avoiding the centre of the city for the next couple of days, Joyce realised.
She had spent a lot of time thinking about cars and driving, since she signed up to take driving lessons as soon as she got here. Her father, who spent most of his time in New York, had been horrified to hear that she was learning to drive in China. ‘They don’t know how to drive in that country. They just buy driving licences—they don’t have to do any tests or anything. You’ll be flattened on your first day on the road.’ But his warnings had not been heeded. It was probably true that in parts of China you could get a driving test just by paying money to the right person—the abysmal lack of motoring skills among many rural drivers seemed proof of that. She’d heard stories of one province where the only driving test was a written one. So as long as one could memorise rules, one could get out onto the street as a licensed driver without ever having driven a car.
But in Shanghai the system proved to be similar to that in other countries: there were driving schools, and there were lessons to be taken and a test to be undergone. Joyce had signed up for twenty lessons—the rule of thumb being that the average person needed roughly as many lessons as she was years old—and the first was scheduled for eleven o’clock the following Tuesday. Joyce had been very careful to specify the time, so that the morning rush hour would be over, and there would be a pause before the lunchtime rush hour kicked in and jammed the streets again.
But she was wondering whether she had made the right decision. Flip had had his test the previous week, and ended up with a time slot of five thirty to six. In the event, the car turned onto the main road, got stuck in a traffic jam, and barely moved. The examiner gave him a pass mark, despite his having skipped many of the official manoeuvres he was supposed to do. ‘He should really have extended de test, but I de the las’ one for de day, and he obviously wan’ go home,’ the young man said afterwards. She liked Flip and had initially wondered whether he might become her first Chinese boyfriend—until he confessed to her that he was trying to decide whether he was gay. And then she had met Marker Cai: gorgeous Mister Sigh , whom she was going to meet for coffee one of these days.
The thought put a grin on her face as she gingerly trod the busy pavements leading to the hardware shop. The early evening gridlock brought one bonus to pedestrians. During the earlier parts of the day, it was hard to cross a road of weaving, jerking, stop-start traffic. But during rush hour, the cars sat still most of the time, crawling forward only once or twice every few minutes. That made crossing the road easy. The main streets of the city became long thin car parks of stationary vehicles.
Strolling down the side road, she quickly found the hardware store and chose a bottle of super-strong stain remover. Although she knew that Flip had been joking about the presence of steak in cleaning fluid, she carefully checked the ingredients list to make sure there was nothing objectionable in it. After all, who would have thought there would be fish in Lea & Perrins? Of course, the bottle of cleaner she wanted was three times the price of the one next to it. It was always the way in China, and the thing that made life difficult and expensive for people from overseas. Products which were recognisable and had bonuses such as believable lists of ingredients on them were usually imported, and thus pricey. But there were always tempting local versions of everything, at a fraction of the price, but bearing no information in English, and often very little in Chinese. Does one take the risk? No; better to pay the premium.
Two minutes later, she was walking back across the main road and noticed that she was walking in between precisely the same cars; none of them had moved. And a minute after that, she slipped once more through the doors of
She had spent a lot of time thinking about cars and driving, since she signed up to take driving lessons as soon as she got here. Her father, who spent most of his time in New York, had been horrified to hear that she was learning to drive in China. ‘They don’t know how to drive in that country. They just buy driving licences—they don’t have to do any tests or anything. You’ll be flattened on your first day on the road.’ But his warnings had not been heeded. It was probably true that in parts of China you could get a driving test just by paying money to the right person—the abysmal lack of motoring skills among many rural drivers seemed proof of that. She’d heard stories of one province where the only driving test was a written one. So as long as one could memorise rules, one could get out onto the street as a licensed driver without ever having driven a car.
But in Shanghai the system proved to be similar to that in other countries: there were driving schools, and there were lessons to be taken and a test to be undergone. Joyce had signed up for twenty lessons—the rule of thumb being that the average person needed roughly as many lessons as she was years old—and the first was scheduled for eleven o’clock the following Tuesday. Joyce had been very careful to specify the time, so that the morning rush hour would be over, and there would be a pause before the lunchtime rush hour kicked in and jammed the streets again.
But she was wondering whether she had made the right decision. Flip had had his test the previous week, and ended up with a time slot of five thirty to six. In the event, the car turned onto the main road, got stuck in a traffic jam, and barely moved. The examiner gave him a pass mark, despite his having skipped many of the official manoeuvres he was supposed to do. ‘He should really have extended de test, but I de the las’ one for de day, and he obviously wan’ go home,’ the young man said afterwards. She liked Flip and had initially wondered whether he might become her first Chinese boyfriend—until he confessed to her that he was trying to decide whether he was gay. And then she had met Marker Cai: gorgeous Mister Sigh , whom she was going to meet for coffee one of these days.
The thought put a grin on her face as she gingerly trod the busy pavements leading to the hardware shop. The early evening gridlock brought one bonus to pedestrians. During the earlier parts of the day, it was hard to cross a road of weaving, jerking, stop-start traffic. But during rush hour, the cars sat still most of the time, crawling forward only once or twice every few minutes. That made crossing the road easy. The main streets of the city became long thin car parks of stationary vehicles.
Strolling down the side road, she quickly found the hardware store and chose a bottle of super-strong stain remover. Although she knew that Flip had been joking about the presence of steak in cleaning fluid, she carefully checked the ingredients list to make sure there was nothing objectionable in it. After all, who would have thought there would be fish in Lea & Perrins? Of course, the bottle of cleaner she wanted was three times the price of the one next to it. It was always the way in China, and the thing that made life difficult and expensive for people from overseas. Products which were recognisable and had bonuses such as believable lists of ingredients on them were usually imported, and thus pricey. But there were always tempting local versions of everything, at a fraction of the price, but bearing no information in English, and often very little in Chinese. Does one take the risk? No; better to pay the premium.
Two minutes later, she was walking back across the main road and noticed that she was walking in between precisely the same cars; none of them had moved. And a minute after that, she slipped once more through the doors of
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