I’ve forgotten to take pictures so far on this trip, which I apologize for and will fix soon. Without them, a description of my first few days would be pretty dry, so let it suffice to say that I’ve been for a few long walks and start teaching tomorrow. I’m a bit conflicted about that, because my two main feelings at the moment are paralyzing anxiety and desperate loneliness, and I suspect the former will be increased (probably) and the latter decreased (maybe). Anyway, we’ll see what happens. A story that I don’t think needs pictures, though, is the one of my first taxi ride.

To begin, it might be good for you to look up a video of a negotiated intersection, if you’ve never seen one. This is a decent example of one in Phnom Penh:

Now, I was travelling between my hotel and Chengdu Technological University, both on fairly major roads, and the intersections we went through were all well marked. It didn’t seem to matter very much. This drive and many things I’ve seen on my walks have made me wonder whether anyone in Chengdu has been ticketed for anything ever, or indeed whether there are traffic laws at all and the signs are more than convenient suggestions. Keep the image of that intersection in your mind as we proceed.

I was riding along with Ni and John, a staff member and a student from the university, on the way to have a look at the campus. As we got in the car, I reached habitually for my seatbelt and couldn’t quite reach it. I turned to look for it, and found that it was actually torn all the way through and had been tied back in a knot to keep the useless, flapping strap from getting in the way. Presumably a previous accident had caused an unfortunate passenger to be flung forward with such force that they ripped right through their belt. I began to feel a little bit nervous. Ni, John, and the driver were all unsecured as well, so I decided to go with it. Who hasn’t ridden in the back of a pickup truck? At least this is safer than that, I assured myself.

The driver swung a wide U-turn across the 12-lane intersection he picked us up at, drawing several honks and shouts.

As I braced myself against my door, I felt that my collar was a little tighter than I remembered. Still, as I said, this wasn’t terribly unusual for the city. Recall the negotiated intersection image. It did, however, place this man firmly in the “offensive driver” camp. We drove down the road in silence for some few hundred meters or so before the driver nosed his way around a few cars into a right-hand turn. Ni immediately said something in Chinese and gestured down the road to the left. The driver responded in what seemed like a fairly vehement tone and gestured straight ahead down the road he had turned down. The movement of his arm was strong enough to rotate his entire upper body, which caused him to turn the wheel back and forth slightly and drift across the lane divider. A passing bicyclist rang a cute little bell at him. At this point, I upgraded the driver’s style from offensive to outright hostile and antagonistic.

The turn he had taken turned out to be a shortcut on to a larger road. His insistence on quickly finding a larger road became understandable when I saw that this was a man who used all the road available to him. He lived in the open spaces of the highway, revelled in them, drank them in like a wild stallion. He was truly in his element. The open spaces I refer to include: the split between lanes, gaps in oncoming traffic, and oncoming lanes in which he made his own gaps. The car was conveniently equipped with a screen showing how far you had gone, how much your fare was, and the car’s current speed (to two decimal places, for some reason). We reached 140 km/h and not once were we on what I would call a clear straightaway.

I imagine we did save some money on the fare, though, which is a plus. Our driver on the return trip wasn’t nearly so aggressive, and I have to admit I felt the ride lacked a certain something. Anyway, it was a good look around the city and the university, and I’m glad I got a bit of recon in. I still have a couple of touches to put on my lesson plans, so I’m off to do that. Next time: some thoughts about teaching, I would guess.