Disposable Lifestyle

As I've written before, the car is not the primary means of transportation for most people living in Beijing. Public transportation and bicycles/scooters by far outstrip the number of cars on the road. In light of this, I find it very odd that there are NO trashy cars on the road. All of them look very nice and appear to be well maintained. This is very odd in light of the fact that almost all of the bicycles are in horrid disrepair.

Looking over a typical bike rack, about 15% appear to be newer bikes in good shape. The rest are rusting hulks that I'm surprised work at all. These bikes could all use a new chain, new gears and a thorough cleaning and lubing. Walking the streets here, though, I've seen only one bicycle repair shop. For whatever reason, cars get maintained and bicycles don't . I don't know if bicycle repairs are just beyond the means of most bike owners (which would not be the case for car owners) or if it is cheaper to just buy a new bike when the old one completely fails. You would think that if your bike was your main means of transportation that you would maintain it.

This serves to highlight an aspect of Chinese culture that seems widespread: the lack of planning/maintenance. More so than the US, a lot of life here seems to be one-use and disposable. I've always thought of China as a resource-strapped country but I was clearly wrong about this. The Chinese here may keep items in disrepair longer but, for the most part, they don't seem to take this one step further and do things like preventative maintenance (like lubing their bikes).

Another great example: there are two elevators in the apartment building in which we are staying. The two of them are never both working and this seems to be by design. In the few days we've been here, we've ridden on both; one day the left-hand one will be working, the next day its the right-hand one. I have no idea why this is; Katie guessed that maybe the electrical system isn't up to the task of running both simultaneously. Whatever the reason, it is clear that mechanically both elevators work fine, just not at the same time.

Why is this? Why, in one of the largest cities in the world, does there appear to be a profound lack of planning by its citizens. I am at a loss for a good answer.