Living in China for a long time de-sensitizes you to the differences in traffic practices that you noticed when you first arrived.
Sometimes it takes the frightened screaming of your visiting aunt to remind you that Americans only sparingly venture into the oncoming lane of traffic, and when doing so, return to their lane immediately after passing. In China drivers cross the center lane casually, nonchalantly, seemingly without imperative to yield when approached by an oncoming car. Sometimes passing cars just brake, move slightly to their right, and challenge the driver with the right of way to squeeze around them.
I remember being in a taxi on a congested lane, during one such game of low-speed chicken. As we slowed to a stop in the wrong lane of traffic, I remember my surprise that the other driver, who squeezed around to our left, didn’t even honk as he passed us. I was amazed that our brazen behavior was not even deemed a honk-worthy violation. I imagine the logic behind this aggressive approach to urban driving as akin to the doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that was practiced by the US and the Soviet Union during the cold war. If both parties appreciate the fact that their lives are in the hands of the other, they have a clear incentive to work it out, to yield.
I suspect that the chance that driving in the wrong lane of traffic will result in a head-on collision is even higher in the US than China, because oncoming drivers might choose not to yield on principle.