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Research Series on the Chinese Dream
and China’s Development Path

Junxiu Wang Editor

Development
of a Society
on Wheels
Understanding the Rise of Automobile-
dependency in China
Research Series on the Chinese Dream
and China’s Development Path

Project Director
Xie Shouguang, President, Social Sciences Academic Press

Series editors
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Li Peilin, Vice president, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

Academic Advisors
Cai Fang, Gao Peiyong, Li Lin, Li Qiang, Ma Huaide, Pan Jiahua, Pei Changhong,
Qi Ye, Wang Lei, Wang Ming, Zhang Yuyan, Zheng Yongnian, Zhou Hong
Drawing on a large body of empirical studies done over the last two decades, the
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13571

Junxiu Wang
Editor

Development of a Society
on Wheels
Understanding the Rise
of Automobile-dependency in China

123
Editor
Junxiu Wang
Institute of Sociology
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Beijing, China

ISSN 2363-6866 ISSN 2363-6874 (electronic)

Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path
ISBN 978-981-13-2269-3 ISBN 978-981-13-2270-9 (eBook)
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Series Preface

Since China’s reform and opening began in 1978, the country has come a long way
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v
vi Series Preface

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Acknowledgements

After a relatively short gestation period, the Research Series on the Chinese Dream
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lishing process. That high quality if also at times stylistically as well as technically
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this, and is continuing to do this with superb skills. They are, in alphabetical order:
Mr. Cai Jihui, Ms. Liu Xiaojun, Mr. Ren Wenwu, Ms. Shi Xiaolin, Ms. Song
Yuehua, Mr. Tong Genxing, Ms. Wu Dan, Ms. Yao Dongmei, Ms. Yun Wei, and
Ms. Zhou Qiong. In addition, Xie Shouguang and Li Yanling have also taken part
in this work.
Ms. Wu Dan is the SSAP in-house editor for the current volume.

vii
viii Acknowledgements

Our appreciation is also owed to Ms. Li Yan, Mr. Chai Ning, Ms. Wang Lei, and
Ms. Xu Yi from Springer’s Beijing Representative Office. Their strong support for
the SSAP team in various aspects of the project helped to make the latter’s work
that much easier than it would have otherwise been.
We thank Ms. Liu Wanyun for translating this book and Ms. Luo Hongyan for
her work as the polisher. The translation and draft polish process benefited greatly
from the consistent and professional coordination service by Global Tone
Communication Technology Co., Ltd.. We thank everyone involved for their hard
work.
Last, but certainly not least, it must be mentioned that funding for this project
comes from the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China. Our pro-
found gratitude, if we can be forgiven for a bit of apophasis, goes without saying.

Social Sciences Academic Press

Springer
Contents

1 Automobiles: A Unique Perspective on China’s Social

Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Junxiu Wang
2 China’s Automobile-Dependent Society at the Crossroads:
Annual Report on Development of the Automobile-Dependent
Society in China (2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Junxiu Wang
3 In Pursuit of Sustainability: Annual Report on the Development
of an Automobile-Dependent Society in China (2013) . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Junxiu Wang
4 Annual Report on Development of the Automobile-Dependent
Society in China (2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Junxiu Wang
5 Survey Report on Current Status of Automobiles
in China (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Junxiu Wang
6 Survey Report on Chinese People’s Travel in 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Junxiu Wang
7 Analysis of Family Car Ownership Among Different Groups
in 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Junxiu Wang and Jing Quan
8 The Political Ecology of an Automobile-Dependent Society . . . . . . 181
Wanchun Deng and Xiaojue Wang
9 Urbanization and Automobile Dependency: Opportunities
and Challenges in China’s Urban Sprawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Lin Xiaoshan

ix
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x Contents

10 Research on Risky Driving Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Junxiu Wang
11 Traffic Risk and Personal Safety in Automobile-Dependent
Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Xiaoshan Lin
12 Annual Report on Consumption of the Automobile-Dependent
Society in China (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Junxiu Wang
13 Research and Application of the Image of Brand Users Based
on Schema Theory: A Case Study of Car Brands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Ying Cao and Guoqun Fu
14 Annual Report on the Trend of Automobile Consumption
in China (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Mingchao Xiao
Chapter 1
Automobiles: A Unique Perspective
on China’s Social Development

Junxiu Wang

1.1 The Emerging Automobile-Dependent

Society of China

Previous automobile studies by Chinese scholars focused mainly on three aspects.

The first is technological advances. The second is the economic implications of the
development of the industry, an issue the government, manufacturers, commercial
service providers as well as consumers are all keenly interested in. The third aspect
is the environment for automobile use, which has a lot to do with traffic. Whereas
the automobile as a means of transportation has spatially transformed the country’s
urban and rural landscape, it has become more and more of a source of stress for
people and cities alike. Given the growing importance of automobiles and trans-
portation in people’s daily life, the aforementioned three aspects would hardly
suffice to present the whole picture.
This study on automobile-dependent society adds a new dimension to China’s
automobile issues. Rather than discussing technology, economics or transportation
management alone, it takes an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses soci-
ology, psychology, environment, energy, law, transportation, urban science, com-
munications, economics, information technology, culture and automobile
technology to review and rethink how automobiles have reshaped our society and
life. It tries to map out the way forward for the industry, address the problems
automobiles have caused, like energy, environment pollution, traffic safety and
urban malaise, and to explore the vehicle-enabled mobility, particularly in relation
to social development.
Automobile-dependent society is not an academic concept in the strict sense, nor
is its origin traceable. Household car ownership (or more specifically, household car

J. Wang (&)
Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. and Social Sciences Academic Press 2019 1
J. Wang (ed.), Development of a Society on Wheels,
Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2270-9_1
2 J. Wang

ownership of 20% or above) is often used as a measure for automobile-dependent

society. This alone, however, is inadequate to define an automobile-dependent
society which has the automobiles as the major means of mobility and where the
living environment and space have been optimized for the car owners. A typical
example would be the US, or more precisely, Los Angeles, the very epitome of the
American automobile-dependent society. Speaking from the perspective of urban
planning, urban development in an automobile-dependent society focuses on and
gives priority to the vehicular traffic. Los Angeles is a city of this kind. While the
US is regarded as a country on wheels, Los Angeles is an even more striking case in
point. As is noted in a popular song, “nobody walks in LA”. Considering the
staggering growth in automobiles in the recent decade, we can rightly say China is
becoming a country on wheels.

1.2 How an Automobile-Dependent Society Came

into Being?

How did the American automobile-dependent society come into being?

R. M. Fogelson mentioned in Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950, “the
proliferation of private automobiles, the number of which soared from 8000 to
500,000 in 1910, 8 million in 1920, and 23 million in 1930. By then, there was one
automobile for every five people—and as many as one for every four in Detroit, the
home of the auto industry, more than one for every three in Baltimore, and nearly
one for every two in Los Angeles.”1 Around 1920, many Americans decided the
automobile was preferable to mass transit they had got used to. As a result, the
small downtown area of Los Angeles saw 250 thousand cars pour in, which means
around two fifths of the people drove to get there. By the 1940s the ratio increased
to 50%. Prior to that time, traffic jam had already plagued American cities.
A problem arising in the 1870s, congestion worsened in the following two decades
as the streets were teeming with streetcars, carriages and two-wheel pushcarts.
People who had expected the appearance of faster vehicles would ease up the traffic
jam turned out to find that the conflux of trucks, cars, streetcars and horse-drawn
vehicles made the traffic even worse. In the 1920s, people came to realize that the
rapid increase of cars led to traffic problems. The technical department and the
government proposed to ban the entry of private cars into downtown areas but
the proposal was later dropped due to strong objection. The American people
worked out many measures to deal with traffic congestion, including tough traffic
regulations and expressways built to divert vehicular traffic. Different types of
vehicles were funneled onto different roads and the vehicular and pedestrian traffic
was segregated. Unauthorized parking or pedestrian through traffic was forbidden.
One-way roads were designated, where traffic was not allowed to move in the

1
See [1].
1 Automobiles: A Unique Perspective on China’s Social Development 3

opposite direction. Traffic and parking signs emerged first, then traffic control
gestures, and then red and green signal lights. Vehicle registration and driving
license policies were introduced. Drivers must use lights after dark. Through traffic
had priority over turning traffic, so as to reduce congestion. At certain sections left
turns were forbidden. Though these measures did help reduce traffic jams and
improve the management of traffic movements, they failed to fundamentally solve
road congestion in American cities.
Other measures introduced included building roads to divert vehicles which
would otherwise have to pass through the downtown areas to reach the other end of
the city. Pedestrian lanes and overpasses were built, and so were elevated highways
to avoid clogging at level-crossings. The rapidly expanding traffic, however, soon
outpaced the construction of roads, which, once up and running, would be teeming
with automobiles. It was also found that the automobile traffic, increasing more than
twice as fast as the population, was outgrowing the cities’ ability to accommodate
it. Some began to argue for mass transit, saying the city was saturated with cars and
the huge cost in time would make people abandon driving for public means of
transportation. Trams, for example, would be more efficient as a tram route could
carry more than three times the riders on three motor vehicle lanes, while a subway
or elevated railway carried nearly 50 times more. They argued that the cities would
be better advised to improve mass transit systems than to build highways. They
made the proposal as early as 1926, a great insight back then. Had it been accepted,
the American cities might have a different look today. But interest groups, car
manufacturers in particular, actively lobbied for expressways. Closely allied with
them were car dealers, suppliers, the steel, rubber and petroleum industries, the
motorists’ associations at various levels, and construction contractors. Expressway
planners and engineers were also with them, offering research to support their
position. Local and federal officials, too, viewed expressway construction as a way
to create jobs during the Great Depression and to help stabilize the economy after
WWII. The expressway was extolled as a very attractive idea as it would allow “a
free flow of vehicular traffic”. “There should be no more reason for a motorist who
is passing through a city to slow down than there is for an airplane which is passing
over it”. “The days of traffic jam are gone”. “The wide expressway extends its way
to the city’s doorstep”. “The freeways would enable the cities to remedy, or pos-
sibly halt, the decentralization of business and the depreciation of downtown
property values”. These arguments held a lot of appeal to many industries and
people from different backgrounds.2
Under the pressure of lobbyists, city officials and downtown commercial interest
groups, the state and federal governments reluctantly gave up their long-held
position that urban highways were a local responsibility. The state began to des-
ignate urban freeways as state highways which were funded mostly by gasoline
taxes. The federal government, which had long included country road construction
into its budget, started to subsidize urban highways, first as part of President

2
Ibid, pp. 344–345.
4 J. Wang

Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and later as a national defense endeavor. And
Congress was holding hearings on legislation that would eventually lead to the
creation of the National Inter-state and Defense Highway System, which would
include most of the nation’s as yet unbuilt urban freeways.3 Later, the US
expressway network gradually took form while the old elevated railways were
removed, and the automobile became the main means of travel.
China has joined the ranks of automobile-dependent societies at a stunning
speed. This epitomizes the country’s stunning economic success brought by its
opening-up & reform policy, and points to the process of how China has grown
from an insignificant automobile manufacturer to a very important player in the
world scene. Back in the early 1980s, the government decided to curtail car pro-
duction and use for energy conservation purpose. In 1982 the national automobile
production was reduced to 80,000 according to the government plan, around one
third the level in 1980, and a large number of private cars were left unused in the
garages. But today, things are poles apart from 35 years ago, with more than 80,000
vehicles produced every day. In 2015, the production and sales of Chinese auto-
mobiles reached a record high of 24.5033 million and 24.5976 million respectively,
up 3.3 and 4.7% over the previous year. Since China overtook the US to become a
leading automobile producer and market in 2009, China’s automobile production
and sales have undergone exponential growth, which almost doubled by 2010,
topped the 20 million mark to reach 22.1168 million and 21.9841 million in 2013,
and rose to 23.72 million and 23.49 million in 2014 (see Fig. 1.1).
In the 1980s, the motor vehicles produced in China were mostly commercial
vehicles, trucks in particular. When China’s automobile industry was in recession in
1982, a five-ton Dongfeng truck sold for RMB18000 only. The buyers were all
danwei (organizations) rather than individuals. Today, the tally is mostly about
passenger vehicles sold to numerous households. In 2014, of the 23.72 million and
23.49 million vehicles produced and sold across the country, passenger vehicles
numbered 19.92 million and 19.7 million, up 10.2 and 9.9% year on year while the
commercial vehicles numbered 3.8 million and 3.79 million, down 5.7 and 6.5%.
About 20 million families purchase cars each year, and that means a population of
60 million, if we assume each family has three members. By the end of October
2015, China registered 276 million motor vehicles, including 169 million cars.
About 90% of them, or 150 million, were private cars. We can still assume each
family has three members while ignoring the small number of households which
own more than one car, and we would then have about 450 million car users. If
users increase by 60 million on a yearly basis, China will soon see more than half of
its population using cars. This trend is also perceptible in the growth of the number
of direct car users. In October 2015, China had a total of 322 million drivers,
including 275 million car drivers.4 The new car drivers, as potential direct users,
would keep pushing up the vehicles sales and production.

3
Ibid, pp. 348–349.
4
See [2].
1 Automobiles: A Unique Perspective on China’s Social Development 5

Fig. 1.1 Automobile production and sales in China, 2008–2015 (in 10,000 s)

Fig. 1.2 Changes in China’s private automobile ownership. Source China Statistical Yearbook
2015

Private automobile ownership in China grew with the economy (see Fig. 1.3).
With the accumulation of social wealth and improvement of living standards, the
automobile has become, after houses, yet another important consumer product and
even part of our lives. Table 1.1 and Fig. 1.2 both present the changes in the
numbers of motor vehicles, passenger vehicles, trucks, in urban and rural resident
income and per capita GDP since 1985 when the nascent Chinese automobile
industry had just entered an era of growth.
6 J. Wang

Fig. 1.3 Changes in private car ownership. Source China Statistical Yearbook 2015

Table 1.1 Motor vehicle ownership and resident income

Total Number of Number Per capita Per capita Per
number of passenger of trucks disposal net income capita
motor vehicles (in income of of rural GDP
vehicles (in 10,000 s) urban residents (RMB)
(in 10,000 s) residents (RMB)
10,000 s) (RMB)
1985 28 2 26.48 739.1 397.6 860
1990 82 24 57.48 1510.2 686.3 1654
1995 250 114 131.83 4283 1577.7 5074
2000 625 365 259.09 6280 2253.4 7902
2005 1848 1384 452.11 10,493 3254.9 14,259
2006 2333 1824 494.91 11,759.5 3587 16,602
2007 2876 2317 539.45 13,785.8 4140.4 20,337
2008 3501 2881 596.39 15,780.8 4760.6 23,912
2009 4575 3808 753.4 17,174.7 5153.2 25,963
2010 5939 4990 931.52 19,109.4 5919 30,567
2011 7327 6237 1067.43 21,809.8 6977.3 36,018
2012 8839 7637 1175.63 24,564.7 7916.6 39,544
2013 10,502 9198 1275.49 26,955.1 8895.9 43,320
2014 12,339 10,945 1352.78 29,381 9892 46,629
Source China Statistical Yearbook 2015

Figure 1.4 shows that the numbers of motor vehicles, passenger vehicles and
trucks grow in positive relation to the per capita disposal income of urban residents
and per capita GDP.
1 Automobiles: A Unique Perspective on China’s Social Development 7

Fig. 1.4 Motor vehicle ownership and resident income. Source China Statistical Yearbook 2015

1.3 What Does Automobile-Dependency Bring?

Some sociologists criticize the scholars for their indifference to the impact of
automobiles on society. One billion cars were manufactured in the 20th century.
Currently over 500 million cars are around, a figure that is expected to double by
2015. The automobiles’ such huge influence is seldom discussed by sociologists.
“The social sciences have generally ignored the motor car and its awesome con-
sequences for social life. Three ‘disciplines’ that ought to have examined the social
impact of the car are industrial sociology, the analyses of consumption practices and
urban studies. Within industrial sociology there has been little examination of how
the mass production of cars has extraordinarily transformed social life. It did not see
how the huge number of cars being produced through ‘Fordist’ methods, especially
within the US, were impacting upon the patterns of social life as car ownership
became ‘democratized’ and ‘generalized’. Within the study of consumption there
has not been much examination of the use-value of cars in permitting extraordinary
modes of mobility, new ways of dwelling in movement and the car culture to
develop. The main question for consumption analyses has concerned sign-values,
with the ways that car ownership in general or the ownership of particular models
does or does not enhance people’s status position. The car as the locus of con-
sumption normally remains on the drive of the house.” “It was in the modern city
that the founders of sociology first envisioned the contraction of social space, the
density of transactions and the compression of ‘social distance’ that comprised
modernity. Indeed, urban studies have at best concentrated upon the sociospatial
practice of walking and especially on ‘strolling’ in the city. It has been presumed
that the movement, noise, smell, visual intrusion and environmental hazards of the
car are largely irrelevant to deciphering the nature of city life. Many urban analyses
have, in fact, been remarkably static and concerned themselves little with the forms
of mobility into, across and through the city.” “In general, then, the cars have been
8 J. Wang

conceived of either as a neutral technology, permitting social patterns of life that

would happen anyway, or as a fiendish interloper that destroyed earlier patterns of
urban life. Urban studies has omitted to consider how the car reconfigures urban
life, involving, as we shall describe, distinct ways of dwelling, traveling and
socializing in, and through, an automobilized time-space. It is exactly what we
should consider. We argue that mobility is as constitutive of modernity as is
urbanity, that civil societies of the West are societies of ‘automobility’ and that
automobility should be examined through six interlocking components. It is the
unique combination of these components that generates the specific character of
domination of automobility across most societies across the globe”.5 Automobility
can be understood in six dimensions. First, it is the quintessential manufactured
object produced by the leading industrial sectors and the iconic firms within the
20th-century capitalism (Ford, GM, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, Toyota, VW and so
on); hence, it represents the industry from which key concepts such as Fordism and
post-Fordism have emerged to analyze the nature of, and changes in, the trajectory
of western capitalism. Second, whether in Western countries or in China, the
automobile is the major item of individual consumption after housing which pos-
sesses more than use values since it provides status to its owner/user through the
sign-values with which it is associated (such as speed, passion, family, safety,
success, freedom, masculinity, rebellion, dynamism, vitality, wealth and fashion).
To Americans, the American dream involves the house, the automobile and work.
The automobile is dwelling in movement. And indeed there is the motor home. The
automobile is also a luxury, high-tech product, an item of fashion, a collectible, an
instrument and a mode of motion. In a word, the automobile links all aspects of
people’s life, and generates massive amounts of crime (theft, speeding, drunk
driving, dangerous driving). Third, there is an extraordinarily powerful machinic
complex constituted through the car’s technical and social interlinkages with other
industries, including car parts and accessories, petrol refining and distribution,
road-building and maintenance, motels, roadside service areas, car sales and repair
workshops, suburban house building, advertising and marketing, urban design and
planning. Fourth, automobility becomes a predominant global form of
‘quasi-private’ mobility that subordinates other ‘public’ mobilities of walking,
cycling, traveling by rail and so on; and it reorganizes how people negotiate the
opportunities for, and constraint upon, work, family life, leisure and pleasure. Fifth,
automobility becomes the dominant culture that sustains major discourses of what
constitutes the good life, career success and modern fashion. Sixth, automobility
incurs irreversible consequences upon the environment and resources in the process
of car making, road building and car environment construction, like the consider-
able consumption of steel and nonferrous metal, bad air quality, damage of ozone,
poor visual environment, noises, increasing medical expenses, casualties, the
environment changing for the worse and excessive consumption of energy.

5
See [3].
1 Automobiles: A Unique Perspective on China’s Social Development 9

What on earth has the automobile, a machine that had changed the world,
brought us? A close examination of our living environment and especially cities
shows that whatsoever we have got used to is reconstructed around the “intruder” of
the automobile. The automobile development races ahead, changing everything in
the world, like the urban space, geographical environment, physical distance, social
distance, interpersonal relationships and social status. In the early 1980s, American
transportation experts found through a research at Berkley, California, that when
the traffic flow reached 2000 vehicles per day, an average local resident has three to
six acquaintances; when the figure reaches 8000, the acquaintances number one to
four; and when the traffic flow reaches 16,000 vehicles per day, the resident nearly
has no acquaintance.6
With industrial development and population growth, Los Angeles has become a
large city in the United States, second only to New York. In this process, Los
Angeles always ranks among the national top in terms of the increase of automo-
biles. In the 1940s, Los Angeles had 2.5 million cars which consumed 16 million
liters of gasoline per day; by the 1970s, the number of automobiles increased to
more than 4 million as the city boasted a developed highway network, which
covered 30% of the city space; every day as many as 168 thousand vehicles drove
through the highway. The direct result from the increase of automobiles is that Los
Angles became a smog city where the leaked and evaporated oil, car emission, CO,
NO and lead fume had photochemical reaction under strong sunlight, giving rise to
the light blue photochemical smog which often persisted for days. The severe smog
caused diseases with eyes and throats and sources of stress, led to diseases among
livestock, stunted plant growth, rubber aging, erosion of materials and architecture,
lower atmospheric visibility, and even more seriously, car accidents and plane
crashes. The grave photochemical pollutions in 1952 and 1955 each claimed lives
of more than 400 elders aged over 65.7
Chinese society changes with the automobile development. China saw the
expressway mileage increase from 100 to more than 110 thousand kilometers from
1988 to 2013, forming an expressway network among cities. The total mileage of
roads in China also increased from nearly one million in 1988 to 4.4639 million
kilometers in 2014, more than four times the original mileage. As a result, the
transportation network covering major areas of the country has taken shape
(See Table 1.2).
China’s energy consumption also increases with the growth in automobile
ownership. In 1990 the national consumption of gasoline was 52,000 tons on a
daily basis and after that the figure keeps growing rapidly (See Fig. 1.5). By 2013 it
increased five times, reaching 257 thousand tons.
The biggest problem brought by the automobiles is traffic congestion. At present,
traffic jam is common from big to small and medium-sized cities. Beijing is the first
city that imposed vehicle restrictions in China, and then the city has adopted the car

6
See [4].
7
See [5].
Visit https://textbookfull.com
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collection of eBooks, textbook
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10 J. Wang

Table 1.2 China road Expressway mileage Total road mileage

mileage growth (10,000 km)
1988 0.01 99.96
1990 0.05 102.83
1995 0.21 115.7
2000 1.63 167.93
2005 4.1 334.52
2010 7.41 400.82
2014 11.19 446.39

Fig. 1.5 Daily consumption

of gasoline nationwide
(10,000 tons)

purchase restriction policy, which still fails to mitigate traffic jam. In 2015 Beijing
registered 5.61 million vehicles. According to the Road Traffic Analysis Report in
June 20158 released by Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport, the Traffic
Index registered a much higher rate in 2015 than in 2014, up by nearly 30% (see
Table 1.3), i.e., the traffic jam worsened. The Traffic Index is set on a scale of 0–10,
falling into five grades. The higher the score is, the more serious the traffic jam is.
A score of 0–2 means the road is “unblocked”: The traffic goes smoothly, with
nearly no congestion, and vehicles drive according to the road speed requirement;
2–4 means “basically unblocked”: The traffic is good, with some congestion, and it
takes 1.2 to 1.5 times the normal travel time; 4–6 means “slightly congested”: The
traffic is bad, and it takes 1.5–1.8 times the normal travel time to drive through
some ring and trunk roads; 6–8 means “moderately congested”: The traffic is poor,
and it takes 1.8–2.1 times the normal travel time to drive though most of the ring
and trunk roads; 8–10 means “severely congested”: The traffic almost comes to a
standstill as most of the urban roads are clogged up, and it takes over 2.1 times the
normal travel time. The Traffic Index in June 2015 shows in Beijing during the
morning and evening rush hour the general traffic has worsened to moderate con-
gestion, compared with mild congestion in the same period of the previous year.
The six districts in Beijing have seeness even worse traffic during rush hour in
the morning and evening. In June 2015 the traffic index of the morning rush hour in

8
http://www.bjjtw.gov.cn/xxgk/jttj/201507/t20150717_109335.html.
1 Automobiles: A Unique Perspective on China’s Social Development 11

Table 1.3 Beijing traffic index in June 2015

Traffic index June 2014 May 2015 June 2015 Year on Chain
year (%) index (%)
Morning peak hours 5.4 7.1 7.4 +36.4 +4.2
Evening peak hours 6.0 7.2 7.7 +29.8 +6.8
Peak average 5.7 7.2 7.5 +31.6 +4.2

Xicheng District reached 8.7, Dongcheng 8; during evening rush hour the two
districts respectively reached 9.2 and 9.1, and Chaoyang 8.4, a level indicating
severe congestion (See Table 1.4). In addition, each Friday, when the restricted
traffic concerns cars with plates ending with the number of 4 or 9 or in case of bad
weather like rain, the average traffic index during rush hour will amount to severe
congestion.
According to 2014 Beijing Environmental Statement,9 the average density of
PM2.5 in Beijing reached 85.9 milligrams per cubic meter, 1.45 times higher than
the national standard; the average density of SO2 21.8 milligrams per cubic meter,
up to the national standard; NO2 56.7, 42% higher than the national standard; the
inhalables 115.8, 65% higher than the national standard. The research on the
sources of PM2.5 in Beijing in 2014 shows regional transportation contributed
28–36% of the PM2.5 in Beijing; the local pollutant emission 64–72%. Motor
vehicles, coal combustion, industrial production and fugitive dust are the major
sources, respectively causing 31.1, 22.4, 18.1, and 14.3% of local pollution; the
pollution from other sources like catering, vehicle repair, poultry and livestock
breeding, and architecture coating accounts for 14.1%.

1.4 Is the Automobile-Dependent Society Possible?

With automobiles’ rapid entry into the average family, people seem to have
accepted the concept that it is matter of time for China to enter the automobile-
dependent society which is a reproduction from the automobile-dependent society
of European and American developed countries. Just speaking from the rapid
development of China’s automobile industry, that day will come very soon. But
considering the traffic condition in the big cities that take the lead to advance to the
automobile-dependent society, one can’t help wondering whether automobile-
dependent society is possible at all.
The US has paid a high price for its automobile-dependency. According to
estimates by Moshe Safdie, people in North America cover a distance equivalent to
a roundtrip to the planet Pluto in their cars every day. They own close to 200

9
http://125.39.35.143/files/422600000636D652/www.bjepb.gov.cn/bjepb/resource/cms/2015/04/
2015041609380279715.pdf.
12 J. Wang

Table 1.4 Traffic index for the six districts in Beijing

Traffic Morning rush hour Evening rush hour Peak average
index 2015 Chain 2015 Chain 2015 Chain
May June index (%) May June index (%) May June index (%)
Dongcheng 7.9 8.0 +1.8 8.9 9.2 +3.5 8.4 8.7 +3.1
Xicheng 8.7 8.7 +0.3 8.7 9.1 +5.0 8.7 8.9 +2.8
Chaoyang 7.4 7.7 +3.4 8.1 8.4 +3.1 7.8 8.0 +2.7
Haidian 7.2 7.6 +5.2 7.1 7.6 +6.9 7.2 7.6 +5.1
Fengtai 5.4 5.7 +5.7 3.9 4.3 +11.2 4.7 5.0 +6.5
Shijingshan 5.3 5.4 +1.4 3.8 4.1 +8.0 4.6 4.7 +2.1

million cars, pay an average of USD 6,000 a year to buy, maintain, insure and
regulate every one of them, and spend an additional USD 3000 to USD 4000 per car
on infrastructure, policing, parking, and other car-related services. In the
mid-1990s, the federal, state, and local governments in the United States spent a
combined USD 93 billion on highways alone.10
In the Los Angeles region, 60% of all travel is by private car and another 24% by
rented car. Public transportation is involved in only 8% of the all trips taken in the
city. In Los Angeles, every 1000 square feet of office space requires 1300 square
feet of parking space, up to five parking places. For shopping centers, every 1000
net square feet of office space requires 990 square feet of parking space. In other
words, the ratio between the floor space of public buildings and that of the parking
facilities should be no less than 1:1. According to this standard, Beijing needs to
increase the total floor space.11
Los Angeles Airport has 22,000 parking spaces, but the newly built T3 in
Beijing Capital Airport has only 6834 parking spaces. If the same standard is to be
followed in Beijing Capital Airport, at least two more garage towers of the current
size should be built.
About one half of the land in Los Angeles is devoted to car-only environments.12
Suppose each car occupies a space of 122 square feet (around 11.34 m2) and has a
volume of 615 cubic feet (around 17.4 m3), then the parking garage must leave a
space of 350 square feet (32.55 m2) or 2800 cubic feet (79.24 m3) so that each car
can park inside. According to the Transportation Administration Bureau under
Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport, Beijing registers a total of 3970
parking lots and 741,090 parking spaces, including the temporary roadside parking
sections, public parking sites beyond the road and underground parking lots.13
There are less than 100 thousand parking spaces within the second ring. In 2015

10
See [6].
11
Ibid, p. 108.
12
See [7].
13
Wang Wei. First released data about 741,090 registered parking spaces in Beijing. http://auto.
163.com/11/0412/08/71E7QPMA00084MTD.html.
1 Automobiles: A Unique Perspective on China’s Social Development 13

Beijing owned 5.61 million vehicles, but in 2014 Beijing had only 2.9 million
parking spaces, with a shortfall of 3.5 million.14 In other words, as many as half of
the vehicles have to be curbside- parked. According to the standards of Los
Angeles, the other 2 million cars in Beijing require an additional parking space of
64 km2, a size equal to the urban area within the second ring road of Beijing.
According to estimates by the transportation department, the lengthening of the
road by one kilometer means 1000 tons of asphalt, 400 tons of cement and a lot of
sand are to be paved on the road. If China’s roads and parking lots were to catch up
with the US level, it means the whole of Jiangxi and Shandong provinces would be
covered in cement and asphalt. Even if we follow a lower standard of 0.02 ha of
parking space for a car as in Japan and Europe, in comparison to the 0.07 ha in the
US, and if every two Chinese people own one car, the 600 million cars owned by
Chinese will occupy 13 million hectares, half of the rice plantation area in China.15
In the United States, the most intensive automobile growth occurred after the
WWII and was enhanced by the construction of the interstate highway system,
which was supported by federal legislation in 1956. But since the 1960s, the public
in Western countries showed unanimous doubt about the government’s vigorous
support for vehicular traffic and the expressway network. Especially in the 1970s,
the oil crisis and awakening of environmental protection awareness sent the
otherwise post-WWII influential consumption-promoting philosophy faltering.
People came to doubt the worsening cycle of “Cars-parking garages-expressways”
and propose the “post-automobile era” concept.16
Apart from issues related to automobile dependency, China also needs to deal
with problems associated with the period before and after it occurs. From a soci-
ological point of view, the integration of economics, environmental science and
urban studies holds special significance to research on the features and development
of the automobile-dependent society. Sociologists have identified a number of
different types of societies and named them according to their dominant features,
including industrial society, information society, consumption society and risk
society. But the automobile-dependent society differs from all of them. While an
automobile-dependent society must feature a high percentage of automobile own-
ership, the automobile is not in itself a distinct social feature. Rather, it is that
unique product and instrument that has brought about significant changes to society
as a whole, to its spatial configuration, and to people’s lives.
The automobile is far more than a travel tool since no other product carries as
much significance. The automobile development in the past 30-plus years in the
country epitomizes the success of China’s reform and opening-up and the auto-
mobile also serves as the powerful testament to social transformation and devel-
opment in China.

14
See [8].
15
See [9].
16
See [10].
14 J. Wang

References

1. Fogelson, R.M. 2010. Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950. Translated by Zhou Shangyi,
Zhi Cheng and Wu Liping, 321. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House.
2. Xiao Que. 2016. How Important Are 276 Million Motor Vehicles to Chinese Traffic Safety.
China Youth Daily, January 7, 2016.
3. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2008. The City and the Car. In The City Cultures Readers, ed.
Wang Min’an, Chen Yongguo, and Ma. Hailiang, 208–209. Beijing: Peking University Press.
4. Dezhao, Yang. 2006. New Community and New City: Fall of Residential Quarters and Rise of
New Communities, 82. Beijing: China Electric Power Press.
5. Zhong, Guang. 2009. Big Revolution of Chinese Automobile-Dependent Society, 18–19.
Beijing: China Modern Economics Publishing House.
6. Safdie Moshe. 2010. The City after the Automobile. Translated by Yue Wu, 110. Beijing:
People’s Literature Publishing House.
7. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2008. The City and the Car, In The City Cultures Reader, ed.
by Wang Min’an, Chen Yongguo and Ma Hailiang, 219. Beijing: Peking University Press.
8. Qian, Sun, and Huang Hailei. 2015. Facing a Shortfall of 3.8 Million Parking Spaces, Beijing
to Resume Payable Parking Space Policy. Beijing Times, May 30, 2015.
9. Zhong, Guang. 2009. Chinese Automobile-Dependent Society’s Big Revolution, 42. Beijing:
China Times Economic Press.
10. Moshe. 2001. The City after the Automobile. Translated by Wu Yue, 121. Beijing: People’s
Literature Publishing House.
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windmill of pessimism, and they call it “temperament.” If a moralist
paints a wild picture of immorality, they doubt its truth, they say that
devils are not so black as they are painted. But if a pessimist paints
a wild picture of melancholy, they accept the whole horrible
psychology, and they never ask if devils are as blue as they are
painted.
It is evident, in short, why even those who admire exaggeration
do not admire Dickens. He is exaggerating the wrong thing. They
know what it is to feel a sadness so strange and deep that only
impossible characters can express it: they do not know what it is to
feel a joy so vital and violent that only impossible characters can
express that. They know that the soul can be so sad as to dream
naturally of the blue faces of the corpses of Baudelaire: they do not
know that the soul can be so cheerful as to dream naturally of the
blue face of Major Bagstock. They know that there is a point of
depression at which one believes in Tintagiles: they do not know that
there is a point of exhilaration at which one believes in Mr. Wegg. To
them the impossibilities of Dickens seem much more impossible than
they really are, because they are already attuned to the opposite
impossibilities of Maeterlinck. For every mood there is an appropriate
impossibility—a decent and tactful impossibility—fitted to the frame
of mind. Every train of thought may end in an ecstasy, and all roads
lead to Elfland. But few now walk far enough along the street of
Dickens to find the place where the cockney villas grow so comic
that they become poetical. People do not know how far mere good
spirits will go. For instance, we never think (as the old folklore did) of
good spirits reaching to the spiritual world. We see this in the
complete absence from modern, popular supernaturalism of the old
popular mirth. We hear plenty to-day of the wisdom of the spiritual
world; but we do not hear, as our fathers did, of the folly of the
spiritual world, of the tricks of the gods, and the jokes of the patron
saints. Our popular tales tell us of a man who is so wise that he
touches the supernatural, like Dr. Nikola; but they never tell us (like
the popular tales of the past) of a man who was so silly that he
touched the supernatural, like Bottom the Weaver. We do not
understand the dark and transcendental sympathy between fairies
and fools. We understand a devout occultism, an evil occultism, a
tragic occultism, but a farcical occultism is beyond us. Yet a farcical
occultism is the very essence of “The Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It
is also the right and credible essence of “The Christmas Carol.”
Whether we understand it depends upon whether we can
understand that exhilaration is not a physical accident, but a mystical
fact; that exhilaration can be infinite, like sorrow; that a joke can be
so big that it breaks the roof of the stars. By simply going on being
absurd, a thing can become godlike; there is but one step from the
ridiculous to the sublime.
Dickens was great because he was immoderately possessed
with all this; if we are to understand him at all we must also be
moderately possessed with it. We must understand this old limitless
hilarity and human confidence, at least enough to be able to endure
it when it is pushed a great deal too far. For Dickens did push it too
far; he did push the hilarity to the point of incredible character-
drawing; he did push the human confidence to the point of an
unconvincing sentimentalism. You can trace, if you will, the
revolutionary joy till it reaches the incredible Sapsea epitaph; you
can trace the revolutionary hope till it reaches the repentance of
Dombey. There is plenty to carp at in this man if you are inclined to
carp; you may easily find him vulgar if you cannot see that he is
divine; and if you cannot laugh with Dickens, undoubtedly you can
laugh at him.
I believe myself that this braver world of his will certainly return;
for I believe that it is bound up with realities, like morning and the
spring. But for those who beyond remedy regard it as an error, I put
this appeal before any other observations on Dickens. First let us
sympathize, if only for an instant, with the hopes of the Dickens
period, with that cheerful trouble of change. If democracy has
disappointed you, do not think of it as a burst bubble, but at least as
a broken heart, an old love-affair. Do not sneer at the time when the
creed of humanity was on its honeymoon; treat it with the dreadful
reverence that is due to youth. For you, perhaps, a drearier
philosophy has covered and eclipsed the earth. The fierce poet of
the Middle Ages wrote, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” over
the gates of the lower world. The emancipated poets of to-day have
written it over the gates of this world. But if we are to understand the
story which follows, we must erase that apocalyptic writing, if only for
an hour. We must recreate the faith of our fathers, if only as an
artistic atmosphere. If, then, you are a pessimist, in reading this
story, forego for a little the pleasures of pessimism. Dream for one
mad moment that the grass is green. Unlearn that sinister learning
that you think so clear; deny that deadly knowledge that you think
you know. Surrender the very flower of your culture; give up the very
jewel of your pride; abandon hopelessness, all ye who enter here.
 CHAPTER II
THE BOYHOOD OF DICKENS

Charles Dickens was born at Landport, in Portsea, on February 7,

1812. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay-office, and was
temporarily on duty in the neighbourhood. Very soon after the birth of
Charles Dickens, however, the family moved for a short period to
Norfolk Street, Bloomsbury, and then for a long period to Chatham,
which thus became the real home, and for all serious purposes, the
native place of Dickens. The whole story of his life moves like a
Canterbury pilgrimage along the great roads of Kent.
John Dickens, his father, was, as stated, a clerk; but such mere
terms of trade tell us little of the tone or status of a family. Browning’s
father (to take an instance at random) would also be described as a
clerk and a man of the middle class; but the Browning family and the
Dickens family have the colour of two different civilizations. The
difference cannot be conveyed merely by saying that Browning stood
many strata above Dickens. It must also be conveyed that Browning
belonged to that section of the middle class which tends (in the small
social sense) to rise; the Dickenses to that section which tends in the
same sense to fall. If Browning had not been a poet, he would have
been a better clerk than his father, and his son probably a better and
richer clerk than he. But if they had not been lifted in the air by the
enormous accident of a man of genius, the Dickenses, I fancy would
have appeared in poorer and poorer places, as inventory clerks, as
caretakers, as addressers of envelopes, until they melted into the
masses of the poor.
Yet at the time of Dickens’s birth and childhood this weakness in
their worldly destiny was in no way apparent; especially it was not
apparent to the little Charles himself. He was born and grew up in a
paradise of small prosperity. He fell into the family, so to speak,
during one of its comfortable periods, and he never in those early
days thought of himself as anything but as a comfortable middle-
class child, the son of a comfortable middle-class man. The father
whom he found provided for him, was one from whom comfort drew
forth his most pleasant and reassuring qualities, though not perhaps
his most interesting and peculiar. John Dickens seemed, most
probably, a hearty and kindly character, a little florid of speech, a little
careless of duty in some details, notably in the detail of education.
His neglect of his son’s mental training in later and more trying times
was a piece of unconscious selfishness which remained a little
acrimoniously in his son’s mind through life. But even in this earlier
and easier period what records there are of John Dickens give out
the air of a somewhat idle and irresponsible fatherhood. He exhibited
towards his son that contradiction in conduct which is always shown
by the too thoughtless parent to the too thoughtful child. He contrived
at once to neglect his mind, and also to over-stimulate it.
There are many recorded tales and traits of the author’s infancy,
but one small fact seems to me more than any other to strike the
note and give the key to his whole strange character. His father
found it more amusing to be an audience than to be an instructor;
and instead of giving the child intellectual pleasure, called upon him,
almost before he was out of petticoats, to provide it. Some of the
earliest glimpses we have of Charles Dickens show him to us
perched on some chair or table singing comic songs in an
atmosphere of perpetual applause. So, almost as soon as he can
toddle, he steps into the glare of the footlights. He never stepped out
of it until he died. He was a good man, as men go in this bewildering
world of ours, brave, transparent, tender-hearted, scrupulously
independent and honourable; he was not a man whose weaknesses
should be spoken of without some delicacy and doubt. But there did
mingle with his merits all his life this theatrical quality, this
atmosphere of being shown off—a sort of hilarious self-
consciousness. His literary life was a triumphal procession; he died
drunken with glory. And behind all this nine years’ wonder that filled
the world, behind his gigantic tours and his ten thousand editions,
the crowded lectures and the crashing brass, behind all the thing we
really see is the flushed face of a little boy singing music-hall songs
to a circle of aunts and uncles. And this precocious pleasure
explains much, too, in the moral way. Dickens had all his life the
faults of the little boy who is kept up too late at night. The boy in such
a case exhibits a psychological paradox; he is a little too irritable
because he is a little too happy. Dickens was always a little too
irritable because he was a little too happy. Like the over-wrought
child in society, he was splendidly sociable, and yet suddenly
quarrelsome. In all the practical relations of his life he was what the
child is in the last hours of an evening party, genuinely delighted,
genuinely delightful, genuinely affectionate and happy, and yet in
some strange way fundamentally exasperated and dangerously
close to tears.
There was another touch about the boy which made his case
more peculiar, and perhaps his intelligence more fervid; the touch of
ill-health. It could not be called more than a touch, for he suffered
from no formidable malady and could always through life endure a
great degree of exertion even if it was only the exertion of walking
violently all night. Still the streak of sickness was sufficient to take
him out of the common unconscious life of the community of boys;
and for good or evil that withdrawal is always a matter of deadly
importance to the mind. He was thrown back perpetually upon the
pleasures of the intelligence, and these began to burn in his head
like a pent and painful furnace. In his own unvaryingly vivid way he
has described how he crawled up into an unconsidered garret, and
there found, in a dusty heap, the undying literature of England. The
books he mentions chiefly are “Humphrey Clinker” and “Tom Jones.”
When he opened those two books in the garret he caught hold of the
only past with which he is at all connected, the great comic writers of
England of whom he was destined to be the last.
It must be remembered (as I have suggested before) that there
was something about the county in which he lived, and the great
roads along which he travelled that sympathized with and stimulated
his pleasure in this old picaresque literature. The groups that came
along the road, that passed through his town and out of it, were of
the motley laughable type that tumbled into ditches or beat down the
doors of taverns under the escort of Smollett and Fielding. In our
time the main roads of Kent have upon them very often a perpetual
procession of tramps and tinkers unknown on the quiet hills of
Sussex; and it may have been so also in Dickens’s boyhood. In his
neighbourhood were definite memorials of yet older and yet greater
English comedy. From the height of Gad’s-hill at which he stared
unceasingly there looked down upon him the monstrous ghost of
Falstaff, Falstaff who might well have been the spiritual father of all
Dickens’s adorable knaves, Falstaff the great mountain of English
laughter and English sentimentalism, the great, healthy, humane
English humbug, not to be matched among the nations.
At this eminence of Gad’s-hill Dickens used to stare even as a
boy with the steady purpose of some day making it his own. It is
characteristic of the consistency which underlies the superficially
erratic career of Dickens that he actually did live to make it his own.
The truth is that he was a precocious child, precocious not only on
the more poetical but on the more prosaic side of life. He was
ambitious as well as enthusiastic. No one can ever know what
visions they were that crowded into the head of the clever little brat
as he ran about the streets of Chatham or stood glowering at Gad’s-
hill. But I think that quite mundane visions had a very considerable
share in the matter. He longed to go to school (a strange wish), to go
to college, to make a name, nor did he merely aspire to these things;
the great number of them he also expected. He regarded himself as
a child of good position just about to enter on a life of good luck. He
thought his home and family a very good spring-board or jumping-off
place from which to fling himself to the positions which he desired to
reach. And almost as he was about to spring the whole structure
broke under him, and he and all that belonged to him disappeared
into a darkness far below.
Everything had been struck down as with the finality of a
thunder-bolt. His lordly father was a bankrupt, and in the Marshalsea
prison. His mother was in a mean home in the north of London,
wildly proclaiming herself the principal of a girl’s school, a girl’s
school to which nobody would go. And he himself, the conqueror of
the world and the prospective purchaser of Gads-hill, passed some
distracted and bewildering days in pawning the household
necessities to Fagins in foul shops, and then found himself somehow
or other one of a row of ragged boys in a great dreary factory,
pasting the same kinds of labels on to the same kinds of blacking
bottles from morning till night.
Although it seemed sudden enough to him, the disintegration
had, as a matter of fact, of course, been going on for a long time. He
had only heard from his father dark and melodramatic allusions to a
“deed” which, from the way it was mentioned, might have been a
claim to the crown or a compact with the devil, but which was in truth
an unsuccessful documentary attempt on the part of John Dickens to
come to a composition with his creditors. And now, in the lurid light of
his sunset, the character of John Dickens began to take on those
purple colours which have made him under another name absurd
and immortal. It required a tragedy to bring out this man’s comedy.
So long as John Dickens was in easy circumstances, he seemed
only an easy man, a little long and luxuriant in his phrases, a little
careless in his business routine. He seemed only a wordy man, who
lived on bread and beef like his neighbours; but as bread and beef
were successively taken away from him, it was discovered that he
lived on words. For him to be involved in a calamity only meant to be
cast for the first part in a tragedy. For him blank ruin was only a
subject for blank verse. Henceforth we feel scarcely inclined to call
him John Dickens at all; we feel inclined to call him by the name
through which his son celebrated this preposterous and sublime
victory of the human spirit over circumstances. Dickens, in “David
Copperfield,” called him Wilkins Micawber. In his personal
correspondence he called him the Prodigal Father.
Young Charles had been hurriedly flung into the factory by the
more or less careless good-nature of James Lamert, a relation of his
mother’s; it was a blacking factory, supposed to be run as a rival to
Warren’s by another and “original” Warren, both practically
conducted by another of the Lamerts. It was situated near
Hungerford Market. Dickens worked there drearily, like one stunned
with disappointment. To a child excessively intellectualized, and at
this time, I fear, excessively egotistical, the coarseness of the whole
thing—the work, the rooms, the boys, the language—was a sort of
bestial nightmare. Not only did he scarcely speak of it then, but he
scarcely spoke of it afterwards. Years later, in the fulness of his
fame, he heard from Forster that a man had spoken of knowing him.
On hearing the name, he somewhat curtly acknowledged it, and
spoke of having seen the man once. Forster, in his innocence,
answered that the man said he had seen Dickens many times in a
factory by Hungerford Market. Dickens was suddenly struck with a
long and extraordinary silence. Then he invited Forster, as his best
friend, to a particular interview, and, with every appearance of
difficulty and distress, told him the whole story for the first and the
last time. A long while after that he told the world some part of the
matter in the account of Murdstone and Grinby’s in “David
Copperfield.” He never spoke of the whole experience except once
or twice, and he never spoke of it otherwise than as a man might
speak of hell.
It need not be suggested, I think, that this agony in the child was
exaggerated by the man. It is true that he was not incapable of the
vice of exaggeration, if it be a vice. There was about him much
vanity and a certain virulence in his version of many things. Upon the
whole, indeed, it would hardly be too much to say that he would have
exaggerated any sorrow he talked about. But this was a sorrow with
a very strange position in Dickens’s life; it was a sorrow he did not
talk about. Upon this particular dark spot he kept a sort of deadly
silence for twenty years. An accident revealed part of the truth to the
dearest of all his friends. He then told the whole truth to the dearest
of all his friends. He never told anybody else. I do not think that this
arose from any social sense of disgrace; if he had it slightly at the
time, he was far too self-satisfied a man to have taken it seriously in
after life. I really think that his pain at this time was so real and ugly
that the thought of it filled him with that sort of impersonal but
unbearable shame with which we are filled, for instance, by the
notion of physical torture, of something that humiliates humanity. He
felt that such agony was something obscene. Moreover there are
two other good reasons for thinking that his sense of hopelessness
was very genuine. First of all, this starless outlook is common in the
calamities of boyhood. The bitterness of boyish distresses does not
lie in the fact that they are large; it lies in the fact that we do not
know that they are small. About any early disaster there is a dreadful
finality; a lost child can suffer like a lost soul.
It is currently said that hope goes with youth, and lends to youth
its wings of a butterfly; but I fancy that hope is the last gift given to
man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the
period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the
period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is
the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the
knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great
inspiration comes to the middle-aged; God has kept that good wine
until now. It is from the backs of the elderly gentlemen that the wings
of the butterfly should burst. There is nothing that so much mystifies
the young as the consistent frivolity of the old. They have discovered
their indestructibility. They are in their second and clearer childhood,
and there is a meaning in the merriment of their eyes. They have
seen the end of the End of the World.
First, then, the desolate finality of Dickens’s childish mood
makes me think it was a real one. And there is another thing to be
remembered. Dickens was not a saintly child after the style of Little
Dorrit or Little Nell. He had not, at this time at any rate, set his heart
wholly upon higher things, even upon things such as personal
tenderness or loyalty. He had been, and was, unless I am very much
mistaken, sincerely, stubbornly, bitterly ambitious. He had, I fancy, a
fairly clear idea previous to the downfall of all his family’s hopes of
what he wanted to do in the world, and of the mark that he meant to
make there. In no dishonourable sense, but still in a definite sense
he might, in early life, be called worldly; and the children of this world
are in their generation infinitely more sensitive than the children of
light. A saint after repentance will forgive himself for a sin; a man
about town will never forgive himself for a faux pas. There are ways
of getting absolved for murder; there are no ways of getting absolved
for upsetting the soup. This thin-skinned quality in all very mundane
people is a thing too little remembered; and it must not be wholly
forgotten in connection with a clever, restless lad who dreamed of a
destiny. That part of his distress which concerned himself and his
social standing was among the other parts of it the least noble; but
perhaps it was the most painful. For pride is not only (as the modern
world fails to understand) a sin to be condemned; it is also (as it
understands even less) a weakness to be very much commiserated.
A very vitalizing touch is given in one of his own reminiscences. His
most unendurable moment did not come in any bullying in the factory
or any famine in the streets. It came when he went to see his sister
Fanny take a prize at the Royal Academy of Music. “I could not bear
to think of myself—beyond the reach of all such honourable
emulation and success. The tears ran down my face. I felt as if my
heart were rent. I prayed when I went to bed that night to be lifted out
of the humiliation and neglect in which I was. I never had suffered so
much before. There was no envy in this.” I do not think that there
was, though the poor little wretch could hardly have been blamed if
there had been. There was only a furious sense of frustration; a spirit
like a wild beast in a cage. It was only a small matter in the external
and obvious sense; it was only Dickens prevented from being
Dickens.
If we put these facts together, that the tragedy seemed final, and
that the tragedy was concerned with the supersensitive matters of
the ego and the gentleman, I think we can imagine a pretty genuine
case of internal depression. And when we add to the case of the
internal depression the case of the external oppression, the case of
the material circumstances by which he was surrounded, we have
reached a sort of midnight. All day he worked on insufficient food at
a factory. It is sufficient to say that it afterwards appeared in his
works as Murdstone and Grinby’s. At night he returned
disconsolately to a lodging-house for such lads, kept by an old lady.
It is sufficient to say that she appeared afterwards as Mrs. Pipchin.
Once a week only he saw anybody for whom he cared a straw; that
was when he went to the Marshalsea prison, and that gave his
juvenile pride, half manly and half snobbish, bitter annoyance of
another kind. Add to this, finally, that physically he was always very
weak and never very well. Once he was struck down in the middle of
his work with sudden bodily pain. The boy who worked next to him, a
coarse and heavy lad named Bob Fagin, who had often attacked
Dickens on the not unreasonable ground of his being a “gentleman,”
suddenly showed that enduring sanity of compassion which Dickens
was destined to show so often in the characters of the common and
unclean. Fagin made a bed for his sick companion out of the straw in
the workroom, and filled empty blacking bottles with hot water all
day. When the evening came, and Dickens was somewhat
recovered, Bob Fagin insisted on escorting the boy home to his
father. The situation was as poignant as a sort of tragic farce. Fagin
in his wooden-headed chivalry would have died in order to take
Dickens to his family; Dickens in his bitter gentility would have died
rather than let Fagin know that his family were in the Marshalsea. So
these two young idiots tramped the tedious streets, both stubborn,
both suffering for an idea. The advantage certainly was with Fagin,
who was suffering for a Christian compassion, while Dickens was
suffering for a pagan pride. At last Dickens flung off his friend with
desperate farewell and thanks, and dashed up the steps of a strange
house on the Surrey side. He knocked and rang as Bob Fagin, his
benefactor and his incubus, disappeared round the corner. And when
the servant came to open the door, he asked, apparently with gravity,
whether Mr. Robert Fagin lived there. It is a strange touch. The
immortal Dickens woke in him for an instant in that last wild joke of
that weary evening. Next morning, however, he was again well
enough to make himself ill again, and the wheels of the great factory
went on. They manufactured a number of bottles of Warren’s
Blacking, and in the course of the process they manufactured also
the greatest optimist of the nineteenth century.
This boy who dropped down groaning at his work, who was
hungry four or five times a week, whose best feelings and worst
feelings were alike flayed alive, was the man on whom two
generations of comfortable critics have visited the complaint that his
view of life was too rosy to be anything but unreal. Afterwards, and in
its proper place, I shall speak of what is called the optimism of
Dickens, and of whether it was really too cheerful or too smooth. But
this boyhood of his may be recorded now as a mere fact. If he was
too happy, this was where he learnt it. If his school of thought was a
vulgar optimism, this is where he went to school. If he learnt to
whitewash the universe, it was in a blacking factory that he learnt it.
 As a fact, there is no shred of evidence to show that those who
have had sad experiences tend to have a sad philosophy. There are
numberless points upon which Dickens is spiritually at one with the
poor, that is, with the great mass of mankind. But there is no point in
which he is more perfectly at one with them than in showing that
there is no kind of connection between a man being unhappy and a
man being pessimistic. Sorrow and pessimism are indeed, in a
sense, opposite things, since sorrow is founded on the value of
something, and pessimism upon the value of nothing. And in practice
we find that those poets or political leaders who come from the
people, and whose experiences have really been searching and
cruel, are the most sanguine people in the world. These men out of
the old agony are always optimists; they are sometimes offensive
optimists. A man like Robert Burns, whose father (like Dickens’s
father) goes bankrupt, whose whole life is a struggle against
miserable external powers and internal weaknesses yet more
miserable—a man whose life begins grey and ends black—Burns
does not merely sing about the goodness of life, he positively rants
and cants about it. Rousseau, whom all his friends and
acquaintances treated almost as badly as he treated them—
Rousseau does not grow merely eloquent, he grows gushing and
sentimental, about the inherent goodness of human nature. Charles
Dickens, who was most miserable at the receptive age when most
people are most happy, is afterwards happy when all men weep.
Circumstances break men’s bones; it has never been shown that
they break men’s optimism. These great popular leaders do all kinds
of desperate things under the immediate scourge of tragedy. They
become drunkards; they become demagogues; they become
morpho-maniacs. They never become pessimists. Most
unquestionably there are ragged and unhappy men whom we could
easily understand being pessimists. But as a matter of fact they are
not pessimists. Most unquestionably there are whole dim hordes of
humanity whom we should promptly pardon if they cursed God. But
they don’t. The pessimists are aristocrats like Byron; the men who
curse God are aristocrats like Swinburne. But when those who
starve and suffer speak for a moment, they do not profess merely an
optimism, they profess a cheap optimism; they are too poor to afford
a dear one. They cannot indulge in any detailed or merely logical
defence of life; that would be to delay the enjoyment of it. These
higher optimists, of whom Dickens was one, do not approve of the
universe; they do not even admire the universe; they fall in love with
it. They embrace life too closely to criticize or even to see it.
Existence to such men has the wild beauty of a woman, and those
love her with most intensity who love her with least cause.
 CHAPTER III
THE YOUTH OF DICKENS

There are popular phrases so picturesque that even when they are
intentionally funny they are unintentionally poetical. I remember, to
take one instance out of many, hearing a heated Secularist in Hyde
Park apply to some parson or other the exquisite expression, “a sky-
pilot.” Subsequent inquiry has taught me that the term is intended to
be comic and even contemptuous; but in that first freshness of it I
went home repeating it to myself like a new poem. Few of the pious
legends have conceived so strange and yet celestial a picture as this
of the pilot in the sky, leaning on his helm above the empty heavens,
and carrying his cargo of souls higher than the loneliest cloud. The
phrase is like a lyric of Shelley. Or, to take another instance from
another language, the French have an incomparable idiom for a boy
playing truant: “Il fait l’école buissonnière”—he goes to the bushy
school, or the school among the bushes. How admirably this
accidental expression, “the bushy school” (not to be lightly
confounded with the Art School at Bushey)—how admirably this
“bushy school” expresses half the modern notions of a more natural
education! The two words express the whole poetry of Wordsworth,
the whole philosophy of Thoreau, and are quite as good literature as
either.
Now, among a million of such scraps of inspired slang there is
one which describes a certain side of Dickens better than pages of
explanation. The phrase, appropriately enough, occurs at least once
in his works, and that on a fitting occasion. When Job Trotter is sent
by Sam on a wild chase after Mr. Perker, the solicitor, Mr. Perker’s
clerk condoles with Job upon the lateness of the hour, and the fact
that all habitable places are shut up. “My friend,” says Mr. Perker’s
clerk, “you’ve got the key of the street.” Mr. Perker’s clerk, who was a
flippant and scornful young man, may perhaps be pardoned if he
used this expression in a flippant and scornful sense; but let us hope
that Dickens did not. Let us hope that Dickens saw the strange, yet
satisfying, imaginative justice of the words; for Dickens himself had,
in the most sacred and serious sense of the term, the key of the
street. When we shut out anything, we are shut out of that thing.
When we shut out the street, we are shut out of the street. Few of us
understand the street. Even when we step into it, we step into it
doubtfully, as into a house or room of strangers. Few of us see
through the shining riddle of the street, the strange folk that belong to
the street only—the street-walker or the street arab, the nomads
who, generation after generation, have kept their ancient secrets in
the full blaze of the sun. Of the street at night many of us know even
less. The street at night is a great house locked up. But Dickens had,
if ever man had, the key of the street. His earth was the stones of the
street; his stars were the lamps of the street; his hero was the man in
the street. He could open the inmost door of his house—the door
that leads into that secret passage which is lined with houses and
roofed with stars.
This silent transformation into a citizen of the street took place
during those dark days of boyhood, when Dickens was drudging at
the factory. Whenever he had done drudging, he had no other
resource but drifting, and he drifted over half London. He was a
dreamy child, thinking mostly of his own dreary prospects. Yet he
saw and remembered much of the streets and squares he passed.
Indeed, as a matter of fact, he went the right way to work
unconsciously to do so. He did not go in for “observation,” a priggish
habit; he did not look at Charing Cross to improve his mind or count
the lamp-posts in Holborn to practise his arithmetic. But
unconsciously he made all these places the scenes of the monstrous
drama in his miserable little soul. He walked in darkness under the
lamps of Holborn, and was crucified at Charing Cross. So for him
ever afterwards these places had the beauty that only belongs to
battlefields. For our memory never fixes the facts which we have
merely observed. The only way to remember a place for ever is to
live in the place for an hour; and the only way to live in the place for
an hour is to forget the place for an hour. The undying scenes we
can all see if we shut our eyes are not the scenes that we have
stared at under the direction of guide-books; the scenes we see are
the scenes at which we did not look at all—the scenes in which we
walked when we were thinking about something else—about a sin,
or a love affair, or some childish sorrow. We can see the background
now because we did not see it then. So Dickens did not stamp these
places on his mind; he stamped his mind on these places. For him
ever afterwards these streets were mortally romantic; they were
dipped in the purple dyes of youth and its tragedy, and rich with
irrevocable sunsets.
Herein is the whole secret of that eerie realism with which
Dickens could always vitalize some dark or dull corner of London.
There are details in the Dickens descriptions—a window, or a railing,
or the keyhole of a door—which he endows with demoniac life. The
things seem more actual than things really are. Indeed, that degree
of realism does not exist in reality: it is the unbearable realism of a
dream. And this kind of realism can only be gained by walking
dreamily in a place; it cannot be gained by walking observantly.
Dickens himself has given a perfect instance of how these nightmare
minutiæ grew upon him in his trance of abstraction. He mentions
among the coffee-shops into which he crept in those wretched days
“one in St. Martin’s Lane, of which I only recollect that it stood near
the church, and that in the door there was an oval glass plate with
‘COFFEE ROOM’ painted on it, addressed towards the street. If I
ever find myself in a very different kind of coffee-room now, but
where there is such an inscription on glass, and read it backwards
on the wrong side, MOOR EEFFOC (as I often used to do then in a
dismal reverie), a shock goes through my blood.” That wild word,
“Moor Eeffoc,” is the motto of all effective realism! it is the
masterpiece of the good realistic principle—the principle that the
most fantastic thing of all is often the precise fact. And that elvish
kind of realism Dickens adopted everywhere. His world was alive
with inanimate objects. The date on the door danced over Mr.
Grewgius, the knocker grinned at Mr. Scrooge, the Roman on the
ceiling pointed down at Mr. Tulkinghorn, the elderly armchair leered
at Tom Smart—these are all moor eeffocish things. A man sees them
because he does not look at them.
And so the little Dickens Dickensized London. He prepared the
way for all his personages. Into whatever cranny of our city his
characters might crawl, Dickens had been there before them.
However wild were the events he narrated as outside him, they could
not be wilder than the things that had gone on within. However queer
a character of Dickens might be, he could hardly be queerer than
Dickens was. The whole secret of his after-writings is sealed up in
those silent years of which no written word remains. Those years did
him harm perhaps, as his biographer, Forster, has thoughtfully
suggested, by sharpening a certain fierce individualism in him which
once or twice during his genial life flashed like a half-hidden knife.
He was always generous; but things had gone too hardly with him for
him to be always easy-going. He was always kind-hearted; he was
not always good-humoured. Those years may also, in their strange
mixture of morbidity and reality, have increased in him his tendency
to exaggeration. But we can scarcely lament this in a literary sense;
exaggeration is almost the definition of art—and it is entirely the
definition of Dickens’s art. Those years may have given him many
moral and mental wounds, from which he never recovered. But they
gave him the key of the street.
There is a weird contradiction in the soul of the born optimist. He
can be happy and unhappy at the same time. With Dickens the
practical depression of his life at this time did nothing to prevent him
from laying up those hilarious memories of which all his books are
made. No doubt he was genuinely unhappy in the poor place where
his mother kept school. Nevertheless it was there that he noticed the
unfathomable quaintness of the little servant whom he made into the
Marchioness. No doubt he was comfortless enough at the boarding-
house of Mrs. Roylance; but he perceived with a dreadful joy that
Mrs. Roylance’s name was Pipchin. There seems to be no
incompatibility between taking in tragedy and giving out comedy;
they are able to run parallel in the same personality. One incident
which he described in his unfinished “autobiography,” and which he
afterwards transferred almost verbatim to David Copperfield, was
peculiarly rich and impressive. It was the inauguration of a petition to
the King for a bounty, drawn up by a committee of the prisoners in
the Marshalsea, a committee of which Dickens’s father was the
president, no doubt in virtue of his oratory, and also the scribe, no
doubt in virtue of his genuine love of literary flights.
“As many of the principal officers of this body as could be got
into a small room without filling it up, supported him in front of the
petition; and my old friend, Captain Porter (who had washed himself
to do honour to so solemn an occasion), stationed himself close to it,
to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The door
was then thrown open, and they began to come in in a long file;
several waiting on the landing outside, while one entered, affixed his
signature, and went out. To everybody in succession Captain Porter
said, ‘Would you like to hear it read’? If he weakly showed the least
disposition to hear it, Captain Porter in a loud, sonorous voice gave
him every word of it. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to
such words as ‘Majesty—Gracious Majesty—Your Gracious
Majesty’s unfortunate subjects—Your Majesty’s well-known
munificence,’ as if the words were something real in his mouth and
delicious to taste: my poor father meanwhile listening with a little of
an author’s vanity and contemplating (not severely) the spike on the
opposite wall. Whatever was comical or pathetic in this scene, I
sincerely believe I perceived in my corner, whether I demonstrated it
or not, quite as well as I should perceive it now. I made out my own
little character and story for every man who put his name to the
sheet of paper.”
Here we see very plainly that Dickens did not merely look back
in after days and see that these humours had been delightful. He
was delighted at the same moment that he was desperate. The two
opposite things existed in him simultaneously, and each in its full
strength. His soul was not a mixed colour like grey and purple,
caused by no component colour being quite itself. His soul was like a
shot silk of black and crimson, a shot silk of misery and joy.
Seen from the outside, his little pleasures and extravagances
seem more pathetic than his grief. Once the solemn little figure went
into a public-house in Parliament Street, and addressed the man
behind the bar in the following terms—“What is your very best—the
VERY best ale a glass?” The man replied, “Twopence.” “Then,” said
the infant, “just draw me a glass of that, if you please, with a good
head to it.” “The landlord,” says Dickens, in telling the story, “looked
at me in return over the bar from head to foot with a strange smile on
his face; instead of drawing the beer looked round the screen and
said something to his wife, who came out from behind it with her
work in her hand and joined him in surveying me.... They asked me a
good many questions as to what my name was, how old I was,
where I lived, how I was employed, etc., etc. To all of which, that I
might commit nobody, I invented appropriate answers. They served
me with the ale, though I suspect it was not the strongest on the
premises; and the landlord’s wife, opening the little half-door, and
bending down, gave me a kiss.” Here he touches that other side of
common life which he was chiefly to champion; he was to show that
there is no ale like the ale of a poor man’s festival, and no pleasures
like the pleasures of the poor. At other places of refreshment he was
yet more majestic. “I remember,” he says, “tucking my own bread
(which I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapt
up in a piece of paper like a book, and going into the best dining-
room in Johnson’s Alamode Beef House in Clare Court, Drury Lane,
and magnificently ordering a small plate of à-la-mode beef to eat
with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition
coming in all alone I don’t know; but I can see him now staring at me
as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave
him a halfpenny, and I wish, now, that he hadn’t taken it.”
For the boy individually the prospect seemed to be growing
drearier and drearier. This phrase indeed hardly expresses the fact;
for, as he felt it, it was not so much a run of worsening luck as the
closing in of a certain and quiet calamity like the coming on of twilight
and dark. He felt that he would die and be buried in blacking.
Through all this he does not seem to have said much to his parents
of his distress. They who were in prison had certainly a much jollier
time than he who was free. But of all the strange ways in which the
human being proves that he is not a rational being, whatever else he
is, no case is so mysterious and unaccountable as the secrecy of
childhood. We learn of the cruelty of some school or child-factory