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Originally Posted by glatt
I don't really get it. Why would China do this? In the US, we were settled after the invention of the car, so we built everything far apart because we could. Now we need cars because nothing is close to anything else.
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Settled after the invention of the car? The population increased but most of the states and major cities were in place. Most of the land was spoken for and at least sparsely settled.
Sure levittown and commuting came along after the car but that was a chicken/egg deal.
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In China, they have been doing just fine with bicycles. I assume things are close together if bikes work OK. Why switch to cars if it ain't broke?
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They used bicycles because it beat walking or a Water Buffalo. Being dirt poor, and not much they could do about it under Mao, it was the best they could do. It's hard to move a refrigerator or console TV on a bike, but they didn't have either, for the most part.
Most of China has extremes in weather, from bitter snowy winter to monsoons and tropical downpours. How much fun is that on a bike?
They didn't travel far because there was nothing to travel to, no malls, no Disney World, no resorts for the peasants.
Roads are shit, too. They just started their road overhaul to connect every town and city with decent roads for the first time in history.
You may see their lifestyle as quaint and bucolic, but I'm sure they're damn sick of it.
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm....?
