Shanghai blogger Wang Jianshuo points out a less-than-expected reason why riding the bus is faster than driving on his commute: ad hoc protest against traffic enforcement:
Bus drivers don't follow the traffic rule as strictly as other car drivers. They just drive wildly, and policemen tend not to care about them. Why? I saw some cases when the policeman stops the bus, and the whole bunch of people on the bus surrounded the policeman and protest to ask the policeman release the driver.
This comes in addition to a more engineered factor, the bus-only lane on highways. People bending rules both help and hurt bus travel speeds in Wang's post. Above, they prevent bus drivers from being punished for illegal expediency. But meanwhile, as Wang notes, lots of private cars violate the bus only lane. The bright side is that the bus lane still remains fast enough to increase efficiency.
Shanghai's transit system is already admired as a model in China, with its expanding metro map, the maglev super-express train to the Pudong airport, and high ridership in the bus network. Next comes a proposal to open a subway between Shanghai and neighboring Taicang, a Yangzi River port city in Jiangsu Province.
Construction began on No 11 line, which connects the financial center Pudong and the Formula 1 racing court in the rural district of Jiading, in March last year and will be completed before the 2010 World Expo.
The line will be extended 13.5 km and ultimately terminate in the town of Ludu at Taicang if the extension goes ahead.
If the expansion of a subway line seems uncontroversial, that has not been true for the maglev line and its expansion. Instead of running from downtown Shanghai to the airport, the existing maglev stops at a distant subway stop, where passengers switch to the metro. Although it's not a terribly long ride out to the transfer point, the sense of teleportation that you get when accelerating to 268 mph on your way to the airport is considerably dampened by getting on a regular old subway for the rest of your journey.
A plan to extend the maglev through neighborhoods to reach Hongqiao, Shanghai's older airport, met stiff opposition with unusually high-profile demonstrations early this year. Some demonstrators were concerned about the radiation from the massive system of electromagnets that suspends and propels the train. Others were worried that having an aviation-speed train cruising by would depress property values. After all, if you don't get to ride it, no one really wants a big loud train next to their home.
Shanghaiist posted a lot of material on this, including this video from a demonstration in January:
It so happens I am in Shanghai right now, with plans to visit the urban planning museum as an escape from work and the rain today. Perhaps I will have more to add.
Wang Jianshuo, an avid English-language blogger based in Shanghai found this scene in the rare Shanghai snow tied to a holiday travel nightmare storm throughout much of China over the last week.
(Credit:
Wang Jianshuo)
Craigslist's China sites are not particularly lively. In Beijing, English-language readers tend to head for classifieds run by the local expat magazines that's Beijing and City Weekend. Several friends, Chinese and foreign, have mentioned Kijiji as a more commonly-used alternative. At least their promotional team knows how to play in the snow!
Henry Jenkins, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is perhaps academia's leading fanboy, spent part of January in Shanghai and has been posting observations on his blog. I want to highlight one of his better contributions: on social responsibility in Chinese video game culture.
Video games, "freedom," and "addiction"
Jenkins was attending the International Games and Learning Forum, organized by MIT and Beijing University. There, the focus was on "serious games," those that might potentially be used to promote learning. His most frequently repeated observation was that, while U.S. experts on game learning tend to focus on pedagogy in game play, the Chinese experts he heard from focused mostly on creating historically accurate spaces for games to take place in.
Jenkins writes that some people were concerned that Chinese gamers would miss some measure of socialization in Chinese history when exposed to foreign-designed gaming spaces, and he contrasts the online gaming experience mostly concentrated in Internet cafes where there is minimal face-to-face contact between players with the commonplace sight of usually older Chinese playing chess, mahjong, and card games in the street or in homes. The older games happen face-to-face and often come with a small crowd of spectators remarking on strategy and shooting the breeze. Online games include a large amount of interaction through chat, but most of the non-text interaction is absent.
He also writes of concerns that game addiction, or hype about addiction, should require game designers to tread with caution, lest they be marked as unwelcome cultural influences. Jenkins is not a longtime student of China, but his observation is interesting, if not particularly well-supported by data. (He doesn't claim hard evidence.) He writes:
The addiction rhetoric, though, carries force within China where it is connected to a number of concerns which the Chinese have about their children's culture. First, at a time when aspects of capitalism are reshaping Chinese society (especially in Shanghai), addiction rhetoric gives the Chinese a way to talk about the impact of leisure culture and consumer capitalism on their lives. Playing games is problematic precisely because it is unproductive (or seen as such).
If corporate social responsibility were extended to the point of asking corporations not to contribute to unproductive activities, otherwise known as recreation or entertainment, I suspect corporate heads would fall nationwide. I'm also skeptical that this concern goes much beyond the realm of the rhetorical. Far more consequential to social change in China, in my view, are two factors: (1) the proliferation of direct and near-anonymous interaction online, including in gaming environments, among some Chinese youth; and (2) the divide between those Chinese with access to this sort of high-intensity Internet use and those with little or no online time.
Jenkins notes the latter concern as a challenge to using games as an educational tool: If you're not frequently in front of a computer, it's difficult to engage in learning with one. Research on the "digital divide" in China is at an early stage, but I suspect it will be of growing importance as times passes.
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