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Balancing yin and yang for survival in our modern urban traffic
By Dee Bruce Sun |
October 12, 2011, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
EDITOR'S note: This is the first part of a series of articles by professor Dee Bruce Sun on yin and yang of a city or a country. Readers' comments are welcome.
THE past three decades have been a watershed in China's modernization.
Prior to this period, people wondered what they could possibly do to pull themselves out of destitution; now, people seem to question whether there is anything they cannot do.
Shanghai looks much like Hong Kong now.
Built in 1934, the Park Hotel on Nanjing Road was for almost 20 years the tallest building in Asia. Even 30 years ago, visitors to Shanghai would still marvel at how they could look at the top of the tallest building in China without losing their hats.
Now passersby have difficulty locating this chocolate-colored Art Deco-style 24-story hotel, seemingly buried beneath a jungle of skyscrapers.
What about the "software" part of the city, however?
Freeways, subways, tunnels, bridges and rails, threading through every corner of the city, have all been constructed over the past 30 years to facilitate the flow of urban life.
Nonetheless, you might find yourself frustrated when traveling during rush hour. Many of the traffic jams are self-inflicted: Drivers often don't stop when making a right turn against a red light, and cars making a left turn fail to yield to oncoming traffic. Individuals fighting to gain a second can cause delays of minutes or even hours.
Private cars play a large role. Thirty years ago, they were extremely rare in Shanghai. I could recall my boyhood living on "Huanlong Road," a street in the former French Concession later renamed Nanchang Road.
My neighbor Uncle Tang got a car as a gift from his son in Hong Kong. Similar in size and power to a Geely, his Fiat was small and lackluster.
But it made a big splash throughout Shanghai, because it was believed to be the first private car in the whole city since the mid-1950s.
Owning a car was very extraordinary at that time. Uncle Tang Junyuan was permitted to own this little Fiat likely because Tang's family, successful in textile business in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, is highly patriotic.
Uncle Tang's Fiat was chauffeured by an experienced driver; Geelys, on the other hand, are driven by young owners, who are driving car as if riding a bicycle.
But for a driver to shift into reverse or make an arbitrary U-turns (as cyclists usually do) can be extremely dangerous.
Owning a car (yang) is one thing, abiding by a new set of traffic rules (yin) is quite another matter.
Failing to synchronize yin and yang, a driver may easily paralyze traffic, jeopardize his life, or both.
Street traffic and driver behavior exemplify the quality of city and inhabitants.
They characterize the two spheres of metropolitan life: the hardware (various facilities and equipment) sphere of yang, and the software (various norms and rules, explicit or implicit) sphere of yin.
Are yin and yang functioning and adapting in sync? A big inquiry indeed.
It surely involves grand policy concerning urban development.
However, our attempt here is limited to one of its low level subcomponents: how to make informed and calculated, or in short smart, decisions for you as a resident.
The Author is Professor of Business at California State University at Long Beach. Born in Shanghai, he went to study in the US in early 1980s, and got M.A. in Economics and Ph.D. in Management there.
He has served China Construction Bank as its general manager of Investment Banking Department and the IPO Office, and Shenzhen Development Bank as CIO.
He was a Fulbright Scholar to China. He achieves many projects and awards in China, publishes 14 books in Chinese, and becomes influential through his newspaper columns.
Currently he lives in Los Angeles. (brucesunchina@gmail.com)
THE past three decades have been a watershed in China's modernization.
Prior to this period, people wondered what they could possibly do to pull themselves out of destitution; now, people seem to question whether there is anything they cannot do.
Shanghai looks much like Hong Kong now.
Built in 1934, the Park Hotel on Nanjing Road was for almost 20 years the tallest building in Asia. Even 30 years ago, visitors to Shanghai would still marvel at how they could look at the top of the tallest building in China without losing their hats.
Now passersby have difficulty locating this chocolate-colored Art Deco-style 24-story hotel, seemingly buried beneath a jungle of skyscrapers.
What about the "software" part of the city, however?
Freeways, subways, tunnels, bridges and rails, threading through every corner of the city, have all been constructed over the past 30 years to facilitate the flow of urban life.
Nonetheless, you might find yourself frustrated when traveling during rush hour. Many of the traffic jams are self-inflicted: Drivers often don't stop when making a right turn against a red light, and cars making a left turn fail to yield to oncoming traffic. Individuals fighting to gain a second can cause delays of minutes or even hours.
Private cars play a large role. Thirty years ago, they were extremely rare in Shanghai. I could recall my boyhood living on "Huanlong Road," a street in the former French Concession later renamed Nanchang Road.
My neighbor Uncle Tang got a car as a gift from his son in Hong Kong. Similar in size and power to a Geely, his Fiat was small and lackluster.
But it made a big splash throughout Shanghai, because it was believed to be the first private car in the whole city since the mid-1950s.
Owning a car was very extraordinary at that time. Uncle Tang Junyuan was permitted to own this little Fiat likely because Tang's family, successful in textile business in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, is highly patriotic.
Uncle Tang's Fiat was chauffeured by an experienced driver; Geelys, on the other hand, are driven by young owners, who are driving car as if riding a bicycle.
But for a driver to shift into reverse or make an arbitrary U-turns (as cyclists usually do) can be extremely dangerous.
Owning a car (yang) is one thing, abiding by a new set of traffic rules (yin) is quite another matter.
Failing to synchronize yin and yang, a driver may easily paralyze traffic, jeopardize his life, or both.
Street traffic and driver behavior exemplify the quality of city and inhabitants.
They characterize the two spheres of metropolitan life: the hardware (various facilities and equipment) sphere of yang, and the software (various norms and rules, explicit or implicit) sphere of yin.
Are yin and yang functioning and adapting in sync? A big inquiry indeed.
It surely involves grand policy concerning urban development.
However, our attempt here is limited to one of its low level subcomponents: how to make informed and calculated, or in short smart, decisions for you as a resident.
The Author is Professor of Business at California State University at Long Beach. Born in Shanghai, he went to study in the US in early 1980s, and got M.A. in Economics and Ph.D. in Management there.
He has served China Construction Bank as its general manager of Investment Banking Department and the IPO Office, and Shenzhen Development Bank as CIO.
He was a Fulbright Scholar to China. He achieves many projects and awards in China, publishes 14 books in Chinese, and becomes influential through his newspaper columns.
Currently he lives in Los Angeles. (brucesunchina@gmail.com)
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