The Shanghai Think Tank

Downtown Shanghai is turning into one enormous construction site. Roads are being widened, narrowed, and completely rerouted as the city undergoes an historic metamorphosis.

Walls and barriers are being erected all along the main thoroughfares obscuring many of the city's most common landmarks and shielding blocks of the storefronts from view.

One imagines that one day all the walls and barriers will suddenly be removed revealing a brand new city.

In the meantime, all the construction plays havoc on traffic patterns and even seasoned drivers find familiar routes have changed direction or completely disappeared. Maneuvering around all the sites, many of which are unmarked, can be treacherous and there are many tie ups that result.

I joked to a taxi driver who narrowly missed a gaping hole in the middle of an off-ramp from the Yan An Expressway that it might be more useful to drive a tank in Shanghai. He responded matter-of-factly that he knew how to drive a tank and would give my proposal further consideration.

I find that usually Chinese don't make statements like this in jest, so I decided to find out what he meant when he said he had driven a tank. It turned out he had been in the army for a number of times and during his service had learned how to drive a tank.

As we swerved around another pile of rubble and some pylons along Tianmu Rd. I asked him whether it was tougher to drive a tank in the army or to drive a cab in Shanghai ? He didn't hesitate: "driving a cab in Shanghai"