You know you’re in China when… Round One- all about driving

You know you're in China when….

Perhaps it might be more correct to say, "You know you're an expat living in China when…" but we'll just stick to the former, okay?

Round One

Where to even begin?  

Ah yes, how about we have a little chat about our driving situation?  

For the duration of this expat assignment we will have a car and a driver at our disposal.  It's company policy that employees of Mark's company are not allowed to drive while working in China.  And there's a VERY good reason for that.  The traffic is CRAZY!  Actually, other words come to mind but I won't write them as this is a rated G blog.  ;-)

It's as if all the drivers recently learned how to drive from watching race car movies or television shows.  I can't figure out why we don't see more accidents- perhaps they go slow enough and honk their horns enough to keep the bumps and scrapes to a minimum.  They honk their horns a lot.  They use it to warn others (either drivers, pedestrians or bike riders) that they're passing by too closely.  The lane markings are just for decoration as they don't follow the lane markers at all.  They seem to make up their own rules and do their own thing. I've heard some people compare the drivers and traffic here to the flow of a river- it's always flowing even when it gets amazingly congested.  Mark compares it to a massive flock of birds- the birds fly in tightly packed groups but yet you hardly ever see the birds collide. Kids, DON'T try this at home!

We actually got to pick out our car- we chose a Honda Odyssey because of their great track record (it is quite a bit smaller than the Odysseys you can buy in the USA).  We let the girls pick out the color of the car- I told them anything but white (you wouldn't believe all the dust coating everything here!). So we settled on a nice medium gray.  :-)

Mark picked out our driver on a previous trip to China (before we moved here).  He's young, newly married (or about to be married- I'm a little confused on this topic), has a fairly good grasp of English and was eager to be hired as our full-time driver.  He's also very kind and great with the girls!  So far we've been very happy with our decision.

However we're still getting used to having a driver.

What does having a driver mean?

It means not being able to go anywhere spontaneously (okay, so there are taxis available but we haven't ventured out enough to try those).  We can't go anywhere we want whenever we want to.  We also have been told that the drivers need at least one day off per week.  You know all those long road trips we used to take in the USA?  I think they're a thing of the past.  Also, communicating where we want to go can be a bit challenging.  Thank goodness for iPhones and the Google Translator app!  We've all been using it and having fun communicating through it.  

On the upside, we don't have to worry about traffic!  We let our driver handle it.  I've found that it's best not to watch what he's doing.  Otherwise it makes my stomach churn and my clenched knuckles turn white.  Our driver does know what he's doing.  Perhaps this will cure my back/side seat driver issue?  Who knows. Another added bonus is that Mark can keep working while he's going to and from work- which means that when he comes home from work he's actually done with work for the day.  

Another bonus: Our driver has come to our aid on a few different occasions.  He's helped us with communicating with other Chinese and made suggestions for restaurants for us to try. 

It just feels kind of weird handing over the driving responsibilities to someone else but so far so good!  I think we're all still getting used to each other and used to expectations.  I admit that I do worry about the day when our driver won't be available for whatever reason and having to try explain to the new/other driver where we want to go using hand gestures, iPhones and my inadequate Chinese.  

Are you curious to hear more about life in China?  Let me know!  We just got here so there's a lot for us to learn and to share with you.