If anything will make a man reconsider his faith in divine prudence, it is a trip on the Chinese bus system. I sat awake one recent night, eyes wide open and sweating bullets, a cartoonish figure of insanity, as the driver of my long-haul sleeper bus killed the engine, and silence fell on the highway. We were somewhere in the wasteland between Beijing and Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, in the middle of a miles-long train of buses and trucks, all at a dead halt.
A clock, hanging from a nail driven into the metal front of the bus, above the driver, gleefully reminded me that the time was 3:15 AM, and that we were already 10 hours into our 7-hour trip to Beijing. As if taunting me further, my fellow travelers,-all Chinese,-were sleeping peacefully: to my right and left, in the berth above me, and below on the floor; nobody troubled in the least.
We sat like that for an hour. To our right groaned an old blue truck, laden heavily with cabbages. The red taillights of the bus in front silhouetted what must have been the dirty laundry of our bus driver, hanging from a clothesline stretched across the inside of our bus. We sat for an hour, and then, inexplicably, began to move again.
From my vantage in the darkness, crawling through the traffic, what had caused the jam was not an accident or something similarly dramatic, but simply the fact that too many truck drivers had pulled over and gone to sleep for the night and every lane of the highway was blocked for miles.
However one chooses to travel in China, it is a trial of the highest order-of patience, of nerves, or, alternatively, of one's sense of humor. The scene of a city street in Beijing is a chaotic one. Streets are thick with cars and trucks, competing with motorbikes and bicycles, which swerve to avoid the droves of pedestrians.
Donkey carts are rare in Beijing, and for the most part they have been replaced by a wide assortment of jury-rigged mechanized vehicles. Three-wheeled bicycle-carts teeter through traffic, piled high with cargo: from fresh white linens to a home's worth of furniture. Little metal boxes that look something like outsized microwaves veer around corners, powered by what could well be lawnmower engines.
Traffic laws are looked upon as little more than a suggestion; running red lights and passing against oncoming traffic are practices not usually frowned upon except at the busiest intersections. Most main roads have four lanes for traffic: one for bikes and one for cars in each direction.
Despite the clear demarcation of lanes and rules, it is entirely possible to find any type of traffic driving in any direction in any lane at any time. This makes crossing the street a particularly tricky sport, and one that must be done either very slowly with lots of looking back and forth, or very quickly with a lot of shouting and waving of arms.
Needless to say, riding a bicycle through this melee can be a bit harrowing as well. This is especially true considering the durability of the bikes here. China is still very much a poor country, and things here tend to be of a lower quality than in the west, from the pencils to the washing machines. A month into ownership of my new Chinese bike, nearly every part capable of breaking has, at one point or another, totally failed. Fortunately for me, there is a bike repairman on almost every street corner in Beijing, each one ready and willing to take every last Yuan from my wallet.
The nearest miss among my experiences on the streets here - despite seeing a few flaming wrecks, I have not yet been quite so unfortunate - was not, in fact, traffic-related. On one especially hot day I sat baking in the back seat of the cab when, quite suddenly, there was a terrific explosion behind my head. All passengers in the car, the driver included, ducked for cover. In the heat of the moment, I was sure we were under fire, and when the ringing in my ears had stopped, I cautiously raised my head to find the source of the blast.
As it turned out, a disposable lighter had been left under the rear windshield of the car, and the heat had caused the gas to explode, sending the largest piece flying past my head, and into the front seat, where it lodged itself in the emergency brake.
The driver, who seemed to find the situation rather hilarious, picked up what was left of the lighter, showed it to me, and threw it out the window. I remain sincerely glad it did not stick in the back of my neck, because it would have been very difficult to remove.
Sam DuPont is a junior majoring in international relations. He is currently studying abroad in Beijing, China. He can be reached at samuel.dupont@tufts.edu.
