Here are a couple things I have noticed and thought abour while here in China.

1)  The cities are all huge.  They have tons of high rise buildings (apartment and business).  There are no single family homes from what I have seen.  Smallest I have seen is a 3 story condo type building.  I guess to accomodate everyone you can only go up.  Therefore the cities have tall buildings all throughout them.  Not just in one little area like we are used to in San Diego ro most other American cities.

2)  Despite the large cities with tons of tall buildings, there are just as many trees and bushes around in the cities.  Every street is practically lined with trees on both sides and in the middle if possible.  I had a crazy thought today that what if they purposely planted all the greenery to provide oxygen and get rid of all the carbon dioxide.  Think about it.  You have 1.3 billion people all crowded together in the cities.  What if they are using up all the oxygen in the area so the plants are necessary to provide enough oxygen for them to survive?  Also with that many people breathing out carbon dioxide and all the vehicles releasing carbon dioxide maybe the plants are also necessary to reduce the carbon dioxide in the air?  Whether all the plants are necessary or not I don't know, but I couldn't imagine how bad it would be here  without the services they provide.  It would probably be hard to breath, like being at high altitudes, and the cities would probably be smoggier than they already are.  Just one of the many crazy thoughts that has passed through my head as I have gone around China.

3)  Finally, the traffic flow here is just absolutely crazy.  In the US traffic is very regulated.  In TJ the traffic is more chaotic, but still regulated somewhat.  Here the traffic is barely regulated and I struggle to even say barely.  The basic rule is don't stop and the bigger you are the more rights you have on the road.  There are basically 4 levels of traffic here:  big vehicles (buses, etc.), small vehicles (cars, etc.), bikes (motorized scooters, bicycles, etc.), and pedestrians (people).  I listed the levels of traffic in a king of the road order with big vehicles being king and people being the lowest.  The only advantage the bikes and pedestrians have is that since they are small they can use sidewalks (yes all types of bikes go on the sidewalk) and they can cheat and cross through traffic (jaywalk).  So the bikes and people are always moving.  You'll being driving down the street and you will have people crossing right through the middle of a busy street dodging cars left and right.  Being a pedestrian you are the lowest level of traffic so you have to remember that no one will stop for you EVER.  The big vehicles basically run the road and do whatever they want.  Today I saw a bus run a red light and cross all lanes of traffic to get to another road.  So the rest of the traffic, including my taxi, had to wait for the bus even though we had the green light.  Also everyone here that has a horn drives with there hands on the horn at all times.  I swear they use the horn more than the gas peddle or brake peddle.  I was watching my taxi driver drive today and he would honk anytime someone would make him slow down.  Even if he though he was going to have to slow down because of someone else he would honk.  If someone was making a right turn at the next street and they put on their blinker he would honk.  Traffic here just does not want to stop or even slow down for a second and amazingly I have not seen one accident and the cars here are not all dented up either.  So somehow they just make it work.


Oh and I finally saw my first female smoker here in China.  So there is 1 out of over half a billion females here in China.