Driving in China can be a pain, for reasons I hardly need to list here (but will, since Web Logs were created for just this sort of venting) -- traffic, severe traffic, traffic caused by fights between traffic cops, traffic regulations, traffic accidents.... Luckily, China's Ministry of Public Security has an extensive test to prepare this country's would-be drivers for the stress, frustration, and Weltschmerz of the road...
The above is by photojournalist Sean Gallagher, who found himself stuck in traffic earlier today just outside of Beijing. As he writes on his Instagram:
Sunday was World Car Free Day, striving to remind people of the earth that cars pollute and are actually less necessary than you think (unless you live in Suburbia, USA). More than 150 Chinese cities observed World Car Free Day, according to Xinhua, though it was apparent that some cities observed it much better than others.
Citing "extremely bad influences," the police bureau in Tangshan, Hebei province has fired two traffic wardens who were caught on video fighting in an intersection, completely neglecting their job.
The above picture comes via George Ding of the Beijinger (you might remember him as our first Three Shots guest). He writes:
If the cars going west hadn’t initially blocked the intersection, this wouldn’t have happened. Had the cars going north and south not rushed in and just waited one cycle for the intersection to clear, this wouldn’t have happened. Had the cars going east not rushed in to be blocked by the cars going north, this wouldn’t have happened. And had the cars going west not rushed in only to be blocked by the cars going south, well, you get the idea.
We love that term, wish we would’ve thought of it ourselves. Zombie commuters. Commuters because they’re trying to get somewhere. Zombies because you’d have to be brain-dead to drive into traffic in Beijing. As SCMP puts it: “It’s like a scene out of American television show The Walking Dead, said a microblogger on Sina Weibo, after photos... Read more »
In response to public outcry over a January 1 regulation stipulating that drivers must stop on yellow lights, traffic management authorities have promised to upgrade road signals, according to China Daily: “The pace of signal upgrading will quicken, the traffic management bureau under the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement on Thursday.” But it’s... Read more »
Red means stop, green means go, yellow means very, very slow... unless you're in China in 2013, in which case, red means stop, green means go, yellow means stop... unless you're driving an Audi, in which case, green means go, yellow means go, red means whatever you feel like.
