Day 6 - Party Animals
Today was our last full day in Beijing; tomorrow morning we catch a train for Tianjin. Today we visited two more places in Beijing, the first was Peking University, and the second was the Beijing zoo. I thought because of China’s one child law that there wouldn’t be that many children running around, I was wrong. There are children everywhere, especially at the zoo. The children are running all over the place, bumping into you and their parents have little control. They are usually just smiling as they chase after their kid who is yelling while they run through crowds of hundreds of people. Along these same lines is children safety in China. Kids are on the back of motorcycles weaving through heavy traffic during rush hour wearing no helmets and are not even strapped in. I have also seen a few cases where children are on their parents’ laps in cars while driving. At the zoo where it is very crowded American parents will be very strict on how far their child can wander or go, in China the kids were running all over the place. There really aren’t any strollers, the kids are typically being carried by a parent or are walking. Today we were at the elephant exhibit and a little boy climbed under the first of only 2 fences and was just running around in front of the elephants while the father just stayed on the other side of the fence kind of paying attention. In America if a child snuck under a fence and got close to an elephant parents and even bystanders would have sprung into action trying to save the child. One reason for the lack of safety in China is that they have a naturally take lower levels of risk. Americans love taking chances and risk whereas the Chinese are more comfortable playing it safe. One other factor contributing to the lower level of safety precautions is that the concept of suing someone isn’t as prevalent as it is in the US. Many laws and rules in America are set in place to protect companies and individuals from getting sued later on.