Yu Pien Chou!

Chinese traffic is a cacophonous confusion. Rickshas, passenger wheelbarrows, pedestrians with bound feet, pigs, dogs, chickens, ducks, sedan chairs, porters shouldering loads on swaying bamboo poles, buffalo and pony carts, busses, trucks, automobiles, jeeps move, when they succeed in moving at all, to the left in China's streets. Last week the Chinese press undertook to get all this confusion moving to the right.

Tradition was invoked. Said Hsin Ming Wan Pao: In the old days when sedan chairs met on a path, the coolies shouted: "Yu pien chou!--Keep to the right!" In Manchu days, Shih Chieh Jih Pao noted, all officials entered the Imperial court on the right-hand side. Said the official Chung Yang Jih Pao: "Keeping to the left is not our ancient system. ... In the old Chinese dictionary . . . right meant high, good, strength. . . . The right occupation is the high occupation, the right party is the government party. Left means inconvenience, unrighteousness, debasement; the left way means the evil way, to be left toward each other means to be contradictory. Our ancestors believed the right side was the proper side, therefore changing traffic to the right would mean gaining face for our ancestors."

In a more practical vein, the Chung Yang Jih Pao added that nine out of ten U.S. cars brought to China will be left there after the war, and all these cars are built for right-hand driving.

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