Remember that video where a TV crew staked out a Corvette in Chicago and filmed it being stripped in seven minutes? Here's a story from Joel, on the Chinasmack website that really gives you an idea how different Beijing is from the U.S.
What would you do if you had just bought a $78,000 brand-new BMW X1? Pick up a hot date? Drive it on the Autobahn? If your answer is “leave it parked on the side of the road unattended for A YEAR while it collects dust,” then Beijing police would like to have a word with you.
Recently, the car pictured above went viral on the Chinese internet, after it was abandoned to the elements outside Beijing’s CCTV building, and netizens are letting their imaginations run rampant with stories of the car’s origins. One such story surmises a tycoon bought the BMW as a gift for a CCTV host, but the host wouldn’t accept it, and so the tycoon abandoned it on the roadside.
Aside from all the jokes, most people are just aghast at the idea of throwing away such a large sum of money, and see the wasted car as another sign of China’s growing income gap:
1) When a normal person loses their bicycle, they spend days searching the entire city, losing sleep and eating poorly — that's the difference between rich and poor.
2) To put it another way: The rich can afford a BMW, the super rich can afford to abandon a BMW.
Locals say the car was first reported as abandoned more than six months ago, but as the car has no plates, police had no way to contact the owner.
The car, which has no personal effects inside, and even still has its miles-per-gallon information from the dealership hanging on the windshield, was finally towed away by police due to its internet fame — most likely to protect the car from vandals or theft. On the ground where the car once lay in squalor, police wrote in white chalk, “X1 owner, please come to the Gongzhufen Traffic Police Station to handle this matter.”
The matters that require handling are registration and purchasing of plates, as well as a whole year’s worth of parking tickets — hardly frightening to anyone who can afford $80,000 on the side of the road.––Paul Duchene
