Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Transportation Woes

First off, I'm about to post for the second time in a week, which I think is officially the high water mark of this blog. Maybe I can start writing short, somewhat focused entries so I post more often, though the odds of that happening are very low. I'm going to continue the transportation theme so it allows for quicker posts for now since I still haven't written that paper I mentioned in the last post.
Anyways, drivers in China are fucking insane; getting into any type of motor transportation involves risking death (by the way, I just want to point out that semi-colon, I'm guessing in no other blog will you see semi-colons, this just affirms the quality of my posts, yet I digress again...). One specific time riding in a cab during rush hour (note: rush hour in Beijing during weekdays is from 8-8. If you want to get anywhere and plan on using street transportation, budget for extra time or you will be significantly late), the road was crowded, yet our cabby decided that every possible opening in the road presented a challenge/opportunity. In a 30 minute cab ride, I'm fairly certain we didn't stay in asingle lane for more than 30 seconds. And this wasn't smooth transition, directional signal lane changes. Instead they were swerve at full speed into the next lane in an attempt to hit every other car on the road. I'm fairly convinced driving in Beijing is just one giant game on chicken and they've decided not to tell foreigners just so we shit ourselves. At one point, we swerved across all four lanes on the road, normally dangerous on a clear highway, LET ALONE DURING RUSH HOUR. I almost had a heart attack. And that isn't even the closest I came to dying in China.
While crossing streets is a whole new post, I'll share one story about the insanity of drivers. One time Alex and I were walking to McDonald's (because at one point in China I was eating there at least 5x a week. Real healthy, I know), and were stopped at an intersection, at the corner, waiting for the light to turn so we could walk (after being in China, I'm now a pro at crossing streets. Nothing in America scares me anymore. I should have been hit by cars many times, even getting pulled off the street at several points because I wasn't paying attention. Lesson being, always look two ways). We weren't directly at the corner, but several feet back because there were two girls in front of us at the curb. Directly behind us was a giant clothing mall where you can bargain for cheap wares, and they got shipments several times a day or stolen/counterfeit goods. Anyway, a truck goes through the intersection, comes up to the corner where these two girls are standing and just holds down the horn and creeps up on them. And this wasn't just a beep. I mean he literally held down the fucking horn for 30 seconds until he got their attention, creeping up the whole time until he practically ran them over. Finally they realize, he wants to drive on the fucking sidewalk to get to the market. So the whole sidewalk has to clear the way so this douche can drive in a pedestrian area. When he drives by, no dui bu qi ("sorry") no acknowledgement or wave. Just speeds by like we're the assholes. So yea, be thankful that people don't drive on the sidewalks in America.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Procrastinating

OK so first off, I realize the baseball playoffs were supposed to spur to write once a week on here. You can see how well that turned out. Anyways, for posterity's sake, I was going to pick the Sox to beat the Rockies the in 5. Now I realize you may not believe me, but if I was going to cheat on the pick, why wouldn't I make it perfect? I thought the Rockies would pull one out in Denver, but they sucked that bad, o well...
Anyways, I may as well write another China post instead of writing an essay so I'm going to write about transportation in on the mainland. Now, there are many types of transportation in China. In my 6 months there, I rode in taxis, subways, trains, city buses, sleeper buses, a tugboatish thing (one of the scariest experiences of my life. We were in Shanghai crossing the Bund so we could go look at the other side of the city and we decided, instead of a second trip down the Psychadelic Tunnel [don't ask...] we would take a boat. Well, the only ferry boat was a rickety old tugboat that looked like it could barely cross the river. Of course we hopped right on. Anyway, aside from the unseaworthiness (is that even a word?) of the vessel, there was also the issue of all the crazy Chinese people on motorbikes also on the boat. We were a group of 7 [I think] and were walking so we boarded first and just walked to the other end of the boat since the passenger "deck" was just an empty area on the lowest level of the boat. So we were standing in front of the gate when suddenly a giant roar erupts behind us and it's the sound of about 200 high polluting motorbikes speeding onto the boat. Now, if you've read previous posts, you know Chinese people don't enjoy waiting in line. So you can imagine that chaos behind us as all the people had to speed onto the boat so they could be first in line to disembark. Some of the smarter people in our group scurried off the to side of the deck to escape the madness. It was the smart thing to do. Obviously, I stayed where I was. So after the loading process ends and we start crossing the river, those of us who didn't move realized we were in the middle of the deck, surrounded by motorbikes who obviously would not think twice about running over some idiot Americans who stood in their way of getting off the boat .5 seconds sooner. Essentially, we were fucked. So we reach the other side and no sooner is the platform set up then all the motorbikes start up at once and a shitstorm ensues. We legitimately didn't move for a solid minute because if we had, we would have been run over. To make matters worse, the retards behind us WHO SAW THAT WE WERE THERE THE WHOLE TIME were honking at us because we wouldn't get out of their way, even though there was nowhere to fucking go. So anyway, finally the anarchy died down and we were thoroughly laughed at by our smarter companions. The lesson: Chinese people are an impatient lot). I just realized this post was supposed to be about the perils of taxis, but I just went off on a wicked long tangent, so we'll call it a day here and I'll post again soon.