8/8/15
Today is the day I’ve been looking forward to the entire
trip: Terracotta Warriors!!! But alas, one of the more tedious aspects of
traveling with a tour group is that they have built in pre-designated high-end
souvenir shopping into our itinerary. And we wouldn’t get to the ancient relics
until later in the day. First, we had to stop by a lacquer furniture showroom
(at least we found our trip picture frame!) and allow people time to browse and
shop. It’s nice that the tour group has made arrangements with these places to
give their customers discounts (and this is nothing new – we got a lot of this
from our hired drivers in India as well), but come on already! I didn’t come
here to shop and, as beautifully handcrafted as they may be, who in their right
mind can afford $6,000 carpets and $20,000 inlaid credenzas?! [NN: Hey we bought a picture frame at this
stop so we can’t complain. We would have spent time on our own trying to find a
picture frame anyway, which is the only souvenir we must buy in each trip to
add to our collection. They are sometimes very hard to find and we saw nothing
in Shanghai.]
I assume the tour company must get comments back from past
customers that they got sick of all the Chinese food because this afternoon we
were taken to eat lunch at a hotel that served a Western-style lunch. The only
good thing I can say about this meal is at least the hotel had soap in their “happy
room” (which is what our tour guide calls the restroom because he can’t
understand why we call it what we do since you neither rest nor take a bath in
it) – and since most toilets are just squat toilets, paper & SOAP were a
rare luxury to find in the water closet. [NN: This was a 4 star very fancy
hotel, and there is soap in all the fancy hotels we’ve been in. Funny note
years back every hotel was trying to be a 5 star hotel in China to attract
government business, but after the recession the Chinese government decided
that they would show austerity by forbidding government officials from staying
at 5 start hotels. Thus most of the hotels that were previously angling to be 5
stars now want to be 4 stars.]
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| No idea why this car was driving on the sidewalk... |
The road blocks to the warriors continued as we got stuck
for a couple hours in a ridiculously tight traffic jam on the way out to the
site. Tour buses were literally vying for inches on the highway to get ahead of
each other. It was dangerous and frustrating but thankfully the tour group
typically builds in a couple hours break in between our last activity of the
day and dinner; so the time we lost in traffic wouldn’t take away from our time
at the warriors. So I relaxed and just passed out the whole time.
A note on driving in China: The car drivers are similar to
those we’ve experienced in other SE Asian countries (though nothing compares to
the death-defying, cow-swerving drivers in India). Everyone vies for whatever
inch of road they can get regardless of what lane they’re in (those painted
lines seem more of a suggestion than a hard, fast rule). Cars pass within
inches of each other and there’s lots of rapid lane change and 5 cars trying to
get into a single lane. There’s even a LEGAL u-turn lane from the middle lane;
so this lane is 3rd from the right but crosses over 2 lanes to its
left to make a uey. I am at a complete loss as to why this exists. [NN: Traffic
is terrible, not India crazy but everyone tries to go at the same time in all
the intersections. Thus really no one goes anywhere. Also, the roads are new
and have a lot of lanes and people just walk into the traffic to cross and it
is amazing to me how they are completely unfazed by the giant busses rolling
inches from their face.]
Several of the older ladies in our tour group have been very
vocal about the “dangerous” driving behavior of our drivers, but in all
honestly, they need to relax. If this is the way people drive here, then the
drivers obviously know what they’re doing and how to maneuver around what we
see as chaos. Have faith that the locals, whose job it is to get us there
safely, will do so if for no other reason than they get paid to.
It’s illegal for foreigners to drive in China without taking
a lengthy driving test, which – while perhaps just a way to make money off
tourists – makes sense. There’s no way with my Western driving skills that I
could possibly understand how to maneuver around Chinese streets. So
vacationers are almost guaranteed to need to hire a driver.
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| Well this is interesting... |
But for Chinese locals, they too are subject to strict
driving laws and test requirements. A commercial bus driver, like the one
driving us around on the tour, is not allowed to apply for a specialty bus
license until they have 10 years of driving experience on their record. Our
guide told us that there are very few incidents of drunk driving in China
because if you are caught driving under the influence, your license is taken
away from you and you have to take/pay for the lengthy test all over again. And
owning a car is NOT cheap! The cost of a car in China is exorbitant – with the import
taxes and fees, a car can cost 3x more in China than it would in the US. So
that affordable $15,000 car you can buy would cost someone in China $45K (or
more) – not a small expense considering the average person in China makes 6x
LESS than we do here in the US. So as you can imagine, only the upper middle
class and above can afford a car in China, which – while a very small portion
of the general population, considering there are 1.3 billion people there – is
a rapidly growing sector of the population; hence, all of the increased car
traffic and less and less bike or scooter traffic as in the past.
And just because you pass the driving test and you can buy a
car doesn’t mean you actually get to drive it. In order to obtain a license
plate in China, you must enter into a national lottery; our tour guide had
entered 3 years in a row before his name was actually drawn. But if you happen
to be a lucky winner, you better have a sizable next egg because the cost of
the license itself is $12,000. Yup. If you want to drive a car in China, you
have to pony up! We were curious as to why driving was so expensive in China;
why should that lifestyle/activity be so costly. Apparently all of the money
collected in taxes and fees is what is fueling the HUGE construction boom going
on in China right now (which I alluded to early). So just think, we could solve
all of our infrastructure problems here in the US if we just charged each
driving citizen $12,000 to renew their car. ;P You may hate the DMV but
seriously, it could be worse.
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