Reddit reviews Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip (P.S.)

China's had a huge rise in car ownership in only a few years, so there's a lot of people driving who had little experience of being driven around or family car ownership. This is creating challenges.

There's an excellent book called Country Driving by Peter Hessler that is partly about this.

Edit: belated link to the book on Amazon. Really recommend it, it's a lot of fun and full of interesting stuff.

He quotes some questions from the written drivers exam, such as:

Q 81: After passing another vehicle you should

a) wait until there is a safe distance between the two vehicles, make a right turn signal, and return to the original lane.

b) cut in front of the other car as quickly as possible.

c) cut in front of the other car and then slow down.


Q 269 When you enter a tunnel you should

a) honk and accelerate.

b) slow down and turn on your lights.

c) honk and maintain speed.

I don't categorize 'em like that as I read 'em, but Dataclysm, Rationality; from AI to Zombies, Everything Bad is Good For You, Country Driving, Freakonomics, and The Mathematics of Love are all 'thinky' nonfiction books I've recommended recently because I've retained new ideas and methods from them. In addition, nearly every essay written by DFW is successfully grist for my mill (even the ones about tennis, a subject I would have to work at caring less about.)

I stuck with nonfiction because even that feels a bit overwhelming. Fiction is too much for me right now; I really enjoyed and recently quoted from The Bell Jar, for instance, but what I got from the book was life-affirming and sensual and I have friends who got vastly divergent or even contrary methods (and I also got some solid advice that I'll take to heart if I ever decide to commit suicide.)

Edit: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest makes me want to watch the movie too, now. The book was not what I expected and was more engaging for all that, but also depressing. Set in an asylum. Read it because of a reference in a recent Neal Stevenson book, and because I'd been meaning to for some time.

Country Driving is pretty good.

America have 9 cities with population of over a million. China on the other hand have over 50 cities with population of over a million. Which means there are a lot of cities. The cities are growing larger too, incorporating the surrounding areas.

Rural areas are more communist than urban areas. People are organized into villages, and the village owns all the land and housing. This means individuals can't just decide to sell their plot of land and move away. People own shares in the village. If the village as a whole makes money (by leasing land to a factory or garbage dump), it distributes the money to everyone in the village. This also means even though young people tend to move away for work, they can always come back to the village and farm as a backup if economy is bad. In a lot of villages, most of the people are over 50 and under 16, because young people want to earn money in the cities.

A great book centered around the topic of driving in China:

http://www.amazon.com/Country-Driving-Chinese-Road-Trip/dp/006180410X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1451858349&sr=8-5&keywords=peter+hessler