Evolution of Sidewalks

Nowadays, usually you don't notice immediately that China used to be an autarkic or self-sustaining country. At least that was the initial plan under the Mao era and probably a big concept long before. So what does this mean? It does not have to implicate that everything is the same, or more exact, that there exists only one representative object in each category you could think of, the ideal. For instance, there was only one type of clothing, the Zhong Shan suit. Everyone had to wear it, even the woman, no under-flowers peaking out of the over-gray allowed. Then there was only one concept of harvesting or manufacturing, it had to work everywhere in China no matter what soils or climates or attitudes there might be regionally, it had to be grain or iron in accordance with the unfailing central plan of the authorities. Today China is more modern. However, quite a few things have not changed. One such steady rock in the waters of change is the construction of sidewalks across mainland China.

The level of disrespect the design of sidewalks shows to any kind of evolutionary force of practicability is marvelous, given that surely more than hundreds of millions of people walking on Chinese sidewalks day by day.  Or maybe this is the crucial point: do Chinese actually walk that much on the sidewalks, or do they actually prefer to walk on the road despite that the car traffic is "bu anquan" (not secure)? In fact, the latter is the case as you will observe instantly when visiting China. Now, why is that?

Well, one probably does not want to fall into the 20cm deep quadratic basin surrounding the small trees planted in regular intervals of about 10 meters and usually cover about two thirds of the width of the sidewalk. Uninformed might think that the remaining stretch of one third of the width might actually be wide enough to pass by the trees and the sidewalk might thus be still usable to the average person, but they are mistaken. They are not aware that the other one third is guaranteed to be plastered with these notoriously uncomfortable protruding markings for the blinds. I do not have anything against this circumspect intention to ease the navigation for people with impaired sight. It is only that it would be outrageously dangerous for a blind person to rely on the continuity of these markings, and, probably as a consequence, are neither used by the blinds. Others are not happy about the uneven footing either and thus it is no wonder that sidewalks are rarely used at all.  However, judging from the amount of cars parking on the unused sidewalks, I maybe was wrong about their resistance to evolution. Becoming parking lot might be the fate of Chinese sidewalks. That indeed would make them better adapted to  the Chinese future.