Among China's first drivers were newspaper photographers, who took advantage of the faster form of transport to follow fire trucks and zoom to action hot spots. Veteran China Daily photographer Wu Zhiyi and former China Daily employee Chen Xiong can remember Beijing in the 1980s when driving a car in the capital was a sheer delight. There were sunny blue skies, very few cars and no traffic jams.
During the 1980s, one of the major seeds of change sprouting from China's new market economy was the all-new motoring industry.
When I was asked to write this column, I felt a little embarrassed. The main reason is that as a senior correspondent and editor covering the auto industry over 12 years at China Daily, I'm still not a car owner, although I got a driving license eight years ago. For this, I'm always ridiculed by many colleagues.