Everyday Life in China

Our tour guides gave us many glimpses into regular life for the people inside China. They told us these amazing unverified “facts.”

Because of the family plan, there are now 6 million more men than women in China. That’s 6 million men who will never get married or have children. Their parents will never have grandchildren. They never have a brother or sister, a cousin is rare. Every child is guarded and fawned over. If a farmer has a daughter, after waiting four years, they can apply to the government to try again, hoping to get a boy to work the farm. Even with these rules, by 2050 they will not have enough food or water to support their population. Oh, and the only one rule applies to dogs too.

The cities there are mind boggling big. Beijing is 12 million, Shanghai is 15 million. For comparison, San Francisco is 4 million and New York is 8 million. Shanghai has 4000 buildings over 20 stories tall. They lived crammed together in these endless high-rises. Driving through the city is like being on a caterpillar in a forest of towers.

Speaking of driving, it’s something else! We were convinced that they simply do not have any traffic rules at all. Our tour guide was amazed at this. “Of course, we have rules. We know when we need to stop. We stop when we must stop.” Which basically means exactly three inches from hitting the nearest object, bus, car, or person. Apparently, they don’t do that too well either, there are over 600 accidents reported a day in Beijing.
And over 200,000 deaths a year in the whole country. More than during the war.

Each driver gets 12 points at the beginning of the year. Every violation deducts points, if they lose all 12 they must go to driving school for three days, which they hate. Often if they are close to the end and have lost almost all their points, they just stop driving for the rest of the year.

If they don’t drive to work or school, they ride bikes or scooters. Millions of them. They can buy a used bike for $5. I watched every night on our way back and I never saw a light on one of them.

With so many people competing for jobs, they work very hard. No way do they want to lose their jobs. It would very difficult to find a new one. Schooling is critical and parents work hard to save to send their child to university to make their lives better.

Pollution in Beijing is appalling; the murk is overwhelming and depressing. People on the streets wear masks so they don’t have to breathe the air. Our guide said, “No, no, it is fog.” But the haze had a definite brown tinge. On top of the factories and cars with awful emission problems, the sand from the desert is taking over. Approximately 300,000 tons of sand landed on Beijing in a single day last year. They are becoming a dust bowl, like Oklahoma in the 40’s.

Most of the population is not Communist. Communists are, by definition, atheists. Our guide said 80 percent of the people are Buddhists, therefore, not Communist. He said since they like to eat meat and have children, they’re not 100 percent Buddhist, but just enough Buddhist.“We like to enjoy our life.”

This is something you will need to know if you ever go to China. They love karaoke, called KTV there. If it is green KTV, it’s okay, that’s for families and groups to go have fun, laugh and sing. But if it’s yellow KTV, that’s for men. Ladies are already there to entertain.