Cars.
Driving in China is a dangerous endeavor. The life behind an automobile in Shanghai is entirely different from that of one in the U.S. or Europe. After being driven around the city for the last three weeks, I have come to appreciate the irony of the Chinese drivers. Politeness is out of the question. Defensive driving rules the day. Using Chinese idioms, one has to look in four directions, and listens in eight more. One reads into every slight deviation by his neighbors. Ones has to tailgate in China. One becomes suspicious when the adjacent car in the next lane does not tailgate. The chances are the car is looking to change lanes, and it inevitably does. Ultimately I have come to the realization that people in China drive their cars like they ride their bikes. Bicycles are nimble and harmless. The chances are every driver in China have ridden bicycles for the majority of their lives before they ever stepped behind a steering wheel. There is no lane change signals in biking. No lane period. Every crack is daylight to freedom. The damages done by an accident on a bike can be remedied by a quick apology. somehow that mentality has been transferred to the auto culture in China.Yet the Chinese love their cars. The internet is full of stories of Chinese jumping into their cars, SUVs, or vans, racing toward the western frontier. Journeys to the West. They thirst for wild open space, for adventures, for an authentic experience of becoming singular with the sky, the land and one's own destiny. Much like the Wild West of the U.S, there are so much of China yet to be explored and experienced. Perhaps all of us hunger for a place to call our own, where 1.3 billion is but a number, and one's life path is not limited by the concrete jungle of steel highrises and narrow highways.
posted by hedgehog @ 9:02 AM
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