our (borrowed) ride

It's been fun to have a vehicle to use this summer!

Friends loaned us their mian bao che to use while they were back in the States for a few months. Mian bao che literally translates "bread loaf car". Check out the photo below, and you'll know exactly why it's called a bread loaf, it looks just like one!



The Bread-loaf is an incredibly popular vehicle, the workhorse of the driving fleet here. They are everywhere, and carry everything! We once saw one with a small donkey in the back. Farmers take out the back seats, fill them up with produce and drive into town - park on the side of the road, open up the door and it's an instant fruit/produce stand. Right now lots of them are full of watermelons - and when I say "full" I mean "really really full", you'd be surprised how many watermelons these farmers can get in their bread-loaf.

The one we are driving carries children :) Even though it is much smaller than an American minivan, we manage to squeeze three carseats across the middle row (the back row does not have seatbelts).


Isaac sits in the center - a bit of a "sister love sandwich". Sometimes it sounds like they are torturing him back there - with the seats squished together, he's well within arms reach of each big sister. They poke and prod and tickle and get right up in his face singing, "hey little buddy buddy".

One evening it sounded particularly rowdy and I felt sorry for the little guy in the middle. Until we arrived at our destination and opened up the back doors - and I discovered he was sound asleep :) Apparently when the sister-love-sandwich gets too intense the best option is to just settle down for a little nap.

It's an interesting ride. Matt says it drives like his 1990 Honda Civic. Except the Civic had a much larger engine. Imagine driving a 7 passenger vehicle equipped with a 1 liter engine - needless to say, acceleration is an issue! No power steering either - I only tried parallel parking once :)

But it's a lot faster than a double stroller! And we like the freedom to just pick up and go, without worrying about arranging for a driver. It's been so fun to go on quick little trips as a family.

And the girls love carseats. I think they like the freedom to sit on their own and that they sit up high enough they can look out the windows. [Carseats are really uncommon here - we have some that we got from the States.] I love the carseats because I can just sit by myself and not worry about restraining one or more children while riding down the road!

PS - I realized that our little set-up with the carseats satisfies approximately 3% of US child safety regs. Hey, the car probably satisfies only about 3% of US safety regulations!

Remember, we live in a different country! Americans are incredibly blessed to live in a country that is wealthy enough to create myriads of regulations for the express purpose of safe transportation. It's a whole different world here - although seat belt use is required for drivers, the law is not consistently obeyed. Children ride in laps. Pregnant women or those carrying children are actually encouraged to ride in the roomier front seat, because it is more comfortable. Seatbelts in rear seats are pretty uncommon - this mian bao is a pretty special ride because it does have the seatbelts.

We are thousands of miles away from anyone who would ever consider adding a special feature like side impact air bags or an alarm that sounded if you were about to back over something and didn't realize it.