Monthly Archives: March 2017

BRT Bus Rapid Transit of Guiyang

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The BRT Bus Rapid Transit  of Guiyang is a little bit like a subway, without the train. There is a ring road around Guiyang and during the construction there have been a lot of fairly substantial bus stations built in  the center of the highway. Buses have a dedicated lane on the freeway and they stop at each station as if they were little subway cars. Access to the bus is restricted by sliding gate doors, not unlike what you see in the subways.

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BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) might be called BART or BERT if it were in a USA city, but it is a modern, low tech, solution to a significant congestion problem. Guiyang is prospering and everybody with any feeling of upward mobility needs to have a driver license. It’s a status thing.  Of course, the roads can’t keep up with the rapid increase in the volume of cars. To make things a little worse, and a lot better, Guiyang is building subways through many of the most congested areas. During the construction, over the last couple years, several lanes of traffic have been closed off. It is big, “huge” construction.

Right now (MAR 11), congestion is falling as subway construction is nearing completion and the BRT is picking up in popularity.  It is my opinion that in another two years, Guiyang will be a highly convenient place to move around. Even those with cars should see some relief in congestion, but the bus/train solution is becoming increasingly competitive.

theBusStation

The BRT Station

LeavingTheStation

The bus leaving the station. Note: I am standing in what would be “the median” of a freeway in the USA.

I have just rented an apartment five minutes walk from the BRT bus station (Denggao Yunshan). This has given me a lot of flexibility in travel. If I want to go to the opposite side of this five million person city (Huaguoyan), I can just jump on the bus and be there in about twenty minutes. Normally by bus it takes an hour and a half, or more and by taxi nearly an hour. You can maybe double these numbers during rush hour traffic.The BRT gets bogged down in rush hour because some dirty lawbreakers use the dedicated bus lane for their Jags and Volvos, but it will only add about ten minutes to the trip.

Interconnections
Transportation in Guizhou is improving rapidly. I recently went to downtown Guiyang (Guizhou Normal University) from Kaili in an hour and a half. I got on the Gao Tia (bullet train) in Kaili at 2:35 pm and traveled at an average speed of 275 kilometers per hour (170 mph) and got off at 3:15 — maybe 120 miles. I caught the 262 bus to the University at 3:30 and arrived downtown at 4:00 pm.Going to Kaili was even easier with a BRT ride of 20 minutes and a 40 minute trip via Gao Tia.

theTrain

Gao Tia is translated “High Iron” (bullet train)

For those who want to go from one side of Guyang to the other, it’s a great solution.  Going from Xintian Zhai to Huaguo Yuan can take one to two hours by bus or taxi. BRT takes 20 or 25 minutes.  Bus 1 and Bus 2 go opposite directions around the circle.  Bus 3 is a bit faster because it doesn’t go to the North Rail Station (Beizhan). (Bus 3 begins and ends at the “Future Ark” development.) The best way to think of the Gao Tia is like a wheel, with the old bus routes as the spokes of the wheel that allow you to go to toward the city center.

 

Tooth Pulled by a Chinese Dentist

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I had my tooth pulled by a Chinese Dentist today. It’s a long painful process leading up to it (finding courage), but once decided, it happens fairly quickly. One the the great fears of an American in China is having dental work. More specifically, we are afraid of having a tooth pulled by a Chinese Dentist.

The Guizhou Provincial Government has a medical college and a hospital connected to the college. It’s called the medical college hospital. have a friend that is a leader. I’ve had work done before, getting a root canal, filling a cavity, but the pulling of a tooth is another level.The dental clinic is on the sixth floor and the dental surgery is on the fifth floor. Even one of my language tapes had a reference, “Hope you don’t have to go to a dentist while you are in China.” So when I had a broken tooth I knew it had to come out.

So my friend, Dr. Ma, introduces me to Dr. Tan, who is quite a nice young lady with good English. She confirms what I knew, that the tooth needs to come out.  She answers all my questions, and she knows I was more than a little frightened.  I asked her if it is difficult surgery, and she said that it was very easy. It’s the right upper front molar tooth, with the pain going up into my eye socket. It took real pain before I broke down to have the procedure. They gave me some antibiotics and the appointment was made for the next day. When we parted I asked her in my best Chinese if she would hold my hand during surgery. I had to tell her I was joking before she broke out laughing. So I went into the surgery section with a lot of confidence.

The anesthetic was effective and it was actually more trouble than I expected. I’ve never had a tooth pulled, except the baby teeth that just fell out. I didn’t know what to expect. I don’t remember the name of the doctor that did the work, but she was quite small, maybe eighty or ninety pounds. She seemed to have a lot of trouble getting hold of the tooth and giving it some good yanks. The tooth was broken near the gum line. Just when I was thinking, “Oh God, I should have asked for a man.” She got the hammer out. We had a signal planned that I would raise my hand if I had pain.

Holding the tooth with a tool and swinging the hammer made a loud clang, but no pain. The other Chinese dentist kept telling me to relax. The dentist hit the tooth several times, not just a couple. She was generating a lot of power. I thought she was holding a small sledge. I suspect that one of her feet was coming off the floor during the swings, maybe both feet. Still no pain.

Finally, when she was done swinging, she went back in with the pliers and started tugging again. Then I felt some pain and I actually raised my hand.  The second dentist said “Pain” in Chinese, a couple times, but the first Chinese dentist kept tugging. Two minutes later it was over. I got the tooth hole filled with cotton and there was little pain. It has been twelve hours since the surgery, and very little pain. The pain compares with a skinned knuckle. I am impressed.

So there you have it. The surgery is a total success, and I am happy the dentist didn’t stop when I raised my hand. She was almost done and knew it. She just finished the job. That pain shooting toward the eye socket is gone, and baring complications, I would say everything is a success. When I finally looked around it turns out that the dentist had more help than needed. There must have been ten doctors and nurses watching! Foreigners are still uncommon in Guiyang, especially in a Guiyang oral surgery clinic.

In retrospect, I had confidence in the place because of the root canal and crown that I had had previously. My dentist in the USA confirmed the procedure in China was the same as used in the USA. So it was a totally modern situation. To the uninitiated, it is surprising to see several dentist chairs and several doctors working together in the same room on different patients. In the USA, perhaps we are a bit spoiled with our medical privacy. Other than that, and the language barrier, things seem pretty standard on this side of the world.