Transportation in Chinese

What are really creating the picture of the city are the many bikes and scooters. As Katie Melua sung “There are 9 Million Bicycles in Beijing”. But I am in Shanghai and Shanghai is cooler than Beijing and there are definitely more bicycles here ;-) Double it and you should be fine.

But the really great thing is that there not just bikes everywhere, no, they have EVERYTHING on them as well. Have you ever seen a refrigerator on a bike??? I definitely felt sorry for this guy but he actually thought it was kind of funny to see me staring at him, and I am definitely not this type of staring guy when something strange comes along. But that time I seriously had to stare!

Though you might think “Refrigerator is pretty heavy they won´t carry anything bigger” it doesn’t end with refrigerators.

As Shanghai is an expanding city where buildings are built over night, they often first have to knock down the existing buildings.  After they knocked down the building there is an incredible amount things lying around it and there are seldom professional companies who take care of the stuff. Often the people with their “bikes” come and collect as much as they can carry. But those bikes are not normal bikes. They have three wheels and some kind of cart on the back axle. It´s pretty much a very small one where you can but some things on it but never should put as much on it as they do in China. They seriously put stuff up to 5 meters high on it. When I see them driving through the crazy Shanghainese traffic I always want to run along them and help them. Of course they are not respecting any traffic rules, as like they don’t care about their own life and of the life’s of others.

I always wonder how they actually get stuff on top of the carts, with an height of approximately 1,50 m. And the second point is how they actually get the stuff NOT to fall down. These people should better work as structural engineers than picking crap up from construction zones.

So that’s it for Transportation inChinese. I actually hope I get some pics of these “cyclist”.

By the way I am invited to a wedding on Saturday in Yangzhou, a place north of Shanghai. It will take me about 5 hours to get there by train. So be curious about my train ride and the Chinese wedding.

Enjoy

L.