Daily Life in China                  

Changde Hunan city East Entrance:

A few kilometers out of town is the east entrance into the city.  It is very nicely decorated and modern.  This road is off the road which runs around the edge of the city.  The encircling road is a life saver for traffic, congestion and pollution.  It keeps all the mess at the edge of the city.  Some cities do not have such an road at the edge so heavy traffic cuts through the city and is horrible.   Usually those cities have constraints like being packed between a river and steep mountains.  In general most cities have these roads or are building them and at times at great expense i.e. building two bridges to make the bypass road on the other side of a river or worse cut through a mountain to make the bypass.   

Jianzhou in Hubei: A small to medium size city and fairly nice.  The street layout is typical  for cities: wide sidewalk, bicycle area, large 4 lane street (6 typical, 8 in big cities) nicely decorated with shrubs.   Fences keep pedestrians off the road.  Overhead walkways for pedestrians at large intersections, usually well decorated and many with evening light decorations.