Cars are permitted to drive on only a few of Pingyao's ancient streets. The result is often gridlock. In this case, traffic, which included two horse-drawn carts full of collected sewage, was backed up for nearly a mile. Today meets yesterday here, and the results can be unpleasant. I use a 28mm wideangle lens here to punctuate the story – by stretching the traffic as much as I can, I make it seem even worse. The incongruity of the old carts, euphemistically known as honey-wagons, contrasted to cars and motorbikes, speaks the loudest here – much of provincial China is very much still caught between past and present. Just the fact that they still collect sewage here, called “night soil,” which is used as fertilizer, is telling. The story blends urban chaos with rural crudities, giving us a sense of ordinary life in much of China. (Ironically, such chaos had a direct effect on our own travel there – our van from Pingayo to a regional airport was caught in a similar traffic snarl, and we missed our flight to Beijing.)