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Published: November 10th 2010
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In between teaching classes, the Impossibly Adorable Roommates (IARs) and I often travel to the nearby public schools to hand out fliers touting our private English school. We try to time our arrival around lunchtime. We wait outside the gates (alongside the students' parents) until the students come out for lunch. The parents then give their kids a ride home for lunch, but before they do, we hand them a flier. We give them a coupon for a free "demo" class and, in exchange, they get to see the overly large American in person.
Like any public school everywhere, the front of the schoolyard was not designed for the fleets of vehicles arriving to pick up the kids, and once the parking area fills up the street
becomes the parking area. Double parking is only the half of it; triple parking is the norm. Before, the street would only be cluttered with parents and bicycles, today's modern Chinese parent often has a shiny, new car. Think soccer Moms and SUVs. Same here. And this is only the beginning: the middle class is emerging even in the backwater towns such as Weishan.
Meanwhile, the cars are triple parked on the
road outside the school. This road is not on a side street; it is a quite serious road. It is used by trucks, coal trucks mainly, as this is coal country. Coal powers the electric plants. Coal is king in China, and the burning of coal, in my admittedly worthless opinion, is probably a major contributor to climate change and is definitely a major contributor to pollution here.
Of the 30 most polluted cities in the world, 20 of those are in China. I have seen blue skies only twice since I arrived here over a month ago. The rest of the time, I see smog. I can't see much smog though; the visibility is less than a mile, due to smog. The smog problem has not gone unnoticed by the Central Planners in Central Planningville. In the really smoggy cities, gasoline-powered motor scooters are banned in an effort to cut down on pollution. Instead of gasoline-powered motor scooters, people ride
electric motor scooters.
One of the first things that arriving foreign teachers remark upon are the plethora of electric motor scooters.
If I were to guess, I would say that about half of the two-wheeled vehicles that I see around town are electrically powered. Most look sort of like commuter
bicycles (such as the ones pictured above), but many look just like regular motor scooters. Think
Vespa. When they are parked, I can determine if they're electric or gasoline-powered by looking underneath to see if there is an exhaust pipe; electric scooters don't have one. When the electric scooters go by, they are remarkable for their sound: None, they're silent.
These electric scooters are not viewed as toys. They are seen as serious transportation around town. Adults ride them in business casual to work. Men in dark blue suits with their briefcases ride them. Children do not ride them: they must still suffer the humiliating indignity of riding regular bicycles. The scooters are powered by (an easily removable) battery. At the end of the day, one simply takes the battery upstairs to their apartment and charges it in a normal electrical socket (if you count 240 v. as "normal"). An overnight charge is enough to run it all day. I have never seen a scooter on the side of the road out of juice. New models range from ~$250 to $600.
Those that need to make a living often need to haul around stuff. There are three-wheeled electric models with "pickup" beds and/or with bench seats. They haul loads of heavy stuff just fine. I fancy one for Maggie and me.
Most of the Taxi drivers in this town use green-painted subcompacts (that are about the size of a Kia Sephia). The "flag drop" is four
yuen, or about 60 cents, and is usually enough for trips around town. I usually take one to work in the mornings. My co-workers, the IARs, are quite tight-fisted and so they wait until one of the bright, red, electric "cars" comes along. They are piloted by stern, middle-aged women. These red carts don't have a meter. Their "flag drop" is usually two
yuen (30 cents) unless you are a overly large American, in which case it is however much they can get away with. These vehicles are comparable to an enclosed golf cart, have a city hackney license number spray-painted on the back and are battery powered. Their acceleration could be described as "leisurely". Essentially, these women make their living hauling around passengers on short jaunts in electric vehicles (MSRP US$2000) that cost just pennies a day to power.
Why we in the USA have not embraced electric-powered vehicles is beyond me. I'll bet that the answer has something to do with coal.
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Ed Ward
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Coal?
Guess again, O OLA!