Why do the interesting things always happen in Chongqing? By “interesting,” of course, I mean things that might make good stories but that you actually don’t want to have happen to you.

A colleague and I were headed to the airport, he back to Shanghai and I on the only flight to Ningbo, for a project meeting the next morning. As is normal, the client had provided a car to take us - even small companies in China usually have a car and driver. Our project site is a good hour and a half from Chongqing, and we both napped on the way, awaking to find ourselves headed into the tangle of hilly streets that is downtown Chongqing, around 5:30 in the afternoon - which is usually not necessary; there’s a highway leading to the airport. We had heard that the road to the airport was under construction, so we had left plenty of time, and we assumed that this was a necessary detour. But after quite a while of twisty streets, I was thinking, boy, if this guy hadn’t been provided by the client I’d be assuming we were being, well, taken for a ride. My colleague finally asked if the detour was necessary because of road construction. “No,” the driver responded, “I’m picking up a friend.” We were digesting this when, sure enough, a girl walked up and got in the passenger side seat, and on we went.

“Uh, is 45 minutes enough time?” I asked after several more red lights, because that was indeed how much time my colleague had. I had fifteen minutes more. “No problem!” the driver said cheerfully, and in retrospect that’s when I should have gotten scared. It was just then that we turned a corner to face a wall of traffic. Our driver was amazed, and in the back seat we were fidgeting. “Isn’t it pretty normal to have a lot of traffic at 6:00 pm?” I asked in a much less friendly tone. I was in fact furious.

I will spare the reader the next anxious 45 minutes. Suffice to say, we finally got on the highway to the airport, the driver stomped on the gas, and in another classic China moment, turned on a siren! Apparently the client, when purchasing the de rigeur black sedan, had shelled out more for the undercover cop package (they are not related in any way to law enforcement.) However, the siren did not magically solve our problem, as drivers in China typically view a siren as something like a super-horn - it kicks things up a notch, yes, but it doesn’t clear the road. We were finally saved by the fact that the airport is just not very far from downtown - my colleague missed his flight and had to take another one an hour later, and I did make mine. In the end, just another story.