On family, long weekends and a criticism

Those of you that have read my previous post will have noticed a general theme.
I love life here in Beijing and am very positive about most things.
Partially it's because I am, by nature an optimist.
I try and minimise the problems and focus on the good things.

It is also however because life here genunely is great.
Interesting and challenging, with a healthy dose of fantastic food and good friends thrown in. And a low cost of living.
But to avoid accusations of smuggery I thought I'd throw you all in credit crunch Britain and elsewhere a fact to focus on. (Point of note, although the news may try and tell you otherwise, away from the export centres, the 'global' financial crisis is not hitting hard here in China - not as I can see with my limited vision anyway).

So here it is, the thing the irritates me about China the most and makes me swear every other day:
The driving is crap.
It's not dangerous particularly.
I'm certainly happy riding my bike all over the city and do so about 3 days a week, when I don't have to scoot between 2 jobs by taxi anyway.
But it is infuriating.
The main sentiment is "might is right".
And this makes for soem irritating incidences, when people see you but happily pull in front of you, because your person/bike/car can do their taxi/swv/bus no harm.
It might be technically true but it simply means that if they are driving a bigger car, all rules including etiquette (non-existent in this context) go out of the window.
Also drivers tend to rush unecessarily, they'll speed up to a red light, to wait in traffic, even if it means threatening you with impact.
And the right turn is sacrosanct and will happen at all times, no matter red light, pedestrian, or anything else.
Oh and people converse by way of their horn, but curiously I seem to be getting used to that - except when it's directed at me.
So because my dad (and his dad before him) is such a purist when it comes to driving, he's passed on a sensitivity to me that means all this stupidity on the roads quite gets my goat.

Anyway, enough of that - quite cathartic in it's own way, I've been crafting that post in my head for weeks.

This weekend is Qingming also known as Tomb Sweeping Day. So it's a time for Chinese folks to remember their ancestors and more recently departed and also to get out and enjoy the Spring. A good aspect of this is that we have a 3-day weekend, which we have decided to turn into a 4 day weekend and head south to Guilin and Yangshuo to catch some sun and relaxation before Beijing warms up.
It's beautiful down there and I have photos on Flickr to prove it.
You can expect a lot more when we get back.

A recent class saw a few of my students talking about the importance of family and their plans to return home when older to look after ageing parents.
This made me think about different attitudes to old people in different countries.
And made me happy to look forward to my Grandmother's 90th birthday when I'll be back in the UK at the end of April to see friends and family.