Nine-day traffic jam NOT in Atlanta

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

08/23/2010

Nine-day traffic jam NOT in Atlanta

Drivers in China have been stuck in a traffic jam for nine straight days now, trapped in gridlock that stretches more than 62 miles, according to multiple media reports. The backup has thousands of cars and trucks crawling the major route from Beijing to Zhangjiakou.

And here's the worst part: Severe congestion isn't expected to end until construction projects are finished on Sept. 13, msnbc.com reported, citing Xinhua News.

"Insufficient traffic capacity on the National Expressway 110 caused by maintenance construction since August 19 is the major cause of the congestion," a Beijing Traffic Management Bureau spokesman told the Beijing-based Global Times.

CNN.com reports some drivers are playing cards to pass the time. Others accused nearby food vendors of price-gouging to take advantage of the situation

AJC.COM