Size ≠ Development

I got off the train in Hengyang, Hunan and immediately searched for a taxi, as I would in any city in China. I found, or should I say was accosted, by several taxi drivers attempting to “earn” my business. I told them I was headed to “Xin Yi Zhong,” and haggled over the price before my selected driver led me to his car. He opened the front door and as I got in, I saw that there were two other people sitting the back seat of the car. While this would have bothered me in many other places around the world, I didn’t give it a second thought, because I knew that this is a normal occurrence in Hengyang.

Hengyang is a city of 9 million people located an hour and a half train ride south of Zhuzhou. It has been the Chinese home of two of my fellow foreign teachers for the past year, which is why I was visiting. While Hengyang is larger not only in population than Zhuzhou, but also in land area, it is less developed. My friends and I have a very sophisticated system for measuring the development of a Chinese city. A city must pass a three question test to be labeled “developed.”
1. Is butter available for purchase in said city?
2. Can one buy peanut butter without selling a bodily organ?
3. Is cheese, in addition to the Kraft Singles variety, accessible at select supermarkets?

The cities are then branded using the following scale:
0 yeses: Not developed.
1 yes: Shows some signs of future development.
2 yeses: Is on its way to development, but needs improvement.
3 yeses: Is officially a developed Chinese city.

Here are the results of several cities: Wulingyuan: Not developed. Changsha: Developed. Zhuzhou: Needs improvement. Hengyang: Shows signs of future development. Hong Kong: Off the charts (but that’s a different story).

All joking aside, the structure of taxis in a city is an indicator of development in China and good example of my point. In Zhuzhou taxi drivers always use the meter. One needn’t ask; they put it down automatically. Most taxis are equipped with walkie-talkie like radios and I haven’t heard of a driver attempting to drive more than one party at a time. Hengyang is a different story. Haggling over the price is a must, as it is impossible to get a driver to even consider using the meter. The claim that the trip will be more expensive with the meter only means that the driver will run you around until it is. And packing people into cars like sardines so that the driver can get even more off the meter money is commonplace.

In America, the size of a city is a good gauge of its development. A town with 250 people likely has fewer things for sale than a city of several million. I think that both my very refined quiz and the "taxi test" prove the same in not true in China. As with so many other things here, you just never know what you’re going to get.