there is a hotpot waiting for me at my hotel, so let me be brief.
Urumqi in wintertime is not pleasant. It is freezing (high of -2f yesterday). The cold necessitates that people keep themselves warm. Americans buy energy to heat their homes by gas companies which must conform to environmental regulations. Poor countries don't. Poor people just but shit in a steel something or another and just light it. In china, the somehting or another is pure coal (i think) or something that just doesn't burn well. All this combines to give the city the cover of a horrible haze. Visibility is nil as seen in the picture below.

The icing on the cake however, was that I was in a carcrash. yep. i was in the back seat of that car pictured here. I was going off to a coffee shop to put the finishing touches on a paper. Some guy tried to take this cab from me, but I forced the issue and relented.

The cabbie wanted to take both of us and i agreed since it is so effin' cold. Since the guy didn't put up a fight, i even offered to cover the whole fare. SO we're driving along and this guy wants to pass a cop. Fair enough. But there's on coming traffic. Being the resourceful Chinese man he is, he decides to pass in the right lane. Oh wait, there's a bus. no worries, just add some gas. Unfortunately the cop continued apace. My driver didn't give up utnil it was too late. He slammed on the breaks. which locked. He lost control utnil we skidded off the road. Fortunately this building prevented us from going any furhter. A cyclist was hit in the process, and was limping about, bloodied, afterwards. I was thrown around in the back, and stayed to talk to the police. The other passenger took off. I wanted to takl to the police so they would know exactly what happened and the bicyclist would get compensation. The crowd was amused by me saying things like "Don't let him tell you it was the road. he was speed and trying to pass a cop....I guess he doesn't respect the police. IT's all his fault. he must compensate everyone!!"
I feel sorry for the guy b/c if he's driving a cab in Urumqi he's not going to be insured and he's n ot going to be able to afford to compensate everyone. Luckily the people in the small building weren't hurt.

the plus side is when i told my next cabbie this, she drove extra careful and told me that everything would be okay, and that i shouldn't be too scared. a nice motherly touch...

Anyway, i come away learning a lesson. A lot of foreigners in China, in Asia, anywhere think they are above the law, and immune to the perils and dangers of local living. Some dangerously cross traffic with impugnity. Everyone is cavalier about such things....in so many other aspects we are above the law. A simple 'i don't speak c hinese' will get you out of almost any situation. But this stuff can and will happen. Life is cheap here. very cheap.
THis guy risked it all for 10 seconds of his life.

here i am in shanghai, it is now saturday and i'm
leaving for Beijing tonight, going by train and will
arrive Sunday morning at seven am. i've been spending
the past couple days in coffee shops, sipping lattees
and mochas at high end cafes such as "UBC Coffee" and
"Jazz Island Coffee" which are actually quite nice.
right now "Unchained melody" is being piped over the
loudspeakers; Whitney Houston made an appearance just
a few minutes ago. I'm on the fifth floor of some
market, and i can see sky scrapers all around me.
Anyway, surrounded by Santa Claus decorations,
waitresses in christmas hats and poinsettas, its
difficult to not be impressed (or confused) by China's
transformation. It made me think back to my experience
over the summer, when I was staying in Beijing. I was
staying in a very posh dorm, where short term foreign
visitors to Peking University would stay along with
the relatively long term residents. Anyway, these
people come to China with no language skills, just
some general interest or purpose in China. They are
given the grand tour, they see the skyscrapers, the
great wall, eat peking duck, the forbidden city, and
they think to themselves...China is nothing like I
thought it would be. It is so easy to be caught up in
the sense that something "amazing" is going on here.
Indeed, much like the Berlin song found on Top Gun's
soundtrack that I heard at Jazz Island yesterday,
China takes their breath away. At the same time, Fear
mongers in the US hawk the idea that China will
overtake the US in this statistic or that, soon we'll
all be speaking Chinese, etc.
But China is so much more than Shanghai and Beijing.
While the economic growth here is staggering, China's
GDP is about the same as California's. A vast majority
of Chinese are still impoverished peasants, living in
the countryside. For every skyscraper, there is a
million people living in third world peasant style
poverty.

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