Reasons never to hire a car service in China

1. You will probably have a near-death experience.

2. If you don't have a near-death experience, you will come close.

3. Either way, death will be on your mind most of the trip.

I reached these conclusions recently, after experiencing most of the above. Let me tell you the tale.

We (a group of American teachers/friends) were headed to Beijing for the weekend. We'd normally take the train, but due to station renovations, the only two train stations in Qinhuangdao are both closed until next Summer. Nice one, boys. Way to leave the 2.7 million people in our city essentially stranded.

Anyway, we were searching for an alternate way to get to Beijing, since the train (you know, the primary mode of transportation for 99.9% of the city, the easiest way for moving the most people, the best way to get to anywhere from Qinhuangdao...can you tell this absolute lack of planning and foresight is a little frustrating?!) was not a feasible option. We had heard about a car service that could take us to Beijing for about 115 RMB a head--only about 20 RMB more than the train would have cost. Not bad--or so we thought.

The car service, and the cars, were illegal, which is to say they weren't registered, the plates were fake, and they certainly weren't allowed to be charging people for rides. And we should have known. Some of our Chinese friends had warned us the car service we solicited was probably illegal. We weren't exactly sure what this might have meant, but we thought it'd be "fun" to do anyway. It'd be an adventure--the kind of thing we could tell our children someday when they told us they wanted to travel abroad, and we'd be reminded of the days when we were young and adventurous. We'd have time to pen the first draft of the story from our hospital beds. 

And these hospital beds would be full of folks like us since this sort of thing--the illegal car service--is very common in China. Everyone knows these services exist, but no one seems to do anything about it, nor do they seem to care. It's like getting music from your roommate's computer and putting on your own. Tons of people do it, no one seems to care, and there's virtually no one "out there" to stop it. 

So anyway, here we are (the eight of us) hopping in these two cars, moments away from what could only be described as a near-death experience...prolonged over 6 hours. Words cannot describe to you in sufficient detail the conditions of this journey, but let me lay out for you the broad dimensions and I'll let you paint the whole picture for yourself:

1. Traffic laws in China don't really exist. Sure, they exist on paper (I think), but let me ask you: is a law really a law if no one enforces it? That was a leading question. No one enforces anything regarding traffic laws--or at least that's the case for the multiple police cars we just absolutely flew past. But maybe they were busy. One police car was busy littering, another car was busy using his lights/siren (probably) for the sole purpose of going faster than the situation necessitated. I'm convinced that the only laws of Chinese traffic are the laws of physics, which is a nerdy way of saying that the physical limits of gravity, aerodynamics, and thermodynamics are the only forces keeping vehicles from achieving what their operators would hope and dream.  

2. Drivers have various skills.

3. Drivers operate vehicles of various maneuverability, safety, and stability.

4. An unsettlingly high number of drivers will maneuver, without ration or conscience, to the point of the road that they see fit, regardless of anything behind them or to the side of them. Cutting others off frequently is only a natural part of driving.  

5. Higher speed does not equal higher risks. It equals not letting anything in life hold you down.

6. Safety apparently ranks among the following on many drivers' list of worldly concerns: running out of cooking oil, running out of toothpaste, getting a paper cut, oversleeping. 

7. Hired drivers must, must simultaneously do two or more of the following: smoke (what, you think it matters that they have paying customers?); talk on a cell phone; listen to music that can only be described as the strongest known evidence for arguing we live in a broken and completely fallen world; talk to the passengers.  

I'll spare you the details, but I will say that I've now had a near-death experience. Twice. (Don't forget the trip back from Beijing.) Near the end of our trip to Beijing, when my adrenaline had run out and I lost the ability to fear or feel pain, I reached a point of acceptance. Like, hey this isn't so bad...it's kind of like Mario Cart. You can just fly around and it doesn't really matter if you almost hit stuff. It doesn't really matter how crazy things get--as long as you get there as quickly as possible. Watch out for bananas!

On the way to Beijing, our driver did slow down, and even stop, for three reasons: 1. When traffic was at a stand-still for 20 minutes because of an absolutely terrible multiple-vehicle accident that, without any doubt in my mind, killed probably everyone involved (and yes, we saw the completely obliterated vehicles. No, we did not see the people involved, for which I am glad. Seeing those bodies would have emotionally scarred me for life); 2. When we hit the notoriously awful Beijing traffic, which was a large reason why the trip took six hours and not three like it should have; 3. when we went through the toll plazas. Without paying. 

That was kind of fun, I'll admit. Maybe because it gave me something exciting to think about other than death. It's fun to vicariously break the law too. And this wasn't the "slap on the wrist for you! Just pay the 50 cents online within two weeks, no big deal" kind of toll skipping. This was the "we will arrest you if we catch you" kind of skipping. Well, maybe they wouldn't arrest us for skipping the toll, but they surely would have when they discovered the cars and the car service were illegal. Exciting.

Aside from more toll hopping, the trip home was much less eventful...save the last 20 minutes. These last 20 minutes were perhaps the closest to death I've ever felt in my life. You see, we hit some fog. Bad fog. The worst fog I've ever seen in my life. The kind of fog that gives you five feet of visibility. The kind of fog that makes a normal person stop the car and say, "Of course I'm not driving in this!) And of course, we keep on truckin'. At a reduced speed, yes, but truckin' nonetheless. Not to worry though, because our driver had "done this plenty of times before." My chief concern wasn't so much that we'd run off the highway. It was that we'd smash into the back of one of the many trucks in China that have no working tail-lights. (Lights are a luxury, really. An option. They might be useful in some situations (e.g., night), but not all the time. And that's headlights we're talkin'. Tail-lights are really for the straight-and-narrow goody-goodies. The "weak" fellas.) 

Retrospectively, I can recall that my fear at this time progressed through several stages, leaving me with the following thoughts: 1. I might get hurt; 2. I will get hurt--if not physically, then certainly emotionally; 3. No, I will be hurt physically; 4. Actually, I might die; 5. I will die; 6. Somehow, I didn't die.

So we got our adventure. And hey, after therapy, we can learn to laugh about it. Looks like my first visit to a Chinese hospital will have to wait.