shenanigans"! Unfortunately for me, I don't speak enough Mandarin to yell at Jin to "get away from that truck before that third row of pigs falls onto our hood", so I just sit quietly in my seat and practice talking about the weather. Which does nothing but confuse and distract him, and sometimes appears to cause him physical pain. Demonstrations will be performed later on...
Where was I, that's right, pecking orders...
~after the blue trucks, the vans seem to be next. Yippee! That's us! Lucky for us, our driver is a great guy and is very careful with his cargo. The same cannot be said for the drivers of some of our friends, you need a Dramamine to get to the grocery store with some of these guys. Then the cars get to be in charge, then the scooters, then the electric bikes, then the man powered bikes and last, but most certainly thought of as least, the people.
Picture this if you can... cars driving in no apparent order, honking, swerving, stopping in the middle of the road to text, and all the while the people are crossing the streets from all directions. Here how it works; you don't look around when you cross the street, you just look straight ahead. This way, if someone hits you- it's their fault because you didn't see them. This rule applies to people on scooters and bikes too. I swear to God this is true! It's the craziest damn thing I have ever seen!! Seems like a lose-lose kind of risk, doesn't it? This brings me to the 2nd thing that the Chinese could use a bit of practice with...
2. Thinking ahead. Many, not all mind you-but many that we have seen, really seem to lack the ability to think beyond the next 5 minutes. A wise and eloquent lady once told me, "Chinese people react, they don't pro act." This is evident in their building and plumbing jobs. This is why we have a four story house with 2 strings of cable for a railing. This could also apply to the lovely lady we saw one day, who was shocked and dismayed that she had to get off the golf trolly that took her to the top of Tiger Hill. This instance led to some hilarious videa that will be shared when we come home at Christmas. Stay tuned!
3. Listening. When I tell the workers that have been in my kitchen for the last 3 hours in Mandarin(that anyone else I have talked to seems to understand) that I am putting the baby to bed and to try and be quiet, I get the standard, okay, okay, okay. No more than 3 minutes later the worker that has been on my deck for the last 4 hours gets the go ahead from the kitchen guy to start hammer drilling through the bricks beneath Riley's window. Only when I start screaming at them, do they seem to all of the sudden understand my "pu tong hua". That's right, I was screaming at them. They all though I was insane, but it suddenly got very quiet and the work was done quite quickly.
Enough of this! All these things pale in comparison to the amazing feeling I get when I go into the closet each day to get dressed in clothing I didn't have to wash, dry, fold or put AWAY!!! I love China...