Not out of thin air.

Some pictures from the roof of the apartment today. Smog's pretty bad, and it's been like this for a couple of days already.

It's getting worse every year, and it starts earlier every time, at least that's how I feel it.

Heating season starts in China in November, and most heating plants are powered with coal. So it has become sad normality that every winter the air is filled with smog for a couple of weeks in November and December.

But this smog is a month early, as the weather is still warm and the plants probably aren't really fired up yet. And yet the smog's already massive.

 Additionally more and more supermarkets start stocking protection masks and more and more people start wearing them. I also bought one for the first time in 3 years.

Also one can overhear more and more people talking and complaining about the bad air quality. Although Shenyang as an industrial hub is used to bad air as a lot of plants and factories caused tremendous pollution in the 90s until about 10 years ago, then it became better.

But an AQI of 300 is high. And values like this start becoming frequent. In a lot of Chinese cities.

IMHO currently China's most pressing, cause most visible and dangerously unhealty problem.

There is no bad weather, just wrong clothing.

What I admire the Chinese here in the Northeast for is their ability to brave the coldness of winter and still get to work the same way they do in summer - on their scooters. Regardless of streets being icy and snowy, and even with temperatures down to -20° C . Especially the migrant workers, who often have to get their tools with them to work and therefore neither can use public transport nor afford a car or even a cab ride.

Although I'm luckily not under this economic pressure every now and then I'm in the mood to go by scooter - if there's no ice or snow (what can happen in a dry climate like here, with sometimes weeks of no rain or snow fall) and temperatures are not tooooo low - around -10° C a 10 km-ride is bearable.

 If you wear the right outfit, that is. In the picture above you can see mine - a mixture of skiing trip and polar expedition. And benath still your regular work outfit, naturally.

above: salopettes
middle left: winter boots thickly lined, at best wear two pairs of socks beneath
middle center: lined cap russian style, below that ski googles
middle right: face mask "bank robber style"
below left: woolen gloves, worn beneath....
below center: ski gloves
and both pair of gloves in a third pair (below right), which I call "boxing gloves".

Basically a big lined sac with 2 openings and 2 laces to strap one end to the handlebar, and to put your hands into the other.  Offers additional protection for the most vulnerable spot, one's hands.

I haven't seen them anywhere else but here in Northeast China yet, but here everybody scooting in winter has a pair attached to their handlebar. Every year when winter is coming you can buy them virtually everywhere on the streets for 20 RMB, about 2,5 €.

Et voila, one is good to go. But even under all this layers, the weak point kept to be the freezing and after more than half an hour awfully hurting fingers. Can't do this every day, not if temperatures are below -10.

Life is rough, so you gotta be tough. And I'm not as tough as Chinese migrant workers. But their life's also way rougher.

And if someone's wondering why no helmet - well, we don't take kindly to people wearing helmets around here......

Just kidding - just barely anybody wears them in China - traffic safety is still an issue people are not yet very aware of. And when in Rome....

Traffic in Shenyang - The Players. Part 2

Having introduced certain kinds of "civilian" scooter riders here in Shenyang in the last post, this time everything revolves around what and how Chinese can transport on two wheels.

As with the "Civilians", the Transporters also can be divided into several subspecies. As there are:

Donkey carts

 As more and more Chinese can afford a car, they get rarer, but you still see them occassionally in the streets - donkey carts. Mostly owned by farmers who ride into the city centres to sell their produce, mainly fruits.

Jouster

Like knights with lances in middle age tournaments, the "jouster" or "lancer" carries with high speed narrow stuff that`s much longer than his vehicle and often has pointy ends. Mostly cables, boards or long bars. Or, as in the last picture of this series, a billboard.The long part can stick out at the front, the back, or even sideways.  And as the mentioned knight poses a threat to everyone coming his way.

Wide loads

For transporting stuff, you need boxes, be they made out of wood, cardboard, styrofoam, or plastic. The stores receiving that stuff delivered often just need that particular stuff, but not the boxes. So someone has to bring them back to their origin, or, if further unasable, to a recycling facility. That`s where the wide loads come in. They stack their cart with - exactly - empty boxes, and when the cart`s fully stacked, they tie even more - what? - yes, empty boxes - around it. And voila, ready to go.

Just ridiculously overloaded

The most common species among transporters. Chinese just master the art of piling stock. Even on a scooter. And driving through town with it. Yes, all the scooters in these pictures had people riding them on it when I took the pictures. This is just a small selection of my drive-by-(photo-)shootings:

 

Sky is the limit

And last but not least, two representitives of the "I-piled-up-the-stuff-on-my-cart-so-high-I-can`t-see-a-damn-thing-and-now-need-someone-walking-beside-or-in-front-of-me-to-tell-me-where-I´m-going"-kind:

Traffic in Shenyang - The Players. Part 1.

For a couple of months now I´m owning a little electric scooter. Those became more and more popular here in China in the last couple of years, as they are pretty cheap (even a migrant worker can afford one spending a month`s wage), of course more comfortable as a bicycle and during rush hour the quickest way to get through town. Mine`s a pretty basic model and with 40 km/h and a range of about 35 km sufficient for a cruise through this huge city.

So now I´m one among millions swarming through the city every day on their rides to get to work, home or anywhere else. On bigger roads scooters and bicycles have their own lanes, and in Shenyang almost every road is big. And if not, you just ride on the sidewalks, as you`re officially not allowed to drive on the road along with cars. Not that anyone really cared. But on a scooter you´re mainly surrounded by other cyclists or scooters, so this post revolves all around the interesting and to the eye of a western beholder somewhat strange encounters in this chaotic world of Shenyang city traffic.

Shenyang cyclists can be categorized in mainly three categories according to what purpose they use their bike or scooter for - I identified civilians, transporters and officials.

Civilians

 The "civilian" cyclist is defined by not using his ride to work or earn money with it, mainly by transporting stuff, but for private means, mainly getting someplace. Pretty obvious, I guess.

Most of them are normal,ordinary, not worh mentioning cyclists and scooter riders, but there are also lots of interesting subspecies, e.g.


Dementors

I named this kind of cyclists after their resemblance to this ghost-like beings from the Harry Potter movies. They also wear veil and you can`t see their faces.

The Shenyang Dementor is exclusively female and middle-aged. They wear this to protect their faces from strong winds, insects, dust and the sun. And pose a threat to everyone else as I highly doubt you can see really clearly through those "curtains", be they transparent or not.

Space (Wo-)men

Mostly middle-aged women like the Dementors, they use a different method to protect their faces from dust and sun -  huge caps with "sun glasses" that work like a car`s wind shield and cover the whole face, giving them somewhat the appearance of astronauts or futuristic 70ies science fiction movies or 80ies music videos.

Family Trips

 The last subspecies is something you probably encounter in a lot of other Asian countries too - the "a-whole-bunch-of-people-on-a-single-tiny-bike"-category. Of course we have`em here in Shenyang, too. You sometimes wonder why people travel like this, especially when children are involved, but the traffic safety awareness is still pretty low in China in general as real road safety education is rare - in cars for example children seats are not mandatory when transporting them, and besides the driver no one is obliged to wear safety belts. So of course on bikes you act as careless, as there is no law against doing so:

As always, those are only examples where I had my camera at hand and was quick enough to take a picture - you can encounter far worse here. And I must admit, as I was mostly riding my bike while taking these pictures, I became a huge traffic hazard myself because of course you might forget focussing on the road while huntig for that particular picture - or talking on the phone, what almost every Chinese does while driving or riding:

That`s it on the categories among "civilian" riders. Next blog post will be all about what Chinese transport how on bikes. Even more weird and risky and dangerous.