Observations from the 14th Floor

And observations from the 23rd floor....

Our room on the 23rd floor was in the south east corner of the building.  Our room on the 14th floor is in north east corner, so we've had a panoramic view of Changzhou (pronounced Chong-Joe) to the north of us.  We're right above the hotel entrance and so we get to see when people are released from their quarantine and what happens, at least from an aerial view:  they stand on the sidewalk with their luggage and wait for someone to pick them up.  It always looks so exciting!!  

The street along the north side of the hotel is a more busy street.  It has ten lanes.  On each side, there are three lanes for cars, one for scooters and one for buses pulling into a bus stop in the center.  The street along the east side is a quiet two lane road.

Honking is ever present.  However, it seems that it is not a get-out-of-my-way rude kind of honking, but more of a caution-I'm-right-here kind of honk.  In our observations, the lines on the road are guidelines, not rules.  We see scooters, pedestrians and cars in the wrong lane going the wrong way all of the time (on the main road cars don't go the wrong way, just people and scooters). If someone or something is in the way, they just move around--no honking or slamming on brakes.  The woman at the top of this picture is walking down the middle of the road.  The scooter on the line at the bottom had been travelling in the oncoming traffic lane.  

There are lots of colors of cars here. Lots of metallic colored cars.  The taxis are a metallic green.  Probably 80% of the cars have sunroofs.  This car didn't photograph well.  The back was a bright pink gradating to bright blue.

In all of the traffic we've watched in the last 22 days here, we haven't seen a single accident.  I'm not a traffic expert, but that seems pretty impressive with that busy of a road and the loose guidelines they apply.  Scooters don't seem to have to stop for red lights or anything else, if there is a space to go, they go! 

Where the side street meets the main road, there are two lanes clearly labeled for direction.  One is for right-turning cars off the main road and one for right turning cars onto the main road.  However, we are entertained every time we look out by scooters who drive down the middle of the lane where traffic could be oncoming around the corner and then dart into the road to cross in the cross walk to the other side.  It seems so dangerous to us!  The scooter in the bottom center of the picture is about to turn left  and dart into the crosswalk the yellow bus is going over.  

Clearly it's not a law here as it is in Utah, that as a driver you are not to cross a ladder style crosswalk with someone in it!!

The streets in this area of the city are quite clean. We've seen several shop owners sweeping and people out cleaning garbage off the streets.  That is nice.

There is a man who has a cart on his scooter full of melons and fruit.  He comes by on the side street every day calling out to come and buy his fruit.  We wish we had a megaphone to call down to him and a pulley to pull it up! We would pay well!

We have really enjoyed watching out the windows, but we realize that these are only opinions from our current point of view.  Give us a few weeks from a different perspective and we might have completely different opinions! We know we have much, much to learn!