Thursday, January 6, 2011

Country driving in Spain

I recently read a great book about the relatively recent car revolution in China called “Country Driving”. It had some wonderful excepts from the Chinese driving test, such as:

If you come to a road that has been flooded, you should
a) accelerate, so the motor doesn’t flood.
b) stop, examine the water to make sure it’s shallow, and drive across slowly.
c) find a pedestrian and make him cross ahead of you

or

If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should
a) not tell him.
b) reply patiently and accurately.
c) tell him the wrong way.

How could this book possibly be relevant to a blog about Sant Cugat? Well, I was driving the kids to school a couple weeks ago, and I couldn’t help but notice a Chinese man standing at one of the roundabouts, intently moving his arm up and down as if he was petting an invisible dog. From reading the book I remembered that this was the sign for hitchhiking in China. Unfortunately the car was full of kids at the time, otherwise I would have tried to find out more…

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