Wuxi Highway Collapse, NBA in Shanghai, Airbrushing of the Houston Rockets, End Result?, Too Much Tolerance, The Cause of the Collapse?

• I was at work when I heard about the Wuxi Highway Collapse. It turned out that the collapse occurred on a stretch of highway (the 312) that I have often driven to get to the Wuxi Ikea Mall and the dealership where we get our car serviced. My wife Jenny doesn't like driving the road because of all the commercial trucks that are on it. I find driving it to be a bit of an adventure. The trucks on this road are on every lane because the rule of slower vehicles to the right is not observed in China. The road is also peculiar in that there were a couple side roads which vehicles could enter from without merging lanes. And the road is often strewn with fallen debris from trucks and will often be rutted because of the heavy trucks.

• The news of the highway collapse interrupted my following of what was going on vis-a-vis the NBA kerfuffle with the chicoms. The game in Shanghai was played, but without much fanfare and without national anthems being played.

• When I got home, Tony told me that Houston Rockets merchandise was no longer available on Taobao. So, wonder if it is a good idea for him to wear his James Harden Shirt or the bright red Rockets hat which I bought for him in Canada.

• What will be the end result of the NBA – chicom kerfuffle? A colleague at work speculated that it would be forgotten in two months and that everyone would be happily watching their NBA again. I expressed doubt about this because it is tied to what is happening in Hong Kong. I did learn from my colleague that "live" European Football Matches broadcast in China are shown on a tape-delayed basis because of pro-Tibet protesters liking to display signs at them. This will happen to NBA games because already HK signs are showing up at NBA games in America.

• Why do mainland Chinese put up with the chicoms? When will they get sick of the banning of things and the censorship?

• The highway collapse is being officially blamed on an overloaded truck. It is what the government would say, they have been saying. I would guess that the collapse was the result of a bunch of factors: poor highway design, poor highway maintenance, shoddy construction, and lack of traffic rule enforcement – the latter factor resulting in an overloaded truck bringing down the overpass. But I doubt that the truck was the heaviest truck in history to have been on the road. The road, as I say, from having driven it many times, is an adventure to drive. It has a third-world China feel to it.