Chinese Ingenuity - Part II

One of the unsettling things in China, that takes a bit of getting use to, is that most value judgements are made from a practial point-of-view.

A case-in-point of how this plays out can be seen in the traffic pattern in Shenzhen. It is very common to see people driving the wrong way onto an off-ramp of a highway. (or the vice-versa: getting off an on ramp) This happens usually for two reasons:

1. The driver went off at the wrong exit, so is re-tracing his steps.
2. It is shorter and less of a hassle to get onto the highway than taking the long roundabout way of properly getting on the highway.

This is a pretty common occurence in Shenzhen. However, recently, the police have caught wind of this and have began cracking down on this. The city has recently installed thousands of new surveillance cameras.

A problem you say? Not at all, it's just another opportunity to see Chinese ingenuity at work.

The other day as we were getting on a highway, we saw some cars coming off of it in the wrong direction, I also saw some people parked along the side of the street. Apparently what was going on was that there is a camera on the on-ramp, so what the drivers were doing is pulling over before they performed their counter-flow manuvering, putting a cardboard or plastic bag over their license plate, perform the manuver, then afterwards removing the incriminating evidence. Naturally the obvious solution, right?

Well, that's the Chinese, practical approach to solving the camera problem, which enables people to continue to pursue the practical, shortest paths approach to driving.

Chinese Ingenuity - Part I

My parents' company had a large shipment of merchandise that was coming into China from the US by air. It was being taken care of by a shipping company and it was suppose to go directly into the interior of China, to Sichuan province.

The delivery was taking longer than expected so they decided to track the shipment. The shipping company indicated that the cargo was being sent by air through China Eastern Airlines. It had a legitimate air tracking number, upon more detailed detective work, they found out to their dismay that the cargo arrived by AIR into Shanghai and then was put on a truck by China Eastern Airline where it made the two day ground journey to Sichuan. Luckily the merchandise made it safely and cleared custom in Sichuan province.

Only in China would you send something by AIR and they would tell you it's by AIR, only to find out later it was put on a truck to complete its journey. (although to their credit, it was an "AIR"line truck)

The only upside is that it was a bit cheaper. (And that it DID arrive!)

I guess the lesson is that you never know what you are gonna get in China, it's full of surprises and "ingenuities".