A Night at the Movies

Out of boredom, I decided to see what was playing at the local Shenzhen theaters this evening, and lo and behold, the only options in English were the Transformers movie and the latest Harry Potter installment. I decided that I’d see Harry Potter, if for no other reason than I was sure I’d see it with Erin eventually.

The movie itself was unexceptional, in my opinion, but it was nice to kill an evening in an air conditioned environment. I did think it was interesting that I was issued a ticket with an assigned seat. Perhaps with so many people, allowing for “festival seating,” even at the theater, does not work.

The real excitement, if you choose to call it such, of the evening came on the taxi ride into town. I managed to secure a ride with a particularly edgy cabbie, and on two occasions, I actually yelled out in fear. The first time came as a guy began to pull in front of us in a small, yellow car, at which point my cabbie gunned it, narrowly missing the yellow car by inches. The second time came as my cab and a city bus both tried to occupy the same lane, and neither driver wished to give up. This resulted in the bus narrowly missing my door. There is a rule of traffic here that suggests that cabs beat pedestrians and bicycles and busses beat cabs. Apparently my cabbie did not prescribe to this rule.

The cabbie reacted to the situation by getting in front of the bus at the next opportunity and slamming on his brakes, again endangering my life. I looked up at the bus and saw the driver laughing. I was not.

The road into town was jammed with traffic badly, which was making the cabbie even angrier. We crept along for several miles, until my cabbie got an opportunity to run at 80 miles per hour along the concrete barrier in the middle of the road on half a lane. Eventually he was stopped by an orange traffic cone, in front of which was a badly damaged body covered in small part by a sheet. We swerved into another lane and sped ahead with the traffic issue behind us.

I have often thought that people here do not possess a healthy fear of motor vehicles and that there are an awful lot of people riding bicycles and walking in the middle of the highway along the concrete median. The roadway runs right against the concrete barrier, and the taxis and busses frequently swerve at full speed to miss these individuals. Virtually everyone I work with has seen the gory results of these interactions, but this was my first time, and I must say that it sort of wrecked my evening. It was just such a mess, and nobody seemed particularly interested in this poor person in the road. They just put up a traffic cone, half covered the person with a sheet, and then apparently planned to finish the cleanup later. I’m sure the image of this scene will stick with me for a while, and it definitely made me cringe each time my return cab to the hotel swerved to miss a bicycle (often with an unsecured child riding behind his or her parent).

Anyway, three more work days to go, and then Erin joins me. I could not be happier. Even the short break in Hong Kong will feel like a vacation…