It’s become distinctly autumnal almost overnight, finally the hot humid air has gone replaced a welcome refreshing breeze. I give it 6-8 weeks before it starts to snow again – can’t wait!

It’s been a while since I took an early morning bus to the centre of town, but this morning, I couldn’t help noticing how many new cars were on the streets. I’d hazard a guess that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of new cars being driven out of the showroom every day.

There are some real nice motors on the streets of Changchun. I’ve never seen so many BMWs, Audis, Mercedes, and Buicks – you’d be forgiven for thinking that this city was full of millionaires.
In Changchun, the Audi 6 is probably the most popular luxury car, usually in black complete with blacked out windows. Also I am seeing more and more Japanese 4x4s, especially the gold coloured Lexuses (lexi?) and lots more Hondas.

People back home talk about ‘gridlock’ but I predict that within the next 5 years (or sooner) China is going to become one massive car park. Changchun is particularly bad as the road layout was designed in a time when traffic from cars wasn’t a consideration, and so there are many huge cross-road junctions and sets of traffic lights. If you have the money you can just take taxis everywhere – afterall they are cheap enough – and avoid the problems associated with maintaining a vehicle.

However, there is still a huge novelty value to owning a car as many families have never had the opportunity to do so before. Also there is massive social status and face value in being able to show others that you are rich, and I think this is factor most important to some. But in Changchun there is no real need beyond this to have your own transport, it is a small compact city with a half-decent public transport system. I would never buy my own car here.

I also wonder what kind of people can actually afford to buy such cars when the prices are still so high. To put this into perspective, a decent family car is about the same price as a large new apartment, and unlike an apartment, you will never recoup your money if you buy a car.
The average wage in Changchun is only 800-1000元 a month, maybe it is just that people have company cars or cars through finance deals or that they are filthy rich bandits.
For example a new VW Jetta costs 98,000元, Ford Mondeo 199,000元 and a Lexus 800,000元!

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