The Chinese are a nation of sidewalk merchants:

At every meal time, 30 some peddlars come to the campus gates; they drag their carts, complete with griddles or gas rings for woks, behind their bikes. There are meat on a stick vendors, create your own fried rice carts (you point at the fillings you like, they make it there), a huge thin pancake of some sort that they wrap various fillings in-- sort of a Chinese sandwich--dumplings, and many, many more things. I don't have an image of this yet (imagine the midway of the state fair, with less fried twinkies), but here's a shot of the aftermath:

That's  a big pile of egg shells, left over from the fried rice vendors. They pretty much toss everything behind them--egg shells, lettuce and boc cai leaves, plastic bags and then leave them. The first time I walked to campus I thought that there had been some epic egg fight, but then I figured out the score. Everyone drops everything on the street, though interestingly, this doesn't seem to be the case on campus. Between that and the spitting and nose-blowing, thre's a really good reason the Chinese believe wearing your shoes in the house is filthy.

As soon as lunch is over, all the bicycle guys dissappear until 4 or so. Our veggie guys also take a siesta (or the Chinese equivalent), but they don't pedal away-- they just lower the umbrellas and wander off

 Obviously, there's not a  lot of crime in China-- no one worries about leaving things unattended. What's funny is that lots of the kids do have bike locks, usually the cable kind rather than the sturdy ones, but they'll leave their bikes leaning against the bike rack and just loop the cables through a spoke of the back wheel.

Two more images:

 First, the way all the balconies look-- no one has dryers, so you see hanging clothes everywhere--I even saw a fruit and veg stall that had a rack of clothes drying next to it and finally some pretty flowers growing along the side of the road.