Today’s commute by the numbers
By Joel ~
| China: life & times
| Culture stress | Places | Pollution | Teaching English | Tianjin | Traffic |
| China: life & times
| Culture stress | Places | Pollution | Teaching English | Tianjin | Traffic |
What a half-hour’s bike ride during Friday morning rush hour can get you in Tianjin:
- People who stared at me: 4
- People who took no notice of me: hundreds
- Red lights: 8/11 (meaning I had to stop for 3)
- Buses I wanted to curse at: all of them, but 4 especially noxious ones in particular
- Groups of migrant construction workers protesting their late wages: 1
- Cars on fire: 1
- Buildings I should be able to see but can’t because of the air pollution: dozens? scores? hundreds?
- Years shaved off my life due to the air pollution: incalculable
Five days a week I bike half an hour one way to work; so 13.2 kilometers total there and back according to google maps. The numbers above are only for the morning commute to work. There really was a car on fire this morning.
Canada:
China:
Taiwan:
The States:
Brazil:
Hey Joel,
Are you wearing face masks when you ride your bike?
[...] soon as I learned how to survive in Tianjin traffic, which necessarily involves blatantly ignoring traffic laws, the traffic culture started changing. More than once during this second stint in China I’ve [...]