Calm within the storm

Sprezzatura, a kind of "studied nonchalance," was described in the 16th century by Castiglione as the unique way that courtiers--gentlemen--go about life with a kind of ease that conceals the difficulty of things. I've written before about this kind of nonchalance and how it seems in harmony with the "unflappable" way that many Chinese folks appear to go about their day. But sprezzatura is supposed to denote the easy way people go about difficult tasks. People here, instead, seem to have an easy way they go about encountering near death experiences by car, bicycle, subway, or bus like 15 times every day. Instead of sprezzatura, perhaps the best way of relating this is more as a "calm within the storm." In the incredible hustle and bustle, noise and frenzy of everyday Beijing, there is a kind of serenity and practiced deliberateness that characterizes the local approach. It could be that everyone is just in shock. Or it could be that thousands of years of a deliberately-paced existence is not so soon cast off with migration into the city.