The Great Wall of China6. The Rental Car

On a busy Thursday morning in the middle of September, Amy and I woke up early, had an uneventful breakfast and headed off to the Great Wall of China. We were both looking forward to hiking on the wall all day, but I was also looking forward to driving the rental car. I don't get a lot of opportunity to drive in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong is not the kind of city where you want to drive. Neither is Beijing, but as soon as we got out of the city, it was going to be wide open roads and countryside for most of the drive.

We rented a 2017 Peugeot 3008. We originally booked a basic compact, but when we got there, our only options were the Peugeot and some older Czech cars. Not having the car you reserved seems to be the international mandate of rental companies. Call me prejudiced, but I will take a Peugeot over a Czech car any day.

The car was a little too futuristic for me, with a smart phone dashboard display with touchscreen menus, sub-menus and tiny icons that I did not like. I'm driving a car, not looking at videos of cats. The less time you spend looking at the dashboard, the better. The good part about all this new technology was that it had cameras all over the place. You can parallel park into the tightest of spaces without hitting anything. That is especially useful when trying to park in a place like China. Where I come from, parking spaces are larger than the cars. China does things differently.

Front and rear cameras are standard in China because traffic laws are enforced rarely and followed even less. In the past, every collision was everyone else's fault. Insurance companies had to believe the police, who believed whichever party had the better job or paid the higher bribe. With today's cameras, it is harder to lie about hitting someone. People still lie, but if the police ever see the footage, they can figure it out.

Our rental car was a 6 speed manual transmission, and I was looking forward to getting it up to sixth gear. The night before, there was too much traffic from the airport to the hotel to ever get fast enough. I like to drive fast, but only when it is safe to do so and there are not a billion other cars in front of me. I'm not a speed junkie who recklessly does anything to go fast. I'm a speed fan who takes the opportunity when practical.