{"id":197,"date":"2008-10-30T10:31:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T14:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/2008\/10\/transportation-old-new-for-thursday-october-30\/"},"modified":"2008-12-10T14:50:11","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T19:50:11","slug":"transportation-old-new-for-thursday-october-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/2008\/10\/transportation-old-new-for-thursday-october-30\/","title":{"rendered":"Transportation Old &#038; New"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Getting from point A to point B in China is at best a challenge, and at worst life threatening.\u00a0 Today we took five taxis, a fast train, and a bicycle rickshaw.<\/p>\n<p>Taxi rides are always hairy in Shanghai, a city of well over 20 million, but taxi rides in Suzhou, a minor city of a mere 6 million are crazy.\u00a0 Swerving, beeping, speeding &#8212; all without the benefit of seat belts is unnerving.\u00a0 In the US when there is a two lane road, typically two cars are abreast.\u00a0 Here the taxis form a third lane right down the dotted white, middle line!\u00a0 But that&#8217;s\u00a0 not all.\u00a0 Motor scooters and bicyclists as well as rickshaws and pedicabs squeeze in where ever possible &#8212; and not so possible.\u00a0 Disney has never created a wilder ride.<\/p>\n<p>The fast train zipped along between 120-150 mph &#8212; fast but smooth.\u00a0 (We may take the bullet train next week &#8212; 260+ mph &#8212; hard to imagine that speed). The rickshaw ride, however, was an experience and a half.\u00a0 Cars, buses, motor scooters, bikes,and rickshaws all compete for the same lane.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time, it&#8217;s best not to watch &#8212; just close you&#8217;re eyes, pray, and trust the Lord, not the driver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Getting from point A to point B in China is at best a challenge, and at worst life threatening.\u00a0 Today we took five taxis, a fast train, and a bicycle rickshaw. Taxi rides are always hairy in Shanghai, a city of well over 20 million, but taxi rides in Suzhou, a minor city of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shanghai","category-suzhou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxonweb.net\/chinablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}