Before I get to the meat of this post, I’ll add one more crazy stat that I furtively creeped this morning from the Express Newspaper the guy next to me on the bus was reading: 1,900 cars every day are added to the streets of Beijing alone. That’s one city, in one country.

Now for the real dinger. Construction in Beijing has caused a 60 mile backup outside the city that has gone on for 10 days. Traffic is moving at the glacial pace of a half-mile per day. The highway where the traffic jam is occurring is known for congestion, especially since large coal fields were discovered in Inner Mongolia, where the highway goes. The recent confab, however, is blamed on construction on one of three highways leading south into Beijing. Though there has been no road rage, price gougers are out in force. Villagers along the route who are the only source of food and water are upping prices: “a bottle of water that normally costs 1 yuan (15 cents) was selling for 10 yuan ($1.50), while the price of a 3 yuan- (45 cent-) cup of instant noodles had more than tripled” according to the Washington Post. Makes that DC commute seem like a walk in the park, huh?

The development of China and all the superlatives that go with it are indeed spectacular. The dragon has to somehow make sure, however, that it doesn’t choke on its own ferocious growth.

UPDATE: Some sources are reporting the tie up is over: “The bottleneck on the Beijing-Tibet expressway, which began on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks and was compounded by road maintenance works… seems to have vanished. A team of AFP reporters drove 260 kilometres Wednesday along the highway out of Beijing, through the northern province of Hebei and into Inner Mongolia — and did not encounter anything but intermittent traffic jams at toll booths.”

[Image Credit - above image is not of current traffic jam. Below is a picture of the current snarl]