Back on the bus, John starts reviewing the concept of the Special Economic Zone for the benefit of those who missed it the first five or six times. This gives me an opportunity to stare out the window in terror at the traffic. China has achieved a totally free-market traffic system, as far as I can tell. There are virtually no traffic lights, and apparently anybody is allowed to drive anywhere, in any direction. Everybody is constantly barging in front of everybody else, missing each other by molecules. The only law seems to be that if your horn works, you have to provide clear audible proof of this at least once every 30 seconds.

If you didn’t know that Shekou was a Special Economic Zone, you probably wouldn’t be very impressed by it. The buildings are mostly grim, industrial, and dirty; many seem to be crumbling. The roads are uneven, sometimes dirt, always potholed. But this area is turning into a manufacturing monster. Encouraged by the Chinese government, many foreign companies have located factories here, and China now exports more than $60 billion worth of goods a year. The United States buys a quarter of this, all kinds of items, including a tenth of our shoes and a third of our toys. They are big-time, Most-Favored-Nation trading partners of ours, the Chinese.

Our tour does not include a manufacturing stop. Instead we go to what John says is the largest kindergarten in Shekou, where we’re going to see the children put on a show. We arrive just as another group of sticker-wearers is leaving. We sit on tiny chairs, and a dozen heart-rendingly cute children, even cuter than the animated figures in the It’s a Small World After All boat ride, play instruments and dance for us while we take pictures like crazy. Fond memories of the People’s Republic.

As we leave, we learn that school isn’t actually in session; the children are here just to entertain the tourists.

Getting back on the bus, my son has an insight. “Really,” he says, “all kids are in a communism country, because they have to obey orders and they get pushed around.”

I agree that this is true, but he will still have to take out the garbage.

Now John is telling us how this city came to be called “the mouth of the snake.” It’s a long, old legend involving a snake that came here on a rainy day and turned into a beautiful woman (why not?), and a man lent her his umbrella, and they fell in love, and then needless to say this attracted the attention of the Underwater Dragon King. It’s a very complex legend, and I hope there isn’t going to be a quiz. Outside the window we see a large group of dogs, all tethered to a post, looking around with the standard earnest, vaguely cheerful dog expression. Some men are looking the dogs over, the way supermarket shoppers look over tomatoes. John is back on the endlessly fascinating topic of the Special Economic Zone, telling us how many square kilometers it is. This is not what I’m wondering about. What I’m wondering is: Are they going to eat those dogs? But I don’t ask, because I don’t really want to know. Now we’re going through a security checkpoint, leaving the Special Economic Zone and its many freedoms. Now we’re in the real People’s Republic, which makes the Special Economic Zone look like Epcot Center. Everywhere there are half-finished buildings, seemingly abandoned years ago in midconstruction, some of them with laundry hanging in them. There are also people everywhere, but nobody seems to be doing anything. I admit this is purely an impression, but it’s a strong one. The primary activities seem to be:

1. Seeing how many bundles you can pile on a bicycle and still ride it, and

2. Sitting around.

We go through a line of tollbooths—our booth was manned by six people—and get on an extremely surreal expressway. Picture a major, semi-modern, four-lane, interstate-type highway, except that it has every kind of vehicle—mostly older trucks and buses, but also motorcycles, tractors, bicycles with bundles piled incredibly high, even hand-drawn carts. Also you come across the occasional water buffalo, wandering along. Yes! Water buffalo! On the interstate! Bear in mind that this is the industrially advanced region of China.

Of course, all the vehicles, including the water buffalo, freely use both lanes. So our bus is constantly weaving and honking, accelerating to a top speed of about 45 miles per hour, then suddenly dropping to zero. We pass a truck with a flat tire; somebody has removed the wheel and thoughtfully left it in the traffic lane. We pass an overturned pig truck, with the pigs still in it, looking concerned. A group of people has gathered to sit around and watch. We pass two more overturned trucks, each of which has also attracted a seated audience. Maybe at some point the trucks here just spontaneously leap up and right themselves, and nobody wants to miss it.

All the while, John is talking about square kilometers and metric tons, but we tourists are not paying attention. We’re staring out the window, fascinated by the highway drama.

After about an hour we arrive in Dongguang, where we’re going to stop for lunch.

“People here like to eat poisonous snakes,” John informs us. This makes me nervous about what we’re having for lunch, especially after the scene with the dogs. Plus, I can’t help thinking about an alarming development in Chinese cuisine that I read about a few days earlier in a newspaper story, which I will quote from here:

Beijing (AP)—Health officials closed down 92 restaurants in a single city (Luoyang) for putting opium poppy pods in food served to customers, an official newspaper has reported ... in an attempt to get customers addicted to their food ... health officials started getting suspicious when they saw that some noodle shops and food stalls were attracting long lines of customers while others nearby did little business.

So I’m concerned that they’re going to offer us some delicacy whose name translates to “Poodle and Viper Stew with ‘Can’t Say No’ Noodles.” I’m relieved when John tells us we’re having Peking Duck. We pull up to a hotel and enter the dining room, where, lo and behold, we find that we’ll be dining with the very same sticker-wearing people that we encountered at the museum, the free market, and the kindergarten. This is indeed an amazing coincidence, when you consider how big China reportedly is.

The Peking Duck is pretty good, but not plentiful, only a couple of small pieces per person. John informs us that in China, when you eat Peking Duck, you eat only the skin.

“Sure,” mutters an Australian woman at our table. “And they’ll tell the next group that you eat only the meat.”

After lunch we’re back on the bus, on the road to the major city of Guangzhou, which most Westerners know as Canton. John is pointing out that we are passing many shops, which is true, but the vast majority of them seem to be either (a) permanently under construction or (b) selling used tires.

In a few minutes we encounter dramatic proof that China’s population is 1.1 billion: At least that many people are in a traffic jam with us. I have never seen a traffic jam like this—a huge, confused, gear-grinding, smoke-spewing, kaleidoscopic mass of vehicles, on the road and on the shoulders, stretching for miles and miles, every single driver simultaneously honking and attempting to change lanes. Our driver, Bill, puts on a wondrous show of skill, boldly bluffing other drivers, displaying lightning reflexes and great courage, aiming for spaces that I would not have attempted in a go-kart. Watching him, we passengers become swept up in the drama, our palms sweating each time he makes yet another daring, seemingly impossible move that will, if it succeeds, gain us maybe two whole feet.

We pass an exciting hour and a half this way, finally arriving at the source of the problem, which is, needless to say, a Repair Crew. Providing security are a half-dozen men who look like police officers or soldiers, standing around smoking and talking, ignoring the crazed traffic roiling past them. The work crew itself consists of eight men, seven of whom are watching one man, who’s sitting in the middle of the highway holding a hammer and a chisel. As we inch past, this man is carefully positioning the chisel on a certain spot on the concrete. It takes him a minute or so to get it exactly where he wants it, then, with great care, he raises the hammer and strikes the chisel. I can just barely hear the ping over the sound of the honking. The man lifts the chisel up to evaluate the situation. I estimate that, barring unforeseen delays, this particular repair job should easily be completed in 12,000 years. These guys are definitely qualified to do highway repair in the U.S.