American in Foreign Land Strangles Bus Driver

It finally happened, the scary bus ride that I knew would eventually come in China.... At O'dark thirty we set off from Zoige to our irrigation town, Dujiangyan. Dujiangyan is the largest irrigation project in the world. A town that irigates close to 3 million acres now but originally irrigated one million acres. The river used to flood and then a famous engineer decided to build a weir system and irrigate many acres. We were told that we had just missed the spring water festival when they open the weir system. Unfortunately once we got the area was closed to the public for the next few day so we did not get to see it.

The bus ride from Zoige to Songpan started out good enough. This is the section that a bus was stuck in the middle of the road on on the way to Zoige earlier in the week. The bus driver was a happy fellow and I liked him; he was amiable, had nice laugh lines around his eyes indicating to me his good nature, and smiled a lot showing his gold teeth. Most importantly he was a very good driver. The other riders liked him too because they gave him cigarettes and joked around with him. The front seat riders entertained me for most of the ride. The front seat was composed of men were handed the the bus driver cigarettes and lit his cigarettes for him. They joked around with him (although I couldn't understand any of it of course). It was similar to a coffee clutch in the Wisconsin cafes, but instead it was a puffers party in the front seat of the bus. I would have found the whole thing endearing (and I guess obviously I did find it a wee bit endearing)if I wasn't so sick of long hours on the bus in smoke clouds. Emily and I tried to avoid the smokers by moving to other seats; usually though it just resulted in us being closer to another smoker who had just lit up. By the end of the bus ride I think I had figured out that we were the only ones that didn't smoke.

The road to Songpan was a bit muddy but seem to be a solid bottom (Don't forget my dad's a logger so I do not only know what I'm talking about but have experience with this!). Of course the road was a drop off on one side for most of the way but this bus driver was very slow, almost too slow. At one point we went through a tally whacker swamp in logger terms but in wetland ecology terms it was a shrub/scrub willow alder swamp. In this particular location, I think that we were lucky it was freezing at night and that the ground was still frozen or things might have been more interesting. In Songpan I was hoping for a bathroom break since we had been on the darn bus for 4 hours but instead we just kept cruising. We were finally on a good two lane road, although certainly it was not a wide two lane road and there were lots of blind corners and drop offs. Being able to go faster down the road certainly had pluses and negatives, but as long as we had our good bus driver, I was happy to be moving faster. We had a near miss with a car that was passing on a blind corner but our alert bus driver pounded the breaks and swerved ever so slightly so that the car pulled ahead somehow avoiding a head on with us.

The much awaited bathroom break came at 11 ish when they needed to hose down the brakes. I was so excited to have a bathroom break, but little did I know that after this the scariest ride I've ever had in my life would start. In addition to hosing down the brakes they gave the bus an entire wash job. The bathroom as always was interesting. This time it was interesting because it was a one man show so he was collecting money from people using the bathroom (there were 2 maybe 3 buses there) and selling pop/snacks and pulling out other things (sandals to sell too). I gave him 10Y for crackers and wondered if I would get change as he ran around collecting money, directing the wash job and pulling out sandals but I did get change eventually.

We all piled on the bus and to my dismay the bus drivers had switched. I had a bad feeling about this. I tried to be optimistic but as I watched him accelerate to 130KPH on a windy blind corner road that was thick with traffic and not getting any better my optimism turned to fear. In the fourth seat from the front I had a good view of every near miss accident we had--near miss with a diesel truck, near miss with an old woman, near miss with a ricochet, I quit counting. Having to grip the seat on every corner and my neck aching from his hard braking (I guess it was reassuring to know the brakes still worked but I coudln't believe they could work this well) and my stomach lurching wasn't helping make me feel better. About ten minutes into the ride, I started weighing our options. IF the bus had stopped at all during the next 4 hours, I would have walked off and given someone all my Yuan and whatever US dollars it took to drive me safely to the irrigation town or just have waited for another bus. I was totally convinced this bus driver was a crazy mad nutzo. For awhile I thought we were just going to roll off the edge and die and I was OK with that. My big fear is being a vegetable but I can deal with dying but then I started to think that we probably wouldn't roll off the edge and worse we might be the ones trying to help whoever this horrible bus driver maimed. Our friend Andrew had told us that he saw many times in China, where the Chinese just walked past people who were hurt in accidents and would not offer to help. I decided that we should move to the back of the bus which was no easy task considering the speeds he was going at. Then I tried to recall some first aid. I wanted to go to the front of the bus and just shake the bus driver. Then after an hour of counting breaths and alternating with hail Marys, I didn't feel any peace and just wanted to pummel him. Emily though is really a true friend because thru this whole thing, and she didn't enjoy the bus ride either but instead of focusing on her breathing she kept trying to distract me or try to come up with things to make me feel better. Emily is such a good friend for that. I fantasized about organizing a hijacking and reinstating our old bus driver. It was probably good that I didn't speak any Chinese or I'm not sure what I would have done. I think the moment that I had the most hatred for him was when a car was stopped in front of us. The car could not go any further because there was a gate and the police were talking to this car. Our stupid pig bus driver blared on the horn for the next ten minutes. And then I thought what police officer doesn't give this bus driver a ticket or REVOKE his license??? I don't know how I made it through this bus ride. I was really happy that it was the last long distance bus ride we needed to go on. At our bus stop he beat us off the bus to have a cigarette. I found that hard to believe since I was ready to push my way off the bus at the first stop. When I got off, I couldn't look him in the eyes since I was seething. But I looked him over, sizing him up and I thought for a fleeting moment that even though I'm not very strong, I was mad enough that I thought I could take him down with my bag and anger. That thought got me off the bus and past him without yelling obscenities. Since we had just come back from Langmusi which used to be part of Tibet, I wish I could say that I thought of a teaching from the Dahli Lama that made me forgive this guy but that is definitely not true. I had nightmares and flashbacks about that bus ride for the rest of the trip. Thank goodness it was almost over.