We have these strange things already for a long time in the pavement in Shanghai, although nobody seems to have taught the blind how to use them. Are they being used during the Paralympics? link

I hope the opening of Paralymics would help more Chinese to be aware that disabled community need more respect and practical concern rather than sympathy.

If yellow pathways not temporary and all handicappeds know how to use them, there will be a good effort for disabled.

Fons: Good point. But I think the blind are familiarized about them already. Like maybe they are taught that in schools.

thanks for the post, Jeremy.

i'm somewhat surprised to see what little mention this site has made of the Paralympics in recent days.

with roughly 10 more days of the competition remaining, perhaps that will change with coverage of media-relevant topics such as, for example,

(1) the opening ceremony,

(2) broadcasting accommodations (if any) for the hearing-impaired,

(3) "Who are the hottest [Para]lympians",

(4) whether or not "pollution wussies" have remained quiet regarding beijing's air quality as conditions have worsened with the city's relaxation of emergency environmental protection measures, AND/OR

(5) media coverage comparing beijing's barrier-free facilities to those of other major international cities in general and to Paralympic host-cities in particular (compare, e.g., (a) ~4,500 publicly-operated wheelchair-accessible buses--that is, 100%--in NYC, a non-Paralympics host city of ~8.5 million with ~51,000 wheelchair users, to (b) less than 1/2 that number of buses in Beijing, a Paralympic host city of 12-17 million people, an unidentified number of whom are wheelchair users).

don't let me down!

whoops. i meant to type "Joel" above. sorry :-P

Years ago, I was a delivery driver in London. The job entailed flouting parking regulations on a daily basis.

One street, though, home to a bunch of lawyer's offices, was known as a "park legally or not at all" zone to all delivery drivers.

The reason was that if you parked illegally, the businesses on the street had banded together to produce paper stickers that they plastered in front of the driver's seat on the glass. "It's illegal to park here for a reason" they read. All the receptionists were in on it. You'd be in a building for 10 minutes and you'd be stickered when you came back out.

The stickers took about 15 minutes of hard work to remove (they weren't strong enough to pull off in one go) -- you couldn't drive with them stuck in front of you -- and 15 minutes is death to a delivery driver.

I commend this solution to Beijing's parking wardens, with one modification: make the stickers even harder to remove.

i'm convinced that many provincial party higher-ups have family members who own companies which just so happen to manufacture these yellow, textured tiles.

Regarding that second picture, I think actually that's kosher. My understanding of the system is that a change in texture of the yellow tiles indicates some change to be aware of (though there are no details of what that change is, be it a change of direction or in this case, a temporary end of the path). The texture change is from long "dashes" texture to "dots" texture. You can see it more clearly in the larger image.

They're not always yellow. And sometimes, like the ones in my neighborhood, they're covered by thick weeds for long stretches.

Good eye, livefrombeijing. The path doesn't seem to come back on the opposite side of the driveway, though.

I totally agree with bocaj's comment. I've often had the same thought myself. I wonder if this is also the reason why China's cities, many of which have heavy snow/frost/rain for large parts of the year, are paved with tiles that go extremely slippery when wet. And the underground railway systems in many cities have marble-like floor tiles which also turn into skating rinks at the first hint of rain.

I always wondered about those yellow things, especially since I never saw any blind people using them. One day.. I think I found out why (and this is a true story). Near the school where I worked, the yellow went straight... straight... straight.... and then it took an abrupt left off of the sidewalk, ending at edge of a divided highway, nowhere near a crosswalk, and you know how Beijing traffic drives... My thoughts.."So that's why there's so few blind people in Haidian!"

It's on the West Third Ring Road, heading north, from Beiwai. Unless they fixed it...

On a bus to work one day, I saw a poor blind Chinese guy nearly walk right into one of those obnoxiously placed sidewalk trees--seriously, why does China put its trees right in the flippin' middle of the sidewalk? Luckily a couple fellow Chinese pedestrians pulled him away in time.

Shaan, I have the same complaint, but it's because I'm usually blind drunk

Most of the people simply don't know what are the yellow paths for, and most certainly the workers who build it didn't knew either...

I've seen them obstructed so many times, and I'm always the one to tell people what are they for actually.

And one more thing, these paths can be very slippery when wet!