China Revisited -- 2013 [#11]

NASCAR, China Style: Always an Adventure

4 January 2013 . Scheduled to go to cultural center [Splendid China] in Shenzhen. Breakfast of noodle soup and vegetable dumplings.

Language note: man man che (tsi?) "Excuse me. Take your time." Cantonese (?) [Man, man is easy enough, but tongue placement for the last part is impossible for the western tongue.]



9 o'clock -- No Edward

Subject note:  Remember to write about driving, traffic, the hair-raising adventure rides, the Chinese version of the intersection standoff.

Drove into Shenzhen.  Stuck in traffic jam.  Edward called Candy [Chinese home-stay daughter from several years ago] to arrange meeting -- dinner, it turns out. She sounds good. Will be nice to see her.

Edward left us in their in-town apartment while he met friends.  Will take us to lunch and cultural center when he gets back. While he is gone, while we wait, I shall write about what, by any estimation, has been a really big adventure.

Our experience w/ Chinese roads -- ah, yes.

First, everyone shares the roads from pedestrians to bicycles to scooters to cars of all sorts to trucks to huge trucks to farm equipment [of many sorts] to three wheeled taxi-truck things. That's for starters.











Then there are road hazards of all sorts -- piles of sand or gravel for road work, pot holes and gaps in pavement (nearly always concrete), produce laid out to dry on half the road in farming communities

(so, anything that drying preserves -- greens of all kinds and descriptions, peanuts (with chicken, above), sliced yellow carrots, etc.), parked vehicles (cars, scooters, trucks, farm wagons), old people shuffling along, kids (meaning even small children) walking or running or playing along the edges, lack of shoulder either due to open shops along the way or to a drop-off from the road surface --



common in agricultural areas, sometimes people repairing the road while traffic swept around them, occasionally as well ducks-chickens-dogs and in one village horses, cows.

No doubt there were other impediments that are lost at the moment and will reappear when the dust settles.

Now the traffic itself.

It seems to us that everyone drives fast, aggressively; nevertheless, there appears to be a certain protocol drivers and pedestrians seem to follow. On, let's say, a two lane road one stays generally to the right hand side and travels as fast as the vehicle allows and necessity demands.  When you come up behind  something slower, you simply zip around, usually with a hefty toot of your horn.

If there is a vehicle coming, you zip around anyway if the approaching vehicle is your size or smaller.  Pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, and most farm vehicles get tooted aggressively -- and usually they move right to let you pass.  [But not always.] Big trucks, buses, or road obstacles (like piles of sand, of course) require that you hold back from passing unless you can force the thing (whatever it is) in front of you to move over quickly. We have been passing in situations where we made a lane in the middle so we passed three across on a two lane road -- or we passed close by scooters or pedestrians or workers at fairly high speeds while on-coming cars passed on the other side without slowing, moving to the outside of their lane just in time.

If brakes were needed -- or more accurately, when brakes are needed -- they were never applied a second earlier than absolutely necessary. [Urgency appears to be the single operative in driving Chinese style.] Passing on corners at high speeds or on hills is common, ordinary. On the night we went to the hot-springs motel [a subject in itself] a bus followed us for miles at close range, blasting its horn.  Edward did not move right [He was not going to be intimidated] so apparently there was a battle of wills going on over right-of-way and over who-would-lead.  Finally, the bus shot around us and several other cars on a series of corners, filling the other lane.  I was glad to have it ahead of us, whatever it may have cost us in terms of face, than behind us dogging our heels.  In the next town it had stopped to let off passangers and we retook the lead.

On another occasion, in Lehu, vehicles came together at a T intersection.





Edward was nose to nose with a smaller, older car with a family in it. Edward somehow signaled to the other driver to back up about 100 feet to the other side of a little bridge and then turn off on the side street.  This required the car behind the other driver to back up as well.

Meantime, a car heading into the T was bumper to door panel with Edward's car while bicycles and scooters [often with two or more passengers] pushed around and among the cars, timing their moves to the little maneuverings of the cars engaged in the standoff.  As the car in front of him backed up, Edward stayed close to his front bumper so as to keep both his spot and his advantage.

Through all of this Donna kept saying, "He's going to hit us!"

Sensitive as ever, I replied, "Close your eyes." There is no man man tsi for traffic.