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China: An Infrastructure Anecdote For Your Sunday Reading
From The Daily Capitalist
A few years back ('02) I was riding a slightly disreputable bus to Sanmenxia, nowheresville, in Henan Province, along the Yellow River in the north of the Middle Kingdom. At night. I had heard there was a new museum there specializing in architectural finds of that area.
Everything had grown so fast. Cities that were small by Chinese standards had reached enormous size, say 1 million people, but still weren't considered to be large. One could understand why they were using one-third of world's supply of concrete. They were building so many new roads that no one had much of an idea where they were, if they were completed, or if they let traffic on them. Which made getting around China interesting because maps could not keep up with the rapidly expanding infrastructure. It's not that you didn't know where cities were, you just didn't know the best way to get there.
To get there, or anywhere, bus drivers would gather around at towns and crossroads and swap information on the latest new road to open up. They'd sit on their haunches, smoke, and spit and gossip. The driver of my bus got a hot tip and we headed off to Sanmenxia. He eventually found an on-ramp to a new freeway and there we were, barreling along nicely at 65 mph. No signs, no lighting, brand new smooth. Absolutely no traffic. It was great. But it's a long trip.
It was late, about 10:00 p.m., and people were dozing off. At night there is nothing but dark out there. Occasionally we passed some big coal burning plant that was burning off gas like a huge torch. Everything in this area, as in most of China, is coal-fired. China has lots of it and that is the fuel source of their electricity plants. The nasty by-product is really bad smog. In these areas of north central China you rarely see the sun through the smoggy haze. If you do, it's an orange orb.
I'm sitting in the very back of the bus, legs stretched out down the middle of the aisle. My favorite spot since most Chinese buses weren't built for my 6' 5" frame. I was looking straight out through the bus windshield watching nothing but concrete for hours. Until the headlights picked up the sight of a crew of about a dozen Heroes of the Revolution standing in the left lane, our lane, working on the freeway. There were no warning signs, no traffic cones, no lights. There was nothing around there. I don't think they were expecting anyone to be using the road.
I cannot forget the surprise on their faces as they stood up and watched this ten ton bus heading right at them at 65 mph. "Deer in the headlights" is close, but not adequate to describe that look. At that point they were nothing but bowling pins waiting for a strike.
People in the bus started screaming.
All I could think about was a dozen women waking up the next morning to discover they were widows.
The driver locked up the brakes and put the bus into a skid. He crimped the steering wheel hard right to avoid the men, and the bus went into a diagonal skid with the rear end (me) now swinging left toward the men and we headed right at them, barely slowing down. Stuff was falling off the shelves, people were screaming. The driver then crimped the steering wheel hard left to control the skid, let off the brakes, hit the accelerator and the rear end swung back right to straighten out, controlling the skid. We were now in the right lane, still upright, continuing on to Sanmenxia.
We missed them. Barely.
This all happened in a couple of seconds.
And the weird thing was that we never stopped. We just kept on going.
We passengers were just stunned. Trying to take in what just happened. Then we started clapping, applauding the driver's skill, grateful and tremendously relieved that no one was killed and the bus didn't flip over.
A half hour later I was in Sanmenxia and my adrenaline level was still pretty high. It took a few beers, quite a few beers, to calm down.
I still think about it today, about how damned lucky those men were.
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It's great that so many ZH readers are in Thailand or have spent alot of time here. I moved away from the madness after W won the selection to settle here. I don't have any road stories but one time my head was split open by getting t-boned on a well lit road (the moat in Chiang Mai) by the only other driver I'd seen all night. He hit the 30 foot divider and didn't slow down, pinwheeled 3 times end over end, and smashed into the side of the pickup I was in (a red songtao, kind of a little red bus thingy they use instead of taxis) right next to my head. A few minutes later another pickup came by and the old lady driving loaded me in the back and drove me to the hospital 5 minutes away. Nobody was too upset and later on I met the offending driver at the police station and the idiot driver offered me 100$ for my troubles. He was so pathetic I just smiled at everyone and walked out. A week later we got a basket of apples from him and the case was closed. In California, I'd be retired from the settlement...
About fifteen years ago, in a one week period, I saw three busses overturn into storm drains on Bangna Trat highway. That was the time of great traffic jams, five hour trips from Thana City to Rama IV (30 kilometers), and a three lane highway which Thai drivers tried to turn into seven lanes. Busses always attempted to make a new lane, though it seemed to surprise the drivers that busses could not drive on water. The three busses I watched in that one week rolled into the storm drain. The passengers scrambled out the windows onto the "deck", jumped off, and in typical mai pen rai style looked left and said "is that another Number 85 Bus coming?"
I was commuting from lower Sukhumvit to Bangna Trat Km 15 or 10 every day at that time (mid 1990s). Hours and hours in traffic.
The only good thing about it was that since the traffic was so bad all the staff would stop work at 5 but hang out at the office drinking wine and partying together until 8 p.m. or so when the traffic died down.
This kind of experience has been par for the course in Thailand for decades.
Makes life interesting!
Those long distance bus rides in Thailand and Malaysia are nail biting experiences, its a wonder more people don't die. The bus drivers are crazy.
road snafus USA style
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/03/16/highways-to-nowhere-the-7-most-ridiulous-new-roads/
I don't know about this guy, but I would have spent the rest of the trip wondering how far to the next river, and whether a bridge had been built yet.
I've experienced this. Its was in the mid 1990s in Thailand when they were going their own infrastructure boom after several decades of growth at 10% per annum.
I had driven from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and was on my way to a town in Issan so I was tired and it was early in the morning and I was on a new highway. With no speed limits enforced and the road empty and new I was travelling at a very good speed and started travelling up a bridge going over one of the many rivers.
For some reason I still don't know today I felt something was wrong and began to slow down. Luckily for me I did as over the crown of the bridge, out of sight, the bridge just ended. I had to slam on the brakes and screech to a halt to avoid going over the edge and into the river below.
No signs or barriers anywhere either at the bridge or at the entrance to this highway.
Vivid reminder of living in a developing country and not to take for granted things you'd expect in the West
That was excellently written.
I particularly like "And the weird thing was that we never stopped. We just kept on going." as a metaphor to China's expansion.
We've seen this situation in the US and now we are living with the fallout. Will China, like the men, avoid the bus coming at them.
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