The first rule I taught my children when we moved to China was that green doesn’t mean “go”. Don’t walk when the green man says walk, and don’t stop when the red one says halt. I think we all found it wonderfully liberating.

China has its own rules — and they are not the ones I learnt in kindergarten. In fact, after seven years as a pedestrian and several forays as a driver, I have not yet figured out exactly what they are — but they seem to work. So you are better off making your own deal with the oncoming traffic (or any of the other challenges of living and working in China) than expecting “stop, look and listen” to apply. China has 5,000 years of history and that means 5,000 years of knowing instinctively that pedestrians have no right of way. That green man may look just like the guy in London or Los Angeles, but he is not the same. He has been localised.

So I tell my kids what I would tell anyone coming to do business in China: don’t expect rules to protect you, but don’t worry that they will thwart you either. And read Tim Clissold, the British businessman whose book Mr China: A Memoir (2004) is probably the best I have ever come across about China. Now he has written another: Chinese Rules: Mao’s Dog, Deng’s Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China ; it’s about what makes China tick — for foreigners who can clearly hear it ticking but can’t quite figure out why.