Zhuhai Tow Truck

Cars are increasingly popular here, mainly because more and more people can afford them. 'Car culture' is still relatively underdeveloped, though, and the hallmarks of a car-centric culture are mostly absent. For example, banks don't have 'drive-thru' lanes. Garages are uncommon (both garages for storing cars and mechanics' garages). Heck, parking lots are rare, and the city is rapidly 'converting' available sidewalk space into parking areas (by 'converting' I mean painting parking lines onto the sidewalk).

Procedures for dealing with broken-down vehicles are also different than in other places. For example, whenever we've seen a disabled vehicle being moved from one place to another, it's always being removed by another car. The two vehicles are tied together by a length of rope, with the car in front towing the other one. With this towing system, one person has to sit in the disabled vehicle and apply the breaks so that it doesn't smash into the towing vehicle. You've probably seen this once or twice int the U.S., usually being attempted by people from lower socio-economic classes (i.e., those folks who can't afford a AAA membership).

Well, yesterday, we saw our first legitimate tow truck. Unbelievably, it used the same rope-pulling technology:
If you embiggen the picture, you can clearly see the rope and the dude sitting in the broken-down (police) van. Now I'm just wondering how they remove really disabled (i.e., smashed, broken, crashed) vehicles from the road. Maybe they use a dump truck.