Trucks of Rural China

Call me a nerd, but one of the coolest aspects of visiting rural china was seeing all of the different trucks, tractors, motorized carts and other vehicals I had a hard time catagorizing. Rural China has work vehicals in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes.

I saw motorcycles, mopeds, and bicycles of every variety. The little six-person city buses I saw all around YnagShuo were actually more golf cart than bus.

But my favorite of them all were the antique-looking tractors that I saw everywhere.

They were actually equal parts truck and tractor. They were small and the putt-putt-putt sound of the engines made them sound as if they were all running on one cylinder.

The engines were up front and none of them had a hood. All the engines were simply exposed to the elements. The coolest thing about these tractor-trucks was that they did not have a rack-and-pinion steering system. Instead, the frame of the truck was articulated just in front of the driver but behind the engine. So when the driver turned the wheel, the entire front third if the truck swiveled.

All of them had flat beds like a pick-up trucks. Many of them have covered beds and some even had a dump-truck style bed.

I brought home a souvenir fan and a genuine fake antique Chinese coin from the Ming dynasty, but if I had really had my way, I would have bought an old Mao-era Chinese farming truck. I would shipped it back to the States and then go putt-putt-putt down Binnie Road in style.

But I guess I will have to be content with the cone-shaped straw hat I bought.

-Jack