I like to think of myself as culturally sensitive. I don’t go around saying stuff like “Why don’t all these people just learn English?” or anything. I didn’t puke when we had tongue of bat (tongue of bat!) in our hotpot yesterday. I don’t make a big deal out of little kids in split pants crapping in the bushes.
But today I read something that made me disgusted. Cultural relativism was thrown aside as I asked how a country can be so stupid.
A quote from Beijing Review:
Those who applaud the practice say that carpooling should be encouraged because it is convenient for rides, reduces the economic burden of carowners and alleviates the pressure on traffic. Objectors regard carpooling as an illegal business that should be stopped, saying that it disturbs the normal market of passenger transport, like taxi and buses.
Yes, some people want to make carpooling illegal. That’s much better for everyone on the whole fucking planet.
I strongly believe cars are the biggest problem in China today. People are so excited they can afford cars, and I just turn into a big old Indian from the 70s.
I wish the only drivers here were professionals. Our school has a bunch of drivers on staff. They get promoted to different vehicles as their seniority increases or something. But that’s their job. If there have to be personal vehicles (and it’s not like anyone’s going to give up their status symbols anytime soon) it seems the height of idiocy to force them to drive with only one person in them.
Yes there are more nuances to this debate (about insurance and stuff), but the environmental factor is completely ignored. The air is awful in the big cities and people complain about it all the time. China Daily is always printing stories about what an environmental leader China is. The taxis here in Wanzhou use CNG (which I assume is some sort of natural gas) instead of regular gasoline, presumably as a pollution fighting measure. Somehow I doubt that all these private Volkswagens do the same.
There are so many buses and taxis here people just shouldn’t be allowed to own a car at all. What kind of oppressive regime is this? And they don’t want to disturb the market? Say hi to communism in the 00s.
Listening to: Nuclear War from the album Adbusters – Live Without Dead Time
by Sun Ra And His Arkestra
