Making an emergency dash to my nearest late-opening store (I ran out of drinking water at a particularly inconvenient time) just now, I encountered in the street outside...... a little boy of no more than 4 or 5 years of age on a scooter, and his older sister, perhaps 8 or 9, on roller-blades, both of them practising on these new and strange forms of locomotion in predictably wobbly and weaving fashion. In the middle of the main road. With no apparent adult supervision!
Ah yes, and it's 11pm, people - do these kids have a 'bed time'???
On one level, I do find it kind of charming. China is remarkably SAFE in most ways (the weekend's murderous assault on an a visiting American couple being a mercifully rare aberration), and feeling able to let your kids run around in the streets unsupervised is perhaps the mark of an innocence and a security - and a sense of community - that we have largely lost in the West.
By this time of night, there was very little traffic around; although there were still occasional taxis impatiently patrolling in search of a fare....... and after a couple of heart-stoppingly near misses, the two kids did move from the middle of the road on to the sidewalk.
There were a few other people around, operating their baijiu shop or hairdresser's, or just sitting outside on collapsible stools patting their paunches, but none of them seemed to be paying any attention to these two tiny children. Only I seemed to be alarmed about them. Where on earth were their parents?
It is a strange country, to be sure.
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