Driving On The Left

Hong Kong, like many urban centers in the world, has a state-of-the-art public transportation system, and Chris and I have benefited from nearly all its many branches:

-- We love to ride the historic Star Ferry across the harbor between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon;
-- Our kids adore the Peak Tram, a zipper-like train that shuttles commuters and tourists up and down the steep and treacherous Mid-Levels slopes to Victoria Peak;
-- We've spent many a Sunday afternoon riding the Mid-Levels Escalator, the longest covered escalator in the world and an amazing feat of people-moving engineering;
-- We jump on the Metro, a labyrinth of subway lines traversing the city, stretching all the way to the Outer Territories, and ride up to the flower and bird markets in Kowloon;
-- We rely upon the Airport Shuttle, one of the most efficient, clean and timely airport shuttle trains we've ever been on, for many of our trips to and from the airport;
-- And like most city-dwellers, when we aren't passengers, we dodge busses of all shapes and sizes, trolleys, trams, and, of course, taxis as part of our everyday life.

In Hong Kong you can pretty much get wherever you want or need without any trouble and at a reasonable cost. In China, however, it's a totally different story. Although public transportation, like everything else, is quickly evolving and improving, it's never been something Chris and I have ever had to rely upon. That being said, we're also not allowed to drive in China and, therefore, have always been transported in a company-hired mini-van complete with a driver who sometimes does, but mostly doesn't, speak any English!

The company's reasons for restricting our driving privileges in China are many fold and all soundly based, especially since driving in China is a harrowing experience at best. Although the majority of our commuting experience has been on the roadways in and around Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhongshan and Jiangmen, we've spent countless hours in various vans on highways and streets in and around many of China's major cities, and have seen driving habits that would make any Western driver red with road rage or speechless with abject terror.

Although Chinese drivers are required to have a drivers license, they seldom adhere to the rules of the road as we in the West understand them and seem to have their own driving code - often based on the simple tenant that the bigger vehicle always wins! Yet somehow they manage to get from place to place relatively unscathed; and despite blatant violations of even the most straightforward rules of safety, including driving at very high speeds and maneuvering through traffic like an Indi-500 racer, we've almost never encountered a driver being pulled over by authorities!

Fortunately, although sometimes by trial and error, we've found drivers who consider the safety of their passengers of paramount importance, and Allan is certainly one of them. True, we must consider that it could be the very expensive van he's driving that motivates his high level of driving decorum, but whatever the reason, we always feel safe when we get into the car with him. He's a consummate professional and takes his job very seriously, never impatient, never speeding, never flustered, no matter what he encounters on the highly trafficked highways and city streets of Hong Kong and Southern China.

On top of that, he drives a van manufactured for Hong Kong, which means he sits on the right and drives on the left (or, for American's, the "wrong") side of the road; when we cross over into Mainland China, where they drive on the "correct" side of the road, Allan has to instantly switch to driving on the right, while his brain is very likely still driving on the left!