Adventure Day - Part 1

We loaded into the Loser Cruiser and set out for Badaling Great Wall.
It seemed like the right thing to do to since the boys had the day off
from school; moreover, the real chance exists that we may be outta
here in July, the rest of the family had never seen Badaling before,
and I think we all feel like you can never get enough of the Great Wall.

Just a few kilometers from home, we decided this trip would certainly
go better on a full stomach, so we flipped on left turn signal and...

...I screamed...we all cringed in preparation for impact.

I just caught the flash of the black car on our left as we were
beginning our left turn. He was speeding around us in the lane
normally used for oncoming traffic - ON OUR LEFT. The absurdity of
this pass may seem unbelievable to any stateside readers, but it
actually isn't too shocking for Beijing driving. The next few seconds
though, a bit shocking indeed.

Although we had only inched across the yellow lines before seeing him,
apparently our pending left altered his course too much. His reaction
- non existent. He didn't swerve back onto the road, he didn't lock
up his breaks, heck, he didn't even tap his breaks. Instead, he drove
his car directly into a brick wall located just off the left shoulder
of the road. The bricks crumbled over his hood and into his
windshield as the momentum carried the nose forward through the wall.
A final crunch and the tail end of the car flipped upwards as the nose of the
car plunged into a roadside creek bed.

We - still blinker on in the middle of the road - sat in shock. "What
the..."

"What do we..."

"Should I..."

"Call 9-1 - wait, no, what the..."

Chins dropped in amazement, we finished our turn and came to a stop in
the parking lot of the Iron Horse, our first destination on our day of
adventure.

I hopped out of my door and rushed toward the crash. As I did, the
door flopped open hard with the assistance of gravity due to the car's
inverted position. I actually thought he might have been killed, but
when the door opened, I was relieved to know that he was alive. I
expected a bloody face as I shouted, "Are you alright?"

What I got in return was a man, visibly angry, poking the screen of
his phone, and then looking up to me with a wagging finger. He was
speaking far too fast for me to understand his Chinese, but it was
pretty clear that the gist of his message was that his accident -
"his" as I maintain that we were not in one - was my fault.

The foreigner's burden of fault no matter what the circumstances is
certainly folklore among expats in Beijing; moreover, many people we
know have found themselves in interesting driving predicaments. This
dude was driving like a psycho(I wish I had only called him a psycho
while my children were listening), and he clearly paid no attention to
the road ahead of him.

Everyone was safe, he had a phone to call a lift, and I wasn't
sticking around to get hit with the blame.

Sent from the iPad of
Paul R. Koch
http://dugahole.blogspot.com/