Depending upon the time of day and route, just being a pedestrian in Mong Kok can be the amusement park ride for which you didn't sign up. There is a pace to walking in Mong Kok—not fast, not slow—but tidal. It surges, and somehow in the middle of that human tidal wave, everyone believes they are the only one moving with purpose. It can feel like a war zone with no front line. Putting this rant in perspective, I love Mong Kok and the energy.

My personal goal is to move quickly but to never make others accommodate my mission. I try to avoid the oncoming and nearly-parallel traffic while hoping to secure a logistical landing for my other foot. When it's shoulder-to-shoulder, there's no seeing the undulating pavers and oddly-shaped segments of protruding cement slabs that are real a danger to my stability. Sidewalks aren't Indy 500 friendly—they have the surface uniformity of earthquake aftermath. The moon looks smoother.

The speeds are variable, but in the end, it's a mosh pit. A tsunami would be easier to stroll through. Slow walkers are like stalled cars in the fast lane—hell, they're all fast lanes. Lanes? There are no lanes—people wander from one side to the other, totally in their own world. Pedestrian etiquette in Mong Kok just doesn't exist.

Then there's the Drifters; the people that just can't, or won't, walk a linear path. You can see the world they're living in isn't this one. Sometimes the trajectory is like they've got a flat tire, and other times they might actually have an eventual destination "over there." Maybe they're just thinking far ahead, and that 6º navigational adjustment is part of a very long term, tactical plan.

You see them drift, like the icing on a picnic cake sliding in the summer heat. Accommodating means you're doing the same and traffic buckles. Just pick a damn lane.

A thousand private trajectories at every speed imaginable, somehow all intersecting in front of you. And the phones. Are they texting Xi something so urgent they can’t look up? No. It’s RedBook, or a game more important than seeing where they’re going. The trifecta of environmental preoccupation: the zombie walker, eyes on a screen, noise‑canceling headset, skewer of food.

It's a dance no one choreographed. For some, it's a hand-in-hand walk with your girl or pushing grandma in her wheelchair, but for others, it's the pace you walk frantically trying to find a toilet after bad street food. Both have been me.

If they're all walking, that is. Aside from the understandable delivery cart or refuse wagon ahead causing the jam, there’s the spatially oblivious pedestrian who might just stop moving. There's no warning, no pulling over. There’s no eye contact. No nod. No micro‑apology. Just sidewalk narcissists—relentless and indifferent.

People don’t pass you; they cut in front of you with the quiet confidence of someone merging onto a highway without signaling. They don’t brush your shoulder; they run into you as if your existence was a late addition to the scene. Maybe because I'm the size of a door, they think I'm an open passage—my black t-shirt looking like a tunnel the Roadrunner painted on the side of a mountain for Wyle Coyote.

Few things are as satisfying as the sound of the phone hitting the cement after holding your ground.

You have a choice; become a turnstile or a brick wall, and sometimes there's a stand that has to be made. After sufficient quantities of incessant pedestrian rudeness, I might transform into the Hulk. Please, slam into me—I'll be the immovable object of defensive linemen. I'll be the windshield and you'll be the bug.

Maybe this whole diatribe is about cutting. People don't even need a to space cut in front—they make one. Ten centimeters is an opening. Slow half a step—perhaps to let someone pass—and instantly a body slides into the space you just occupied. Not maliciously—just matter-of-factly. Space is a vacuum, and vacuums are filled.

It's a time-space continuum where an opening didn't exist seconds ago and some physics major knows just where the black hole will form. Maybe they calculate, but probably they just don't care—nothing matters when the logic is based on bumper car theory.

Courtesy, when it appears, feels almost surreal. It's a revolutionary act when someone actually tries to uphold the social experiment of cohabitation.

Okay, it is a dense environment. There’s no hostility, just urgency. Everyone moving as if the next pedestrian light, the next door, the next opportunity will evaporate if they lose half a second.

After living and doing business in Beijing, I came away with the understanding that businessmen just want to sneak a bonus. Not maliciously, as it's just business. It's sort of an obligation, deeply rooted after only a couple of decades of modern capitalism. Nothing personal, they just have to get one over on you. Maybe this is the "must get ahead" mentality manifested in Hong Kong.

At least in Hong Kong, bus queues are orderly. Beijing doesn't have the foot traffic, but their shame should be, if they judged themselves, in their bus and subway queues—elderly and children are regularly pushed aside by young bucks. So, hurray for Hong Kong.

If you can navigate these sidewalks at rush hour without colliding, conceding, or cursing, you’ve earned something—the quiet satisfaction of being the one person who plays the game within the rules of civil engagement. Be in the Dao.