DAS FORUM IST UMGEZOGEN

Everyone in China rides bicylces. Private cars are virtually unheard of, so the traffic in Shanghai consists of trolley-buses, taxis, vans, trucks and tidal waves of bicycles.
The first time you stand at a major intersection and watch, you are convinced to witness major carnage. Crowds of bicycles are converging on the intersection from all directions. Trucks and trolley-buses are already barrelling across it. Everyone is ringing a bell or sounding a horn and no one is showing any signs of stopping. At the moment of inevitable impact you close your eyes and wait for the horrendous crunch of mangled metal but, oddly, it never comes.
It seems impossible. You open your eyes. Several dozen bicycles and trucks have all passed straight through each other as if they were meerely beams of light.
Next time you keep your eyes open and try to see how the trick's done; but however closely you watch you can't untangle the dacing, weaving patterns the bikes make as they seem to pass insubstantially through each other, all ringing their bells.
In the western world, to ring a bell or sound a horn is usually an aggressive thing to do. It carries a warning or an instruction: 'Get out of the way', 'Get a move on', or 'What the hell kind of idiot are you anyway?' If you hear a lot of horns blowing in a New York street you know that people are in a dangerous mood.
In China, you gradually realise, the sound means something else entirely. It doesn't mean 'Get out of my way, asshole', it just means a cheerful 'Here I am'. Or rather it means, 'Here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am...', because it is continous.
[...]
"The other thing that's extraordinary about cyclists is their inner peace."
"What?"
"Well, I don't know what else it can be. It's the extraordinary, easy unconcern with which a cyclist will set off directly across the path of an oncoming bus. They just miss a collision which, let's face it, would not harm the bus very much, and though they only miss by about nine millimetres the cyclist doesn't appear even to notice."
"What is there to notice? The bus missed him."
"But only just."
"But it missed him. That's the point. I think we get alarmed by close scrapes because they're an invasion of space as much as anything else. The Chinese don't worry about privacy or personal space. They probably think we're neurotic about it."