What a strange existence I live here in Shanghai.  Its six o’clock on a monday night I’m moving at a snails pace (I only use that phrase because the truck next to us is leaving a trail of something that to look at makes the stomach turn), there are approximately 200000 people in the a mile radius of me and I know none of them.  I don’t even know the guy who driving me home.  Who is this guy.  What does he do all day that he has the time to drive me for two hours on a monday night.
The road is slam packed tonight and it looks like I’ll be getting home late.  When I was in college I lived an hour and a half from my parents house in Haslett, and I rarely went home since it was such a long trip.  Now I spend that much time, at least going to work one way.
Its a stream of communist blue trucks, minibuses, like the one I’m in, and the occasional     black Audi that seem to be THE car to have in China.  I liked the phrase I heard recently about Chinese drivers.  “China is a country of teenage drivers”.  Ten years ago their were one tenth of the cars on the road as their are today and all those new cars means new drivers.  Cars have become accessible to the majority of people for the first time in fairly recent years.  These people haven’t been driving since they were sixteen, they started driving when they were forty-five.  On the way to school today we almost created two accidents and were nearly run off the elevated highway when a massive travel bus decided it wanted to be in our lane for no apparent reason.  Ahead of us I watched another bus swerve in and out a lane like it had the suspension of a sports car.  The whole thing nearly toppled.
If you saw this on the highways of Indiana or Illinois (maybe not Florida) you would some sort of reaction, maybe even to take action and call the police, but in the strange existence of Shanghai this is commonplace.