China: Like Los Angeles, but worse. (Image by Rgoogin.)

As China hurtles ahead like a rocket into its highly urban future, the country’s environmental and quality-of-life challenges mount. Formerly a rural culture in which bicycles ruled the road, China’s experiencing a proliferation of cars that’s overwhelmed its infrastructure. The Global Times has a story about a colossal nine-days-and-counting traffic jam across 100 kilometers of highway in the Huai’an section of Northern China. Traffic experts believe it could last, yikes, a month.

But the snarl has created insta-markets for entrepreneurs who have flocked to the area to serve the stranded drivers’ needs–and make a buck. An excerpt from the article:

“For drivers, suffering the congestion on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway is nothing new. In a similar scene this July, traffic was also reduced to a crawl for nearly one month. Some killed time by playing cards, while some could only wait idly by. In the latest bout of congestion on the Huai’an section, a truck driver surnamed Huang, told the Global Times that he suffered ‘double blows.’

‘Instant noodles are sold at four times the original price while I wait in the congestion,’ he said. ‘Not only the congestion annoys me, but also those vendors,’ he joked.”