28 Nov 06
Easier said than done. It takes us about half an hour of driving up and down either side of the oddly boatless Yellow River, waving now and again at the traffic policemen sat at their desks in the central reservation, before we manage to break free and start heading in the right direction. Lanzhou's wide, straight roads give us a relatively safe vantage point from which to observe Chinese driving. It's... different. Like those in a lot of fast-developing countries, China's drivers put more emphasis on the 'fast' than on the 'developing'. Or the signalling. Or the giving way. Or stopping at red lights. And they have loads of accidents. This is going to be interesting.
Our four-day route involves heading north east from Lanzhou along the Yellow River Valley into the fringes of the Gobi Desert, then across the plains to Hohhot and down through some hillier territory towards Beijing, crossing the Great Wall of China at Badaling. Lanzhou is nearly 5,000 feet above sea level, while our destination, the capital, is only about 40 feet above sea level, so it's downhill all the way.
How very true. We start out as law-abiding paragons of gentility, but soon realise that will literally get us nowhere. If you don't push and barge and bully your way through a junction, you don't get through until everyone else has gone home to bed. It seems to be expected that bigger, faster, shinier cars will throw their weight around. Similarly, we start off by conscientiously obeying the speed limits (well, I do; co-driver Kyle Fortune has other ideas). But while 40 and 60km/h in town seems perfectly reasonable, 100 and 120km/h (62, 75mph) on the highways does not. We're talking about flat, wide, straight roads, many of them very new. Aside from a large number of police cars, these roads are light on traffic.
Don't Drive Tiredly, say the road signs. Don't Drive Drunkenly. There are lorries on the back of lorries. You can drive for miles without seeing a soul, apart from the road sweepers charged with clearing dust from the hard shoulder, but then you'll pass through a scruffy, modern strip development, with people playing snooker or badminton at the roadside. There are no pet dogs or cats, and wobbly scooterists shun crash helmets.
