Wrong Way to Get to the Party House

 

To set up this blog entry, I'll need to tell you two things.  And I have inserted a photo of the intersection in question to better convey my meaning.

First, there's a Chinese Communist Party branch on a corner just down the street from my currrent apartment building here in the Xi Shan district.  The photo above shows a view of the intersection.  The “party” building or the “party' house would be on the right hand side, out of the photo.

Second, at the intersection by the corner, there is a left turn lane which runs against a boulevard.  (When I say boulevard, I mean the divider between the opposing lanes.)  In the photo above, you can see the boulevard is full of bushes.  In that boulevard you can see that there is a gap where cars can make u-turns.  It is at that gap which is the subject of this entry.

The truth about this gap is that half the cars that use it are making u-turns and half the cars are coming from the opposite direction and are using the gap to get to the entrace to my apartment complex.  Thus, they are going the wrong way on the lanes that run  right in front of my current apartment building complex.  The reason that they drive the wrong way is that they would otherwise have to drive half a kilometer down the road before they can turn around and drive another half a kilometer the right way to get to the apartment entrance.  My wife says I can't do this maneuver.

Now, some of these cars going the wrong way aren't going to our apartment complex.  What prompted me to make this blog entry is that I saw a car being driven the wrong way to the party house.  That is, I saw a CCP member breaking the traffic rules to get to the branch of his party.  That they do this, says something to me about either Chinese culture or members of the Chinese Communist Party.  It doesn't say much also about the developers.  Apparently this a phenomenom all over the world where planners think people will follow their paths like lemmings.