| Exerpted from the April '05 Wired article entitled "China's Next Cultural Revolution," p108:
Here's the new cultural revolution: Every morning, Wang Jian Shua and his wife leave their condo in the suburbs of Shanghai, get into their Fiat sedan, and drive to jobs in the city. Two years ago, they lived in a cramped, decrepit apartment in the center of Shanghai, and Wang, an engineer for Microsoft, traveled to work by bus or train. "I never thought of getting a car," he says. "Driving was a very serious profession - like medicine." Cars were for party bureaucrats, or at least the very rich. But in 2000, Shanghai's per capita GDP (already much higher than China's overall) rose above $4,000, and the roads started filling with private cars. Local highways, which were designed by engineers who'd never driven, clogged. Shanghai's narrow streets became so congested that commuters abandoned their bicycles for the subway just to avoid the cars. Smog grew so thick that on many days you couldn't even see the boisterous skyscrapers looming above you. And so, a year ago, Wang moved into a spacious condo in the suburbs - and bought a car. "The change the car brings in my life is bigger than the house," he says. "My life scope is much larger now." Today Wang and his wife shop in Western-style supermarkets instead of haggling with the fishmonger, and they can drive to visit friends and return home by car long after the subway has shut down for the nightr. They grew up in a world bounded by transit schedules, shabby housing, and nosy neighbors, but now they live in an airy apartment, surrounded by the brand-new high-rises that have sprung out of the rice paddies. Some nights, when they're tired, Wang and his wife get in the car and drive out to the new airport just to experience speeding down the empty highway. But even that road is filling up. It makes Wang happy he bought a car as soon as he did. "What a car becomes something everyone can afford, forget it," he says. "You won't be able to drive." At a Hyundai dealership not far from Wang's condo, families prowl the showroom, inspecting the stitching on the seats, criticizing the design of the rear lights, trying to find the biggest car for their yuan. A TV blares a gov't program featuring a singer in a yellow dress crooning in front of a suburban development. "Nowadays life is getting better, sweeter and sweeter," she sings. "You can fulfill your dreams. The roads are getting wider and wider." |
Jian Shuo on Wired Magazine?