Only in China ...

Last week, I chose the wrong time to head into the city and got stuck in peak hour traffic.  It made me incredibly frustrated and a little stressed ... particularly the idea of being in a traffic jam on the 'wrong' side of the road.  It made me think about when I had last been stressed by traffic - over two years ago, when living in Melbourne.  That thought calmed me as I thought how lucky I was not to have had to deal with traffic jams for several years.  Then, earlier this week, I came across an entry on WoAi's 'I love China' blog (just as an aside, WoAi happens to mean 'I love' in Mandarin) ... a 9 day, 100 kilometre traffic jam near Beijing.  You can read the full article here.  Other articles suggest that the traffic jam will continue for several months.  While the length of the traffic jam itself makes me think, "Only in China ...", what also provoked the same response was the fact that the locals along the 100 kilometre traffic jam are taking advantage of the chaos by selling the stuck drivers overpriced food and water ... instant noodles are four times the normal price, according to this article (which means that they are probably charging $1, rather than the standard 25 cents!).  It certainly is a dog-eat-dog world in China.  So the 15-20 minutes that I was stuck in Calgary traffic has nothing on these poor people in Beijing.