Red China Blues

Also called be careful what you say.

This morning we left Nansing heading out some 180 km to Geming. Having successfully hurdled the language barrier and purchased tickets on the bus, it looked like it was going to be a good day. That sentiment became more profound as the bus driver came searching for us to inform us that the bus was leaving early!!! (unheard of) and so by 1000 hrs we were off in a cloud of dust. Whoohoo a potential 6 hour day of travel was starting early meaning we would be finished early. Only a half hour into the flight there grew quite a stink. We were 25 folks, 2 sick children, 17 seats, 3 smokers, 4 chickens in a rice-sack (heads poking out in quite a connundrum!) and as it turned out - one dog in a bamboo cage half wrapped in plastic. The two nicely dressed women in the front seats noticed the reek first. And eventually the smell was too strong to ignore. The driver pulled over and we all had a look around. Yes, it seems that the poor ill dog (aka supper) had a bit of an accident and liquidated his intestines all over the floor of the bus (and on the bottom of my pack, dammit). The poor and mortified (well not really) owner of said supper made some half-hearted attempts to clean up which was further followed-up and supervised by the driver. Clean and with the dog safely doublebagged ( I kid you not), the dog was hoisted onto the roof and tied down for the remainder of the trip.

It was at this point that I mentioned that this was one of my most memorable experiences on a bus in the developing world....

At hour 2.5 things are going along swimmingly. Scenery is stunning and while we do not have pavement, we have an amazingly constructed cobblestone route through the mountains. We are racing and it can only be that we are ahead of schedule. We barrel down one more switchback and we run smack-dab into a roadblock. It seems that the local hoods are having a field-day and are using the local water-throwing festival as an opportunity to extort money (read beer) from passing vehicles by threat of dowsing the outside and inside of all vehicles or else....

We see the ploy on the last moments before the bus comes to a complete halt. We all plead with the driver to run the barrier. It is a crudly made cross-member over two stumps and easily avoided. But no, this festival is a big deal and the pouring of water down one's back is in some way supposed to wash away the bad-luck carried by us all. Really it is a mid-summer opportunity to have a bit of fun...too bad it seems so mean. So the driver is respectful of the barrier and is trying to placate the youths to no avail. Even the cigs passed about does little and the driver gets a bucketful in his lap. Then the dam breaks...

Two of the boys decide to kick in the passenger door of the bus. The first one in comes in with a bucket and he is being closly followed in with a fellow with a huge hose. Sitting opposite of the door is a bad place for me to be in. Not to mention that as the lone "lowei" in the neighbourhood I am the target of more than my share of waterballoons and very large waterguns over the last three days. (Note this festival is a government sanctioned festival and is restricted to the dates of April 13, 14, 15. Today is the 16 and I was hoping this nonsence would be over!!! I am of little humour in this festival as both an easy target without ability to fight back and weary of trying to protect my camera, etc).

Bucket-boy is eyeing up Brenda and me. Before he has a chance to do too much damage I spin him around and push him out the door, but not before B gets half the bucket. I push him out the door is a bit soft in the language as the boy fairly flies out. It is my intention that he becomes intimate with Hose-boy and that between the two they can become the collateral-damage in the water scene. It works and I am able to kick the bus door closed. Once again, we are a bus-submarine with (now) 18 people and 2 sick kids barracaded behind closed windows and doors wishing aloud for the driver to move on.

That is not enough. The boys are a bit pissed up (the last vehicle which passed gave out beer to which the boys opened with their teeth and guzzled in record time) and now there is a bit of an issue where they must succeed in dowsing the inside of the bus with greater haste. Hose-boy goes a bit ape-ish and succeeds in kicking in the door and is in the process of training the hose on the opening. I fill the opening lickety-split with a flying front-kick and catch him on his hip. Whirling around I have him in a headlock and give him a bit of a hip-throw. This is followed up with a knee to the skull, pinning his head on the ground. Despite his whining, he gets a love-tap on his lat followed up with another on the back of his head. I stand up and we part company with a new understanding.

Back in the bus I am imploring the driver to move on, and idea which he seems even less interested. Hose-boy is able to shake off his momentarily fright and is now Hose-Ape-boy and is smashing on the bus looking for me to come out (the little old lady is holding me back now). His friends now come to his rescue and we are swarmed with hoods looking for my blood. The busdriver has a new role now to try to ease the situation.

Now the cell phones are out and a new load of hoods come racing up on their motorcycles. They get one side of the story and now there are 6 of 'em who want to take a poke at me. I am game to go but the little old lady and now B is working hard to keep me in the submarine. The boy's father and mother come out and they are banging on my window trying to catch my attention! More cellphones come out and well...eventually so do the cops.

Now the fun starts. In spite of the cheering inside the bus, the cops are out to check on Hose-boy. He is now sprawled on a bench, crying (Note he is by far the largest and beefiest hood in the hood!) real tears barely able to move. The cops bring me over to him and show me his wounds. I poke the injurys with relish to which he does not flinch. I shake my head, shrug my shoulders and walk away.

Eventually, Brenda and I are forced into the police vehicle with all our bags. In the past half-hour there has been lots of discussion and lot of arm waving and even a few points to the Mandarin-English dictionary, but very little understanding. Being taken away bodes poorly as my defence base has been amputated. As the police truck is being turned around, Hose-boy and his accomplice is loaded into the back. We are now racing back up the mountain at break-neck speed. Is the strip-search coming?

We race up to the infirmary. We unload Hose-boy and then we race onwards eventually reaching the local school. It is Saturday, yet the cop is able to roust up a school-marm and we squat in the shade trying to gain understanding. The teacher cannot speak English, but she can write it! We can then establish that I am Canadian, a tourist and have been in China for a month visiting such places as Kunming, Dali, Lijang, Baoshan, Ruli and am now onwards to Jinghong and Kunming to Hong Kong and finally to Canada. Ok with that established, to the rolling eyes of the cop, we are racing back again but this time we stop at the police station. I give the head cop our Mandarin-English dictionary but he is unable to find any words to answer his questions. We are sent away (good sign?). Racing again (the cops can only race around and I am more afraid of the driving than the sentence) back to the infirmary.

At the infirmary we are able to meet the first person who is interested in helping and willing to do so. With a little English skills and slow Mandarin we are able to establish that they want me to pay for the medications they have administered Hose-boy. First they ask for 100 yuan, to which I firmly reject the offer. The nurse (?) returns with an itemised list of meds they have (or will??) administer which totals 40 yuan. I pull out 20 yuan and firmly commit to paying half of the bill. Hose-boy is clearly pissed and owns half of his problems I suggest. We renegotiate and I empty my billfold of 32 yuan. The nurse rejigs the bill and returns a receipt to me for the 32 yuan and all seems good.

We race away from the infirmary and lo-and-behold the bus is still there! We have been incarcerated for 2.5 hours and we can only imagine just how angry and willing to kill the folks on the bus are at this point. But no, as I enter with the packs with chagrine and apologies, the good folks hold no malice and are more interested in what the charges were than the cost of their delay. We pile back into our seats shaking our heads and we are off.

I wish I could understand the language. I wonder just what kind of deals/lies/stories were happening. On our return to the bus all the passengers were desiring to know the financial outcome of the deal. I can only wonder if the cop told the bus driver to stick around, that we would only be a short time and that it was about squeezing the 'lowei'.

On a final note when we reached our half-way point in the journey, at a town called Mengla, the bus driver offered to give me some money. He wanted to pay for half of my damages. I took his picture instead.