I love China, I love Beijing - no doubt about that! But there are things in Beijing that needs improvement. The main obstacle for all of us Beijingers to tackle in our daily life is the traffic chaos. Sure, the Beijing government have done a lot to improve the situation, especially since that memorable day, July 13, 2001, when the IOC decided that the Chinese capitol should be host to the Olympic Summer Games in 2008. Next year! But planning and implemention of the infrastructure cannot keep pace with the growth of the traffic. I suppose noone had imagined, that the Chinese people, especially Beijingers, so quickly would improve their personal finances leaving space for fulfilling the dream of most Chinese: Buy their own car! 11 years ago, when I came to live in Beijing, there were less than 800.000 motor vehicles on the streets of Beijing and with only the 3rd Ringroad hardly completed. Today there are 2,9 million cars/sedans crowding the streets and lanes - with 1.000 new cars coming on the road EVERY DAY, 365 days a year! The latest estgimate from Beijing government is, that by the end of this year, there will be more than 3 million cars... and that is plus 62.000 taxi's, thousands of busses, lorries and trucks for commercial use. We have now got 4th Ringroad, 5th Ringroad and a still incomplete 6th Ringroad in the making. Expressways out of Beijing i all directions, widened boulevards in the city, new throughfares, streets, overpasses and bridges, buslanes and an attempt to make bicycle lanes, traffic lights etc. But still the traffic is chaotic - even with thousands of traffic police on the streets attempting to regulate and control the traffic. Where, 11 years ago, it could take me 15 minutes to drive a distance of 5-6 kilometer, which seemed slow at that time, today it can easily take 45 to 60 minutes! Why? In my humble opinion it is not mainly caused by incomplete infrastructure. No, it is mainly caused by the mindset of the drivers! "I have the right of way - and don't care about others"! And very few drivers care about the traffic law. Yes, we do have a traffic law now, as from May 1, 2004. Before that we only had some traffic rules, that were not national. Running the red light, constantly changing lanes, not positioning in the correct lane for driving in or out of expressways and highways, or to make left or right turns, are just some of the common violations. And the terrible practice of leaving the cars in the middle of the road, when an accident has happened... no one seems to want to move the vehicle, while they discuss who's fault it was... even though it creates kilometer long queues. Sad to say, that some of the worst violators in the traffic are... foreigners! But the bigger and more expensive the car is, the driver think he/she has more right of way than those driving more humble vehicles. And that traffic rules are only valid for "all the others". Of course it is not only carowners/drivers who violate the law. Bicyclists and pedestrians are no better. It is rare to see anyone waiting for a green light before crossing the road. No wonder that around 120.000 people are killed every year in the traffic of China.

So it is a normal working day again in Denmark after the Whitsun-holiday. Of course here in China yesterday was also a normal working day, as China constitutionally is an atheistic country. So religious festivals whether Christian, Mosaic, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Taoistic, are not public holidays for the 1,3 billion Chinese people. But religion plays a more and more important part in China now. After people lost faith in Communism 30 years ago have they been seeking "new truths" for life, and many have found that in religion. Today we have more than 100 million Buddhists, some 22 million Muslims, 25 million Protestant Christians, 7 million Catholic Christians and an unknown hundred million number of taoists... as most Chinese people, maybe without realizing it themselves, are taoists in practice. They go to the temples to pray and offer incense to their ancestors and the taoistic deities in the hope it will bring then luck and fortune, good health, to find a spouse, to have a baby, to be cured for an illnes, or just to make sure nothing in life goes wrong. The Protestant Christian Church is probably the religion that has grown fastest in China with churches filled to more than capacity every Sunday. In Beijing we opened recently (one and a half year ago) two new Churches - one i Fengtai District and the other just across the street from my home (see photo) here in Chaoyang District. But no, China does not celebrate religious festivals as we know them in Denmark - Advent, Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsun/Pentecost, but since May 1, 1997 we have had weekends, where people before only had Sundays off from work. Now with a 40 hour five-day working week, most people can enjoy free time and other activities on Saturdays and Sundays. And so they do. While people in Denmark where enjoying the Whitsun holiday, Beijingers flocked to Chaoyang Park for the Beijing Foreign Language Festival... here one year before the opening of the Olympic Summer Games 2008 in Beijing learning to speak English have almost become a "religion" in the capitol of China.