The cars gather in front of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan about 8:30 a.m. In the front seats sit hired drivers (nobody uses the term chauffeur anymore). The cars are mostly big and mostly black luxury-edition sport utility vehicles like the Mercedes GL-Class or the GMC Yukon Denali. They fill the lanes in front of the Y’s entrance on Lexington Avenue, often two or three rows deep. * the drivers open the back-seat doors and the passengers’ feet emerge. * These feet are only a half-foot long. The children — ages 3 through 5 — are enrolled at the Y’s famous nursery school. The livery convention on Lexington Avenue occurs most every weekday. (free registration is required).

While this article describes a scene in NYC, it can just as easily be a description (to a greater or lesser) of the scene outside of some of the more prestigious schools (K-university) in Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian or any other big city in China. The only difference is that in NYC people gripe so much about the traffic and the effects that such circumstances create that it can get the attention of one of the nation’s most well known newspapers, whereas in China it seems to be so accepted as the right of any family that has “arrived” and the aspiration of those families that are in transit to “arrival” that it gets nary a comment.

Once Around the Block, James, and Pick Me Up After My Nap