Roads to riches?
I had my students read the NYT article, linked to a few weeks ago on this site, about the ever-expanding network of roads, railways and pipelines all over China. The article focused on one new superhighway in China’s poorest province, in the rugged, mountainous west of the country. Its point was: although roads are being built everywhere, they’re being used primarily by foot traffic, not cars and trucks and busses, as planned. The underlying point, of course, is that China is developing infrastructure faster than it’s developing its economy and individual wealth.
My students each wrote ten questions about the article, and we discussed their questions in class. One student asked if building all these new roads really does any good. Edie, a sophomore, raised her hand right away. “Four words,” she said. “More roads, more richness.” But, another student countered, this article seems to say that roads are not making life any better for the villagers profiled in the article.
And then Jackie, one of my most insightful students, raised his hand. “I think we need to question why these roads are really being built,” he said. “I think maybe the government wants more visitors to remote parts of China, so they build roads so that tourists can get there. But I don’t think the roads do any good for people in the villages.” His point, basically, was that roads through remote places, such as the one in the article, are all for tourist show, not for resident dough.
I had my own frustrating experience with China’s roads two Mondays ago. Every Monday, I take the bus from this campus to the other campus, in Changsha (Hunan Province’s capital), teach all day, then ride the bus back home. It’s about an hour each way, and traverses the Highway for the Insane, the skinny, potholed road that’s surrounded on both sides by farmland and villages. Chickens, dogs, ducks, oxen, kamikaze minibikers, taxicabs, dumptrucks, busses all compete for the little space there is. No one slows down for anything. Horns blare constantly.
About halfway home on the Highway for the Insane, we came to a dead stop. Something – perhaps a crash, perhaps a roadkilled ox – was blocking the road ahead. And so we sat and sat and sat, people screaming at each other in Chinese, cellphones tooting, darkness all around. Finally, the bus driver decided to whip a U-turn. With a Volkswagen Beetle, it would be a possible maneuver, although not easy. With a 50-passenger bus, it’s unthinkable, unless you’re a Chinese bus driver.
He backed us up a small path, teetering on the cusp of a large cliff, and forward two feet, turning a bit. And back again two feet, and almost off the cliff, time to go forward two feet. After about 30 backward-forward maneuvers, the 50-passenger bus was safely pointed the other direction on the Highway for the Insane. No worries.
During the whole ordeal, not a cop showed up, not a mechanic arrived, no kind of emergency rescue or help was available, and the road was completely impassable, as there's no such thing as a shoulder. In villages, you’re alone, to fend for yourself, which must be why Chinese people are so incredibly resourceful. I was trying to call my Foreign Affairs guy to let him know I would be home late, but absolutely no light – no streetlights, no working lights on the bus. And so I held up someone’s cell phone, lit up, to a paper that contained the phone number of the Foreign Affairs guy. But the cell phone light would die after 30 seconds, and the ride was bumpity-bump-bump the whole way, and it was tough to see anyway, and so I couldn’t get his number despite repeated efforts.
As we rumbled the wrong way on the Highway for the Insane, and I held the faint cell phone light against the paper, fireworks lit up the distant sky. Flashes of radiant red and green and purple streaks shot across the cosmos. They were blasting off to celebrate a big event in Changsha: the Fifth Intercity Games of the People’s Republic of China, an annual competition featuring China’s finest athletes in every Olympic sport. This year, Changsha was chosen as host.
To prepare for the games, Changsha went into developmental overdrive – a massive new superhighway crisscrosses the city, 21st-century stadiums were erected, flowers hang from every lamppost, fireworks light up the sky each night. The city is dressed in its Sunday best, on display for Communist Party honchos and China’s Olympic hopefuls.
And yet, while Changsha shines with its new 8-lane superhighway, for all the important people to see, Central South Forestry University suffers with the two-lane Highway for the Insane. And there we sat, watching fireworks light up the sky to celebrate the new, ultra-modern Changsha, as our bus sat stalled on the ultra-primitive Highway for the Insane, just 10 miles outside of Changsha, and relied on faint cell phones to give enough light to call home. And, again, the Man in Black whispered: “Do not be worried.”
