Back in China two days - Beijing and Tianjin - and have yet to see my shadow, though there seems to be a squint of hope this morning. I can see some blue skies peeking through, though it’s still quite early. I got a ride back to Tianjin yesterday on the Jingjintang Highway, and it was the fastest and least congested trip in my decade here. With all the overloaded and poorly maintained trucks seemingly sidelined, it felt almost safe. Perhaps China can use this time to understand just how much of a problem they have on that road, though I fully expect that come September it will be back to dangerous business as usual: a raft of dramatic accidents, long fuel-hogging backups and the always enjoyable thrill of high-speed on-the-right passing along the narrow and oft-cluttered shoulder. I still have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the police haven’t tapped this gold mine in an effort to bring some law to that road. It’s TicketLand waiting to happen. A scale or two, a few patrol cars and, Voila! an instant pile of cash. But that shows you how much I know. Obviously there is an advantage to keeping it unsafe at any speed or volume. Some things are more important than the common good. Or perhaps the common good is quite a bit different than any that I can possibly imagine.
Another bit of news that keeps capturing the headlines is the new high speed train between Beijing and Tianjin, set to make its initial commercial run on August 1. The last I heard is that it will take 27 minutes and cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 RMB. No one is spending much time dawdling over the fact that the new Beijing terminal station is in the southeast part of the city. From what I’ve been able to learn, it will take two further train rides to get from the new station to Tian’anmen Square. Depending on where you plan to go in the city, the better deal and faster trip still may be to ride the current train and catch the subway at Beijing station. The much-advertised flash train route is akin to riding a bullet from Philadelphia to New York with the New York end-of-the-line somewhere in Newark. But 27 minutes looks good in the papers, even though it will be more than 20 RMB higher than the current ride. Twenty-six days to go and the machine is cranking.
And while we’re on the subject of trains, does anyone know the current status of the once-ballyhoo-ed luxury train to Lhasa? I’m still looking for a place to drop 5,600 bucks.
4 responses so far ↓
1 chriswaugh_bj // Jul 12, 2008 at 9:08 pm
And this was posted July 12. Which was a brilliant day in Beijing, incredibly clear, blue skies, and nowhere near as hot as you’d expect for clear, blue skies this time of year. Judging by the clouds very, very slowly building up to the south, you returned to Tianjin at least one, if not two days early.
2 jg // Jul 12, 2008 at 9:15 pm
It was blue here in Tianjin too today, though early this morning when I wrote the entry it was still a toss-up. Nice to see this sort of thing a time or two in mid-summer. Let’s see how all the factory closures and car restrictions actually work once they kick into gear. Despite all of that, though, it is always a struggle to get over the humid haze that holds whatever’s in the air.
3 ba // Jul 13, 2008 at 1:51 am
And to think that during my time away from China, I would get to see blue skies. Here in northern California, no blue skies. A smoky cast in the skies from the fires.
Enjoy those blue skies.
4 jg // Jul 13, 2008 at 9:49 am
I am sure that soon enough things will return to normal in both CA and CN. Have faith. I do.
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