Rules of the Road

My husband and I have a running joke that China has only 2 "rules of the road" : (ahem) ' I think I can make it!' (as in: " I think I can zip over three lanes and manuever my way into the thee feet between the red car and the giant moving bus") and "There are no other cars . . " (or bikes). So, in a nutshell, that is how people drive here. I think if they visited America, the drivers would be confused at our willingness to just sit there in traffic. Why should we let two little yellow lines stop us from going into the other lane? If it's clear, it's obviously a passing lane! We've seen taxis here have to drive backwards on a bridge, because they tried to pass in the other lane, and there were actually cars coming from the other direction (I always get nervous in one of those impatient taxis).
So anyway, my story begins when we tried to take a taxi to a nearby Indian restaurant. Trying to take a 'shortcut' our taxi driver headed down an increasingly narrow road . .. . during this time, he began to yell irately into his cell phone (no hands-free rule here). After a few turns, the road became more of an alley, in a poor neighborhood. Cars were parked on the side, which meant there was only roon for one car at a time on the road. Undaunted, our driver sped ahead, yelling into the phone and dodging cars here and there. And then there came a point in the narrow alley where he came face to face with a truck, and neither of the two vehicles had room to squeeze by. So what is the most logical thing to do in this situation? Well, the drivers decided to just sit there. Our driver turned off the engine! He continued bellowing into his cell (probably complaining about the truck), seemingly unconcerned about his paying passengers. The truck driver sat there, willing to wait it out. Once I saw him examining his fingernails. Neither said a word to each other. This might have lasted for quite a while, had we not become anxious and asked the driver whether we were going or not? Our prompt seemed to remind the driver of his job, as he put the window down and directed his yelling at the truck driver, who in turn flew into a sudden rage. For several minutes, they each yelled at the other to move, blaming each other for the impass. Things reached quite a volume. Finally, the truck driver grumbled, backed up and let us pass. And so now we know another rule of driving in China; he who yells the loudest, wins!