Friday, May 28, 2010

Who do you think you are?

The other evening, walking down Jiugulou Dajie, the main street nearest to my apartment, I encountered a particularly outrageous piece of selfish parking.


Some would-be dakuan in huge black BMW had wanted to park right in front of the restaurant where he was going to eat. There weren't actually any parking spaces, since a number of people had got there before him (I think it's nominally a 'parking prohibited' stretch of road, but there's no enforcement). But at least these other drivers had (perhaps somewhat surprisingly, untypically) respected the crosswalk and left it clear. So, our man had used that narrow space to drive up on to the sidewalk and park transversely across it - almost completely blocking both the crossing and the sidewalk.

He had left one of those tin notices on his dash. I don't know what it said (not many characters on it at all, and two of them were bei jing), but these things are quite a common sight (I once took a ride with one of my students who, much to my embarrassment and disapproval, made use of one to cut through rush-hour traffic - he'd borrowed an official car from his dad, who was a very high-ranking policeman); their basic import is clearly: "I am way too important for you to even think of messing with me."

I glowered at his car for several seconds, and contemplated giving it a good kick. Then I glowered through the window of the restaurant, to see if I could identify the likely culprit - but, alas, the place was full of smug, sinister bastards with flat-top haircuts and expensive polo shirts (the 'uniform').


It's incidents like this that sometimes make you despair of this country....

2 comments:

The Weeble said...

This is why the Good Lord gave us sharp keys.

Froog said...

A somewhat risky tactic, Weebs, at 7pm on a well-lit street, right outside the restaurant where the driver is presumably eating - perhaps just a few metres away.

Try not to get yourself arrested (and/or beaten up), there's a good chap.