"The Routes of Man" and China's "Self-Driving Clubs"

[Grzrd]

MODS - If this is more appropriate for "Off Topic", please move the thread.

I recently read a review of Ted Conover's "The Routes of Man" (apparently it has been out for a little over a year) that discussed his experiences with some of China's "self-driving" clubs (a breeding ground for Chinese roadgeeks?):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123650495

" ..Not all the roads in Conover's book are strewn with desperate stories. The most comically eye-opening chapter here is devoted to China's love affair with cars. Conover joins up with one of the many "self-driving" clubs that have sprung up in Chinese cities and embarks on a seven-day road tour with a caravan of proud car owners who drive just for pleasure. Bedecked with club decals, the 11 vehicles zoom off down the highway, their drivers happily listening to CDs with titles like The Relax Music of Automobiles.

Looking back on that adventure, Conover concludes, "It is reminiscent of a fading romance in American life, this crush on the automobile. ... Lord only knows where it all could be headed – in terms of congestion and pollution ... it is hard not to predict a slow-motion, multicar pileup in China's future. But it felt unfair to raise those issues in the presence of [the self-driving club members]. They were out to have fun, the kind we've already had. Who are we to say they can't?..."

Two questions:

1. Can anyone who has read the book offer an opinion on it?; and

2. Have any of our well-traveled members ever mingled with any of the Chinese "self-driving" clubs?

[J N Winkler]

1. Can anyone who has read the book offer an opinion on it?

I haven't read the whole book, but the part of it dealing with the self-driving clubs initially appeared as an article in the New Yorker, and I felt that was well worth reading.  Conover has built a reputation for getting an in-depth, ground's-eye view of issues which are normally seen only in bird's-eye view in the mass media.  In the mid-1980's, during our last major foray into immigration reform, he spent close to a year as an agricultural laborer in Arizona, Florida, and Idaho to see what life was really like for illegal immigrants working on fruit farms, and later wrote a book of reportage (his first, I think) based on that experience.

2. Have any of our well-traveled members ever mingled with any of the Chinese "self-driving" clubs?

Not me, I'm afraid.  Frankly I suspect the culture of Chinese roadgeekery, such as it exists (and Conover's New Yorker article is more or less unique as a firsthand testament to its vitality), is very different from ours just because China is such a closed culture.  One thing I would like to do in the long term is to obtain construction plans for the Chinese expressways, much as I do for American freeways and European motorways, but I have never come within a country mile of doing so even for Hong Kong where contract procurement and design activities are bilingually English/Chinese and much of the design work is carried out by British and Australian engineering consultancies.