Chinese dynamics

After crossing a Typhoon, I find myself in Shanghai. Abandonning my gaijin status, I am now a proud laowai. Happily walking the biggest crowds in this world, I will share with you my knowledge of the walking patterns that are in use in this part of the world. A study painfully started when I realized I was running into too many people.

Observational pattern

For Chinese people, seeing a foreigner is an unusual experience. Now, in most of the cultures I have encountered, people will not stare at you too obviously in order not to make you feel uncomfortable. For the children of the cultural revolution, that is no concern and people will stare at you with a mix of curiosity and distrust.

The following diagram represents that situation. It adopts a bird-eye viewpoint. In blue, the foreigner's path and in red, the Chinese observer's path are represented. The general walking direction is from the bottom of the image until the top. Arrows are added to the path. The arrow's base represents a step, and the arrow's direction represents the way the person is looking.

Your self-appointed watchman will walk backwards to keep an eye on you.

A similar pattern is called the bulldozer: the movements are the same but the timings differ. Instead of being forced to stop, you are pushed away by people ramming into you from the side.

Collision patterns

Take this simple pattern, called the titanic. When an enlightened scion of communism wants to check something out in the distance, what better thing to do that walking and suddenly stopping in the middle of a busy street? Carried by your own speed, you can not stop before it's too late.

The dotted lines represent the intended path, the yellow bang is a collision.

This one is particularly irksome as this situation would be easily avoided by just looking on one's right. That never occurs.

Another common pattern is the backwash. Due to the dynamics of the crowd, people tend to sway when walking, which is an endless source of collisions. Needless to say, when people wobble like this, they are not watching who's coming behind them.

 The last pattern is known as Brownian movement. With this pattern, the flow of people seems to have no specific structure and people bump into you from all sides with no apparent order.

When reaching a critical mass of people, this last pattern starts an uncontrolled chain reaction.

Blocking pattern

With the pattern called the great wall of China, proud Chinese people walk hand in hand towards a bright future, thus leaving no room to overtake. Why should one rush when a better tomorrow is inevitable?

Pedestrian crossings

Cars consider them as advisory.

Conclusion

I do not claim exhaustivity, and in fact it would be tedious for the reader to go through the complete list. Scooters were, for instance, entirely left out of this study. Should the author survive China, more anecdotes are sure to come.