I heard him before I saw him. His loud, booming grunt, which could have also been a bark, had a timbre with such deep vibrations I could have sworn it shook the ground we shared.

My own attention had been focused on making it across the road after the little green man indicated I could begin walking. On a busy mid-afternoon in Beijing, crossing the intersection of Maizidian and Nongzhanguan is not as straightforward as one would imagine. Just the day before, at the same junction, a car had nearly plowed through the pedestrians crossing before me.

I was returning from picking up my daughter at daycare, pushing her along in her stroller. She was blissfully unaware of what was happening, as she had fallen fast asleep to the rhythms of our little neighborhood in the Chinese capital. The weather was actually quite pleasant, a brief respite from the high temperatures that have been hanging around since we arrived.

By this point, just as I could feel his booming voice vibrate along the street, I felt his footfalls. Like the Jolly Green Giant, he was bounding closer and closer.

I looked to my right and slowed, as I saw a compact vehicle turning left and beginning to cross into our path. Our friend, with the bounding gait and booming voice, barked and grunted again. This time something more cognizant left his mouth.

“HEEEEEYYYYYY,” he shouted from the depths of his gullet.

I managed to look up, changing my focus away from my sleeping daughter and the turning car to whomever it was making all this racket.

Before me was a man that can only be described as a Chinese version of The Dude from The Big Lebowski–disheveled hair, a scruffy five-day shadow that probably took a month to grow, a ratty, holey t-shirt, shorts that just as easily could have been boxers, and flip flops that likely doubled as house shoes. I am convinced he had a robe, but that’s likely chalked up to projection.

In his right hand, he had an unlit, but previously used cigar. Its mouth end chewed to bits rendering the whole smoking experience soggy and unappealing. For what it’s worth, he didn’t look like he gave a damn.

With the other hand, he was punctuating his grunts, barking, and ‘heys’ by pointing interchangeably at the driver in the car attempting to cross our paths and the green man indicating the driver needed to wait.

It should be no surprise that Zhe Jiahuo (Zhe Jao-wah), Mandarin for The Dude, was not actually in the crosswalk. Instead, he was shaving a few seconds off his walking commute to wherever by applying one of the oldest mathematical axioms—the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. There was no point in telling him he too was violating the rules of the road. I would have only made things more complicated and taken away from the absurdity of the whole ordeal.

As it would happen, though, the driver, stunned by the randomness of the interaction (as it’s usually the drivers yelling at the pedestrians), slowed and ultimately came to a complete stop allowing everyone to pass as they should. He and his passengers shared a laugh and, after the rest of the pedestrians crossed, went on their merry little way.

ZJ grunted a few more times for good measure, then continued sauntering down the road, shaking his head, not quite over the offense.

By the time I got to the relative safety of the sidewalk, I noticed a handful of rubberneckers had gathered to watch the whole thing go down. They, like me, were stunned but amused by the farce that had just played out in our quiet, but bustling sliver of Beijing.

I am convinced I will cross paths with ZJ once again. His attire that day could only mean that he was local, as no one in that sort of drab, would be far from home. But I am, after all, a foreigner, and my assumptions about how folks behave can be wholly unjustified.

If I am fortunate enough to see this man again, I will, for good measure, stop and try to take a picture. And if that’s not something advisable, I will at least give him a knowing head nod. Because this man will forever be an absolute legend.