As the crow flies it’s not all that far from Shanghai, but the problem is a little creek called the Yangtze lying in the way. There is as yet no direct way to drive over to the north side, a ferry ride is the only method and that adds a good hour to hour and a half each way with the wait to load factored in. With that and the rush hour traffic leaving Shanghai in the equation, it took us no less than 4 hours to get to there in the morning. Going back we were able to use a priority access lane lane to the ferry, so that cut it down to 3.5 hours. Still, 7.5 hours of China-style stunt driving in a Buick mini van gets old quickly.
On this journey we at least got to see a little bit of the countryside, and in a few ways it looks a bit more like what I pictured mainland China to be. I actually spotted some farmers out in field
with the trademark big triangular hats, a variety of those ubiquitous three-wheeled single-cylinder tractor-like hauling things, and even a couple of pagodas.But other than a few like observations, this part of the country still resembles ours in more ways than it differs; the highway portion from Shanghai to the Yangtze could have been interchanged with many a section of the 401 between Kingston and Montreal and no one would have been much the wiser. Highlight of the outbound leg: our driver actually got busted by the cops. We were just slowing down to enter the ferry lineup when we were waved over into a parking lane, and the next thing we know our man is hauled off to face the music. He returns to tell us that he has received a speeding fine, but we are more than a little mystified as to exactly how they clocked him. The journey home provides the answer; Ray spots a camera unit on the approach road that must have snapped us. The fine is a whopping 50 RMB, or about $7. One more thing to love about this place…
The ferry ride is nearly as interesting. First off, I can't believe (you know I'm gettin' sick of saying that but dammit it's true, I really can't believe...) that we're about to cross the Yangtze river. That name has sounded about as far away and exotic to me as imaginable ever since I was old enough to read my grandfather's National Geographics, and here I am staring at its gaping green vastness. After an interminable wait we finally make it onto a boat, of which there are no less than three loading or unloading at the
immense ramp at any time. I thought we were in for a least a small break from the wild Chinese road ride, but the boat drivers are absolutely no better, and there is more traffic in a day on the vast expanse of this river than St. Lawrence likely sees in a month. Several times we bear down on like size vessels, clearing their sterns at the last minute with but about 50 feet to spare. Meanwhile it occurs to me that every major shipping disaster I've heard of in the last twenty years involved, um, ferries.Where's that other shore?
Eventually we reach terra firma again and proceed on our way.
I should mention the cars themselves prove an interesting mix. I had known for sometime that the VW Passat outnumbered anything else here simply because VW was the first to embark on a joint automotive production venture with the Chinese. At one point they actually represented 90% of the cars on the road, but owing to the explosion of the middle class here in the last 15 years there is now a remarkable variety of machinery to be seen. GM seems to be running a close second place, they apparently sell a ton of Buicks sedans as well as a Buick-badged version of the Chevy Uplander, which is in fact what we're riding in as I write this. Apparently it’s the most profitable division GM has in the world at the moment, and judging by the number of them we see I’ve no reason to doubt that.
After that there’s a mish-mash of stuff from all the Japanese and Korean majors, and quite a few Chinese-grown things too, mostly rip-offs of Japanese designs (go figure), including a really convincing Corolla clone. Being that privately owned cars are a relatively new phenomenon here they all look to be in really good shape. This would be in stark contrast to the trucks, which for the most part seem to be from the Stalin era, and run about that well too. It’s not unusual to come screaming up an overpass only to find yourself staring at the ass end of one these things spewing toxic waste while struggling to crest the top at 30 or 40 km/h. Like one needed more excitement… but this road trip also provides some of our hairiest driving experiences to date.
The smaller city roads that connect the Yangtze river ferry and the main highway to Shanghai are jammed with all manner of two, three and four wheeled devices constantly fighting for space and often turning two lanes into six. These people play a game of chicken with oncoming traffic that has no equal in the western world. We try to photograph it but it doesn’t do it justice. I finally light up and switch my camera to video mode and capture a few truly excellent moments, punctuated perfectly with Ray's howls of delight and profanity at the amazingly close calls happening but mere feet from our front bumper. I thought the chase scenes in Ronin were good... they got nothin’ on a typical day in back road China.
The three wheelers seem to a rural phenomenon, but the most populous creatures by far are of the two-wheeled variety, there are quite literally millions of scooters
and bicycles on the roads of Shanghai alone, and they are braver/crazier than any of their four-wheeled competition. We are constantly amazed by how far out in the lanes they ride, how close they cut it when crossing intersections, you name it. At one point we passed two women riding along a good six feet from the road's edge on a main highway, blabbing away to each other, not a care in the world, cars blowing by them with not inches to spare. They never looked behind, never even flinched. Unreal. Still, at four days in we have yet to see an accident, and have seen only one car that even had a dent. It's almost like some carefully orchestrated ballet that we just don’t get.Our good friend Mike tries to entice us out once again this evening but there's no way, we are wiped from our wild ride and have two different factories to visit tomorrow. As a result we decide we want to keep things simple for dinner and hit the Rotten Ronnie's about 2 kms down the road from the hotel. We could have walked, but we elect to grab a cab and so ask the greeting girl from the front door to explain our destination to the cab driver. She's not sure what we mean (I suspect she was hired more for looks than English comprehension, a phenomenon frequently observed here) so she hauls out the concierge and he has a go at it.
We sit down in the back seat while he and the driver start debating the whole matter. The concierge translates bits as the fight escalates... driver claims to not know where it is, the concierge thinks he's moron, we think he just can't be bothered with a 2 km fare... At this point the junior concierge breaks in on the deal and announces that he has Mickey's phone number and can get the stuff delivered. Huh? McDonald's delivers? Anything seems possible in this town. We get out of the cab and proceed to the concierge desk where a meeting takes place to determine what we want. They ask us to write it down. They get Ray's Big Mac, but my Quarter Pounder throws them for a loop. It doesn't help that Ray writes 2 x 1/4 lb w/cheese. They look at it like it's written in Sanscrit. I explain slowly, in my best phonetic English... QWAAAAARRTTEERR POUHHHNNDAAAAHH WITH CHEEEEEEESE!
It eventually seems to register, they ask us to leave a cash deposit and say it'll be about twenty minutes. We wander off to the bar to wait, conjecturing on just what exactly what the bag will contain when it arrives.
Sure enough the head concierge shows up twenty minutes later, but no bag, just Junior in tow.
They want to review the order again for quality control purposes.
We begin to realize that we likely could have walked there, eaten and been on the way back by now, but hey, at this point we're committed. Besides, I've never sat in an opulent hotel lounge eating Mickey's accompanied by Chinese lager. I like to think the novelty of it somewhat balances the considerable grief.
Another 20 minutes go by, and lo and behold our bag arrives. And I'll be damned if it didn't contain a Big Mac, two fries and two Qwaaaaarrrteeerr Pouhhhnndaaahhhs with Cheeeeese.
God Bless China.
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