And pollution has little hope to improve anytime soon.
Talks are on again to change the ridiculous “Law on Traffic Safety”, in particular article 76.
To put it simple, according to the law whenever a car hits a pedestrian he will be held liable.
What it means: if a pedestrian crosses a highway where he is not allowed to even come and he gets hit by a car, the driver will be considered liable. And pay a huge fine. Happened already in Beijing on the 2nd Ring Road.
So, pedestrians can ignore any traffic light, any rule. Cars are afraid to hit them. So, they do whatever they want.
As Chinese traditionally never obey rules anyway, have no notion of being “courteous” and consider themselves above everything and everybody, chaos in traffic is the result.
Of course, cars also never respect bikes nor pedestrians. Pedestrians crossings are for pure decoration purposes.
The police never intervenes when bikes or pedestrians cross at the wrong time or use the wrong lanes or the side walks. Nor when cars (nearly) drive over people who cross according to the rules.
Talking on the phone when driving should result in a 200 RMB fine. But drivers smoke, chat, slow down to a crawl in the middle of the road and that’s all “normal”. I’ve never seen police stop them.
So, if you wonder why the chaos in Beijing, you know.
And don’t expect any improvement soon.
I have a driver’s license but I refuse to drive myself, don’t want to buy a car and mostly use taxis and subway, or simply walk. Better for the environment, and for my nerves.

On Saturday night we went to the anniversary bash at Centro Bar. Nice and sensual belly dancing and lots of Hoegaarden beer. And some nice live music.
Watching the TV screens on the wall I tried, as usual in vain, to understand this weird game called baseball. Guess I never will. Worse, people seem to like it and watch it for hours.
Funny was to notice all American players chew on gum like hungry animals, often mouth half open. And they spit like hell. Looks all like intensive team work and synchronized.
Silly me thought only Chinese were spitting and eating with their mouth open. We need our Chinese Ms. Manners, Mischke, to go to the USA. Lots of things to do for her.

Not for the faint-hearted. Thanks to “Beijing Today” for this tip, dated 19 October. Beats all the SPAM I get in my mail box. No, I won’t try, thanks. But maybe we can export to the USA if the FDA permits? Hmmm I see money here… Here goes the full text of the article:
Worming up to weight loss craze ‘reckless’
By Gan Tian- Beijing Today
In the latest bid to battle Beijingers’ burgeoning waistlines, netizens at Baidu’s Post Bar have started selling roundworm eggs as a new magic diet pill. Posters claim to have lost 20 kilograms since drinking a bottle of intentionally-tainted water.
“I’ve heard super stars and rich women use them to lose weight,” Luo Rui, a woman entertainer, said. Online rumors have pointed to one formerly-chubby local star’s staggeringly speedy weight loss as being due to roundworm egg abuse. The worms, more specifically Ascariasis, are a parasite spread by ingestion of worm eggs. When the eggs hatch, larvae burrow into the lungs, from whence they are coughed up and swallowed back into the intestinal track.
Inside their new 37-degree home, the worms anchor to the intestinal wall where they feed on partially-digested food and mature to an adult length of 30 centimeters. The sellers said this feeding can help host organisms lose weight.
Beijing Youth Daily reported that a Shandong man surnamed Guo has been selling the eggs, and many netizens have posted messages naming him as their source. Guo said he raises all the eggs on his own.
“A woman in Guangdong paid me more than 600 yuan for the eggs,” he said. In Guo’s package to the customer, there was a bottle of liquid, which Guo claimed contained the roundworm eggs. He asked customer to take the liquid with water five times, and then the liquid would take effect.
A netizen named Crymax said he gets five customers a day calling for information on roundworm eggs. “Usually I can make 200 yuan on each sale. It is safe to drink the eggs, because human bodies know what is useful and what is harmful. If the roundworms were useless or harmful, the body would just kill them and dump them out,” he said.However, Liang Benyuan, a worker at The Third Hospital of Beijing University, said ingesting the eggs, even intentionally, is dangerous. “Roundworms are harmful to human bodies, and sometimes, their larvae will burrow into blood vessels and travel into the brain. This is an incredibly reckless way to try to lose weight,” he said. Currently, China does not have any laws regulating the sale of roundworm eggs for this purpose, he said.