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How my nagging made Shanghai roads safer

By Linda Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-02 10:17

I immediately pounced on my friend, barking at him for his car keys when I soon learnt he planned to drive home at the end of the night.

Though I didn't recognize it at the time, I was in fact joining the ranks of Shanghai's traffic cops, the ones who are busy scouring the roads to make sure drivers have a blood-alcohol level of zero, which is required by law in China.

It's different than my home city of Toronto, where drivers are legally allowed behind the wheel after a few well-paced drinks - so long as they don't surpass the 0.08 blood-alcohol limit.

But in Shanghai, where bar goers consume alcoholic beverages for easily 40 yuan plus per glass, it annoys me when they bring their cars out, especially since taxi rides home within the city core run for less than 30 yuan.

That price doesn't even get the meter started in Toronto, or the T-dot as it's fashionably nicknamed.

My friend, however, reasoned that he'd been drinking responsibly.

At 185cm and 108kg, my friend is well capable of handling a few modest pours of the world-famous Tennessee whisky, but I was stuck on erring on the side of caution.

And so I spent the remainder of the night harassing him - as politely as I could - to leave his car behind and to take a cab home instead.

The final peace offering of 30-yuan cab fare eventually paid off when he conceded and hopped into a cab as we departed from the bar.

He still gives me a hard time about the "Linda factor".

I'm left quite impressed he left his car parked outside the bar that night, though he had to pay the parking fine for failing to pick his car up on time the next day.

Most Canucks back home would've shut me up a long time ago and driven home anyway, even if deep down inside they knew it wasn't right.

One thing is for sure, the next time we go drinking, I

bet he won't be bringing his car - or me.

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