China/Hong Kong I: Energy

(Note: I have just returned from a three week visit to China and Hong Kong and will reflect on some of my experiences and impressions in a series of blogs of which this is No. 1)

Energy; I felt it as soon as I got off the long flight. People moved quickly through the airport. The persons waiting in line with their signs to welcome newcomers jostled each other to get closer to the exiting passengers. On the drive from the Beijing airport to our hotel I got the first experience of traffic in China today. Gone are the millions of bicycles or even the ox carts, or pedicabs of earlier visits. Now it is all cars and trucks by the millions in traffic that seems incredibly chaotic to an American (And I am accustomed to New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles). Lanes mean nothing. Cutting in front of other drivers is the only way to make progress. Shifting of lanes is constant, exiting from a right exit by crossing across four lanes. Drivers kept their cool, accidents were no more common than in other countries. It was just millions of Chinese determined to get to their destination as quickly as possible.

Pedestrians have no roadway rights. It was explained to me this way, “There are billions of people in China. If pedestrians ever had the right of way, vehicular traffic would be in permanent stop. This is the only way traffic could ever move.” And I was also told that as a pedestrian I must keep walking forward, if stopped, then halt momentarily, but by no means should I ever take a step back. “If you ever take a step back as a pedestrian you will just confuse everyone in China. Don’t do it. Keep your face forward and when there is a three foot space in front of an approaching car move into it.”

This urge to move finds another way of expressing itself in elevators. As soon as a person enters an elevator the “Close door” button is pushed. If another person enters before the elevator starts up, that person, too, immediately presses the “close door” button. When I was a bit slow in inserting my hotel key into the special slot before pushing my floor number I felt the impatience of my fellow passengers. The message is: Hurry, Hurry, Hurry!

This hectic pace is reflected in an unprecedented flurry of construction. China has paved more miles of highways in the last few years than the rest of the world combined. The typical way of dealing with a mountain is to tunnel through it. Wide expanses like the ocean between the city of Qingdao and outlying islands are simply spanned by the world’s largest (by far) sea bridge. Bullet trains are what the people expect everywhere, not just in Shanghai. For years the joke has been that the national bird of China is the crane. Huge construction cranes dot the landscape of every large city in China. In Xian alone I saw thousands as far as the eye could see. Massive construction sites of apartment units utilize a separate crane for each structure.

The old wedding walk in which the male friends of the groom accompanied him by foot to get his bride from her home was a centuries old custom. Now this is replaced by car caravans, often including autos especially rented for the occasion. In the long fast driving procession the cars get into a row and speed down the freeway. Their intention is clearly identified because they are decorated with wedding flowers, ribbons and specially designed license plates that have cartoon style depictions of the bride and groom. In some cases they even have a police car escorting the pack, hurrying them on their way at 75 miles an hour..

Thanks to the growing economic power of the masses, Chinese can now become tourists to the amazingly varied and plentiful tourist suites in this remarkable country. So new hotels, restaurants, tour buses, tour boats are everywhere. We went down the beautiful Li River to marvel at the overwhelming beauty of the mountains of the region. The first time I went down this river in 1989 we were on the lone boat to make that trip that day, with a passenger capacity of less than 100. This time there were 20 boats in this caravan-each with some 200 passengers on board, by far the vast majority of them being Chinese.

The only thing more hectic than travel in Beijing or maybe Shentzhen is travel in the beyond –all comprehension-pace of life in Hong Kong; but that’s another story.