Life and Travel in China

Recently, my wife watched some sad news on Chinese television. A driver was reversing and hit a 3-year-old child. He was aware of what he had done and decided... to kill this child. He ran over it 3 more times!!! Why? The point is that if someone is disabled after an accident, the driver pays for his treatment, surgery and rehabilitation throughout his life (no insurance system). Many drivers make victims. It's unimaginable to us, but here people are like beasts. The whole news was presented in a funny way, with music and colorful animation, along the lines of "look - a rich man thinks he can do anything." Nobody was worried about the child's life at all, it was more about the fact that a rich guy might even kill under the slogan "go for it." Of course, the police arrested him, but it is difficult to say what will happen to him. It depends on how much money he has and what kind of arrangements he has, because if the case goes quiet, he can get away with punishment. The law and the death penalty are for poor people, the rich are above the law. One girl once told me that while she was driving with her brother, they hit someone in the mountains, in the rain, and ran away. Her brother was the head of the hospital, a doctor! Theoretically, he could easily help the injured person, but in practice it looks different - it is better to finish him off or run away if there are no witnesses or cameras on the street. Many Chinese are simply beasts, and human life has never had value here, not even a child's life!

Recently, my wife and I went to her hometown, Hunan province. We spent some time in the countryside with her parents, visited her uncles and grandfather. It was interesting. Despite many cultural and linguistic differences (a completely different dialect) and even food differences, we are able to communicate perfectly and behave like a family. During these few days, we could observe some changes taking place in the countryside, we learned some secrets, and we listened to various gossips and interesting facts. Unfortunately, there was no internet there, but I wrote down the diary entries earlier and will publish some of them now.

I recently had the opportunity to take the high-speed train from Guangzhou to YueYang. A few years ago, traveling by ordinary train, the journey took exactly 12 hours. Now lasts 3 hours! The train travels at a maximum of 350 km/h, average speed is approximately 270 km/h. Interestingly, all new infrastructure was built, this line has no connection with the old railway network at all. New, huge and truly stunning stations were built. The South Station in Guangzhou looks better than any airport in Poland! Of course, I will present the photos in the gallery. The railways have invested in all these innovations, but this does not mean that passengers travel for free! Here the railway is profitable and people pay quite a lot for tickets. A trip from Guangzhou to YueYang (about 850 km) by super-fast train (300-340 km/h) costs PLN 200. A trip from Guangzhou to Shenzhen (about 100 km) by high-speed train (160-210 km/h) costs PLN 40. In Poland, we are used to the fact that the railway is unprofitable, it has to be maintained and subsidized. What if we invested in modern rolling stock, shortened the journey from Krakow to the seaside to 3 hours, provided passengers with a safe journey, comfortable trains and modern and clean stations, would the railway be profitable and would there be more passengers?! Certainly yes, not only from Poland, but from all over Europe! Well, of course we don't even have money to invest in anything! And China had surpluses of steel and other materials that were not exported outside the country, and that's how the high-speed railway was created.

The first information from a village in Hunan concerns drug dealers! Surprising, right? Anyone who has been to China knows that drug addiction is not a common problem. It applies rather to provinces and larger cities, you don't see many drug addicts, and they certainly don't walk the streets or stations. However, it turns out that some people, even in the countryside, earn a lot of money from drug trafficking. Next to my in-laws' house, a family built a large house, a classical-style entrance with golden columns, large windows, mosaics on the walls, and a high floor. As it turns out, they earned this money by selling illegal stimulants. Theoretically, such a practice is punishable by death. All neighbors and even family know about their profession. The police probably know about it too, but the protection and bribery system probably works very well here. The guy was already arrested and was facing the death penalty, but he got out of it. The owner of the new house wanted to invite the family to something like our housewarming party, but the family ignored him, they are simply ashamed of the criminal in the family.

Another neighbor in a village in Hunan can't be too proud of her daughter. The girl got married and she and her boyfriend moved somewhere to Guangdong province. They have a child. After some time, this girl met another man, a richer one. She did not divorce her husband, but moved in with her lover. Later she also took her child. The guy pays her about PLN 1,500 a month and supports her this way. Of course, the husband knows everything and sometimes even uses the money received by his wife-lover-maintainer.