Christmas in China

[enming]

Rural areas of China are somewhat nice to look at but I wouldn't want to live there. I've just spent four days in Guilin, a somewhat less developed city but known for its natural beauty. However, I'm back in Shanghai for Christmas. Today I visited the Oriental Pearl Tower, the tallest structure in China. It has a nice view from the top, but it's awfully crowded. An interesting thing happened on the cab ride back. In my previous entry, I commented on how motorists here show very little regard for each other and for pedestrians. Up until today, I was actually very surprised that I hadn't witnessed an auto accident since I was sure they happened very frequently in Chinese cities. So while riding the taxi a few hours ago, our cab driver struck a pedestrian and probably killed him. I mean our cab just totally nailed this person. I got out of the taxi to ask the guy if he was okay, but I found him lying on the pavement at least 30 feet away, his body in violent spasms, blood pouring out of his head and mouth. I am by no means a medical expert, but it looked to me like this young man was dying. The cabbie was on his cell phone calling for help so I tried to do what I could by directing traffic so that no other vehicle would run over him as he continued to bleed on the road. However, every car just ignored me and weaved around me. And my mom had gotten out of the cab and had started crying out of stress. She had been sitting in the front seat and blood had been splattered on the windshield in front of her. Police arrived shortly afterwords but it took a long time for an ambulance to come. Soon, his entire upper body was lying in a pool of blood. As we finally left, I looked at that individual, motionless, still lying on the road as a police officer pulled out a piece of chalk and started tracing his outline on the pavement. Despite all this, I still have hope that he made it. We saw an ambulance coming down the road as we left and later that same ambulance overtook us, hopefully on its way to the hospital as opposed to the morgue. In either case it was an unfortunate thing to happen to this young man, especially on Christmas day.

I'm just about tired of China. I'm freaking bored because there isn't much to do. Furthermore, this entire country pissed me off today. I'll be back home on Friday the 31st at around 7 or 8 in the evening. I don't care about jet lag, I'm going out that night.