Return to Zhengzhou from Longmen Grottos

Pa writes --

On our return to Zhengzhou we arrived at sunset. Rush hour traffic was very tight. The drivers made three lanes out of what should have been two, driving literally inches apart. Powered vehicles only, no animals or animal powered carts.  We passed a forrest of 30 floor apartment buildings under construction shrouded in dust from the silt filled soil. The image of the sunset here was striking. I wonder if Hoboken looked like this in the 1960s. Think Blade Runner. 

 Getting back into the city proper we drove on an elevated road as if placed on top of the wide and busy city streets. I wonder what Robert Moses if NYC fame might have done here. Getting down off the elevated road, we were plunged into a mass of people. 

At sunset everyone seemed to be going home and stopping in the street for every kind of street food to take home to their (I suspect very small) apartments. I wanted to Jump out of the bus and get some food for our dinner! 

The sidewalks were jammed with people. The sidewalk near the road was filled with the extremely quiet electric scooters. It was difficult to cross the street because these scooters would nearly run you down.

So modern China is a mix of the rapid and the traditional -- on the way to Longmen Grottos, we saw a man carrying buckets of water suspended from a pole across his shoulders to a highway crew using a water cannon to water plants in the median. 


Or -- the street was immaculate by the Grotto, kept by people with brooms made of straw, but our tickets to the Longman site were scanned in via barcode.




Ma and I felt on the trip to Longean that we finally got a glimpse of the "real " China as opposed to the prepared version done at our fancy hotel.