The other morning it rained rather heavily. It does not rain very much in Tianjin so heavy rain is a sight. Going to work is always chaotic at the best of times: lights, police signals, road rules, all amount to nothing but out of chaos comes order and all seem to reach their destinations on time and in one piece. Going to work in the rain is always a very hazardous journey. Traffic jams and hold-ups due to the massive road construction taking place compound and a simple accident involving a little bump brings all to a standstill.

David Jones [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

On this wet morning my bus had managed to squeeze through the main city centre and had headed out to suburban location of my university when turning a right hand corner of a usually busy intersection we came to an abrupt halt. It appeared as if a massive pile-up had occurred. People milling around a tractorised cart and cars trying to manoeuvre through the ebbing and swaying throng. Complete chaos. The policeman waving his arms around like a duck being dragged to slaughter; horns continually honking, push bikes with their soaking riders all jostling for space. And the rain tumbled down. It must be stated here than Tianjin road construction is not the best in the world for drainage. Most of the run-off ends up in great lakes which further impeded traffic flow and explain why woman wear platform shoes. I thought wearing these silly shoes was to gain height but no it is all to do with keeping your feet dry.

My bus with horn blasting senselessly joined the cacophony that made heavy metal seem musical and nosed slowly ahead. No one giving way in a senseless push, push forward that would cause blood to boil and eventually spill on a Sydney road. A bus is bigger than a car, a car is bigger than a bike and a bike is bigger than a pedestrian. So eventually we arrived at the "crash site".

Well, blow me down, the tractorised motor cart was not involved in an accident but had parked on the corner and had set a road stall with wooden barrels and tarps on which live crabs in there hundreds were displayed. Crabs with rubber bands around their nippers to immobilise their nipping but not their sideways movement. The vendor and his woman assistant (more than likely his wife) were busy mustering and shoving crabs into plastic bags, weighing them on his stick scales and selling them to the myriads of people buying in the teeming rain.

So a three lane highway came to an almost standstill as the veracious appetites of crab buyers were satisfied and the horn blazing traffic snarled its way around and through this accepted obstacle. Ah! China I hope that you never modernise to the standards of the West as all the fun in life would vanish. How boring it is to be stuck in a traffic snarl in Sydney to eventually see a prang rather than a live crab vendor.

David Jones has been living in Tianjin since 2005 when he accepted a position at the Tianjin Commercial University where he taught until his retirement.

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