Road Conditions Haven’t Improved

We got a few inches last night.  Up early to head to the gym I couldn’t tell just how much had fell, staring out the window, into the dark.  I turned on the car, turned up the heat and considered the covering.   What I needed was an ice scraper.  Any car in New York back home would necessarily have one.  But not here.  The wipers disperse the snow but not the ice.  I roll down both windows but frozen ice beads remain, obscuring any sight.  The heat will catch up with this covering but I need something quicker than that.  A magazine in the back seat gets me most of the way to clarity. 

Our compound roads have been cleared but at six-fifteen nothing whatsoever has been done to the roads outside.  It’s only a few inches of cover but it’s a slick pack now on the road and it is very slippery.  We have a perfectly reasonable Honda Odyssey, which does what its supposed most of the time.  But its useless in conditions like this.  The brakes lock easily.  I proceed at about twenty miles per hour. 

An hour later we leave the gym.  Road conditions haven’t improved.  I note to my younger one that when we were in Vermont over Christmas it snowed quite a bit more than this one night and the roads in a little country town were all plowed by morning.  A big bus speeds past me to the left, on the main road and I consider what would happen if he had to stop suddenly.   Signal right.  I approach the turn as a nonagenarian might at about seven miles per hour, allowing the three-wheeled cart to pass first.

Now, a few hours later I’ve just driven my wife along the same streets.  They’re all clear now.  It warmed up.  Everything’s melted.   Perhaps the city or the county here in Shunyi saved money by not hitting the streets early with a plow and a salter this morning.  Thirty years ago China would certainly have disregarded such things as bourgeoisie luxuries.  But how many accidents were there this morning, in this city of twenty million?  I hope there weren’t any deaths.  Where does “plowed roads” reside on the list of weile renmin fuwu – serve the people-services that the government wants to get to?  Certainly car owners are now a vast majority. 

Wednesday, 2/22/17