Advertisement
Published: October 13th 2012
Last week during Mid-Autumn Festival (into which National Day is embedded), my evolving-into-friend student, Rex, invited me to accompany him to nearby Jing Mountain. I jumped at the chance to leave the city-scape for a day, and he collected me in his tiny van at 7am. (Rex is from Hangzhou, but lives on campus, and doesn't like to bring his car to school because his fellow students will think he's rich.) Now, I don't know whether the Chinese drive so precariously because of the traffic conditions, or whether conditions are so precarious because of the way the Chinese drive. Well, chicken or egg, it's a damned scary bit of business being a foreign passenger. Think Manhattan...or San Francisco...where the runing joke is that drivers pull into parking spaces regardless of need just to see what it feels like to secure one. Now picture that urge on steroids, and the parking spot is instead any 5 yards of road without a car moving in it. Next, equate pulling over with gunning the gas, and you'll get the idea. And no matter how many lanes are painted (if any) on a given road, the number of cars abreast in them is double that, which just may explain why I saw more traffic cameras suspended above them than there were lanes on several occasions.
I determined not to test Rex's ability to multitask by not expecting him to speak English AND drive, so we kept companionable silence. He was obviously grateful. The white-knuckle part up the mountain came next, with trucks, cars and motorcycles vying for occupation of either of the two lanes, regularly swerving into the oncoming lane just as it became a blind curve whose safety railing had been lain waste. Granted this was accompanied by much laying on of horn, but almost always as an afterthought. Time after time, to my inestimable relief, no one was hurt nor driven off the mountainside. Not today, anyway. At least not here. Elsewhere, all over China, accidents are commonplace and injuries frequent, hardly surprising when traffic signals are merely suggestions and forward momentum of pedestrian, cyclist or car is awarded to the first-responder. When there are accidents, I understand that they are frequently settled on the spot without third-party intervention. Police and lawyers just complicate things. True.
Did I mention that I own a bike? Bought second-hand from a previous teacher before I left the States. Want to hazard a guess as to whether or not I've taken it for a road-test yet?
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 8; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0284s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Rex & the Bike
So glad that you have met Rex, he is an amazing student and I really enjoyed him last semester. I hope you have taken the bike out for a spin at least down to Century Mart for groceries or just our for some exercise/relaxation. I am really enjoying reading your blogs as some days I really miss China and others not so much. Keep smiling and enjoying the adventure!