Traffic.

I know that I have mentioned the awful traffic here in Shanghai in my previous blogs but it is difficult to impress on anyone who hasn't been here how truly terrible it really is. If a trip by car should take you 20 minutes, you have assume it will be 45 minutes to be on the safe side. And if it's raining- forget about it. On top of that, fender benders happen constantly- on a recent trip we saw 6 accidents in a 2 hour span. And yes, there are a lot of cars on the road but the driving skills just aren't up to western standards. Here are some examples:

- If you are waiting at a red light to turn left, and it turns green you just go. Yes, you turn in front of on coming traffic that is going straight. And as many cars as possible will turn until finally the cars going straight block their way.

- If you are getting off at an exit and it is backed up, you simply get out of the line and drive to the front of the line and try to cut in. Fine if it was just one car doing this but several cars try to do it at once so that the one lane exit actually becomes 4 or 5 lanes of cars trying to get over which of course leads to backups on the highway and more traffic jams.

- It is not uncommon to see cars backing up on the exit ramps of the highway because they realized they took a wrong turn- scary.

- It is OK to make a u-turn anywhere, anytime and most drivers don't bother to look around to see if other cars are going to stop for them- they just assume you will.

- If you are making a right turn into traffic, you just go. You don't stop and wait for an opening.

In general, people just drive however they want to and they act like they are the only ones on the road.

Plus, it isn't just car traffic - it's people traffic. We recently went for a day trip to Hangzhou which is a lake town about 2 hours drive from Shanghai (of course, it took us 4 hours to get there). Anyway, we made the mistake of going during a holiday here which I am sure contributed the crowds but take a look at the picture below to get an idea of what I mean when

I say crowded.

Wall to wall people in Hangzhou.

Rush hour traffic in Shanghai. We finally decided to get out of the car and take the metro after sitting in this for 20 minutes and moving about 100 yards.