When driving is about luck and death

Some digits are more auspicious than others when it comes to the anti-pollution driving scheme

At least one day a week, Chinese superstition is at least partly to blame for traffic gridlock in the nation's capital.

Those days are the worst to drive in Beijing.

If you are a law-abiding citizen whose registration plate ends with the number four, you're probably using a bus, subway or a pedaled pony to get around on those days because you won't be legally driving your car.

To alleviate traffic jams and help curb pollution - there are more than 5 million cars in Beijing - authorities have established a rotating roster for days when people can drive. One weekday each week, one group of cars is barred in downtown areas during business hours.

In the recent rotation, on Mondays, for example, if your plates end in zero or five, you may be on your bicycle.

Because the Chinese regard four as the unluckiest of unlucky numbers (the pronunciation of four in Chinese is similar to that of the word for death) number plates ending in four or containing the number are in the minority in Beijing. Therefore there are more cars in the traffic jams and worse traffic on the days the fours are banned, which as of this writing is a Thursday.

Lucky number 8 on the other hand: bingo. Number 8 days in Beijing are the luckiest for traffic flow since the more-numerous eights should be parked at home. Getting the number plates in the first place is a bit of a lottery.

Since 2011, after getting a driver's license, aspiring motorists have had to apply and hope to be one in 150 people every month lucky enough to get tags. If you are chosen, you get a choice among several tags with different numbers. According to some media reports, plates on the black market can fetch a handsome sum.

For Ma Zhong, a scholar of environmental economics who in 2009 was awarded China's annual Green Person award, a different set of numbers paint an altogether more somber reality of the relationship between China's economy and its environment.

Its rapid development over the past 30 years has seen its coal production and use skyrocket, hurtling its economy to where it is today, but also damaging its environment and harming millions of people. A 2013 Lancet report by former Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu said outdoor pollution leads to the premature deaths of up to 500,000 Chinese annually.

To curb pollution, the government has spent hundreds of billions of yuan since 2011. But, according to the Ambient Air Quality Standard, only Haikou in the island province of Hainan, coastal Zhuhai in Guangdong and remote Lhasa in Tibet have air of an acceptable quality.

Hundreds of workers die in coal mines every year (2014 was among the lowest with around 1,000 recorded fatalities) and at least 600 million Chinese have had to seek medical care for pollution-related illnesses in recent decades.

"Our coal consumption has reached levels that was projected to only happen 10 years from now," Ma says. "We have to find other ways to sustain our economic growth with renewable energy, solar, wind and biomass. For now, we will continue to rely on coal."

China's targets up to 2020 include sustained GDP growth of 7 to 8 percent and significantly reducing carbon emissions at the same time.

Both are vital for China and its people, but one, like a Beijing number plate, might take a bit longer to attain.

Those whose mode of transport still relies on legwork, literally, continue to be a boon to the economy and environment.

And while there may or may not be exactly 9 million bicycles or cyclists in Beijing (as the Katie Melua song suggests), their daily contribution to society is still omnipresent - schoolchildren hitching a ride on their mother's fixie, seniors on bikes a Cape Town hipster would cut his beard off for, bicyclists towing homemade carts filled with recyclables, delivery boys on their morning dispatches. The relationship between cyclists and motorists here seems to be a lot less tenuous and tense than it is in Cape Town, where it was hoped the building of a vast network of bicycle lanes would get more people out of their cars and onto a two-wheeler.

In Beijing, bicycles are used primarily as a mode of transport to get from point A to point B, rather than as a form of exercise, as is the case in South Africa. The Spandex set here is in the minority.

"Once Chinese people dreamed of having a TV, sewing machine and a bicycle," says Wang Yiwei, professor of the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China. "Today, people are dreaming beyond getting BMWs."

For the ordinary Joe, the former may still apply, and for those with a bicycle, there is peace of mind in the many two- to three-meter, cordoned-off cycling lanes that run alongside most of the roads in this city of more than 21.5 million inhabitants.

As for those driving BMWs (or at least Audi Q5s, which seem to be the drive du jour among wealthier Beijingers), they may have fulfilled a part of the new Chinese dream, but must feel a touch of envy sitting in nightmarish traffic most days, watching their two-wheeled compatriots whiz by.

Off the road transport, though, has been one of the highlights of living in Beijing.

Coming from a city where rail commuting can be dangerous (muggings are commonplace) and chronically unreliable, Beijing's subway system has been ideal in getting to know this vast metropolis. An estimated 8 million people use the subway every weekday, so it does become a case of hustle and bustle.

During peak hour, most carriages are chock-a-block, which means you are cheek to jowl with a bunch of strangers.

But it is one of the cheapest, safest and easiest ways to get around and is cleaner than, say, New York's subway, more efficient than London's Tube and an altogether more pleasant experience than Paris' nightmare Metro.

Whether your vantage point is the confines of a car, on a bicycle, in the subway, or on the streets with your face covered by an anti-pollution mask, Beijing continues to make progress as a world-class city, blue skies or not.

The author is the deputy editor of Cape Argus in Cape Town, South Africa.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/25/2015 page14)