Gypsy Feet: "It never snows in Wuhan!"

Everyone who’s traveled seems to have their public transportation horror story. I had mine the other night. Well, it’s not exactly deemed worthy of a “horror story” title, but it’s my first of the year, so the most “horrish” thus far. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was hanging out with some of my Chinese friends singing KTV (karaoke). When we came outside afterwards, we saw that it had begun to rain and snow. After we had dinner, I was hoping to get a taxi home. But since we were over the river and through the woods from where I live (literally, over the Yang Zi river) and the weather made a free taxi impossible to find. My friend suggested I take a bus to get in to my district of Wuhan, and then it will be easier to find a taxi from there. I’m very comfortable with the bus system now, so it was no problem. So I hopped aboard a crowded bus and rode for about ½ hour until I reached a familiar location. By then it was raining and snowing pretty profusely, and the streets were a mess with cars, buses, and people (first snow of the season). When I got off the bus, it didn’t take me long to realize that I was not going to find a taxi. Every free taxi that pulled up to the curb was instantly swarmed with people, so much so that people were driving around in their private cars offering rides for a fare. I knew where I was, and I knew the bus that I could grab home, but I couldn’t find the bus stop. I walked around the streets for about 15-20 minutes, and none of the bus stops had the bus I was looking for. I finally found the bus station on a side street. It was a single bus station solely for this bus. I didn’t have an umbrella with me so I ducked under the overhang of a shop to wait for the bus. It was getting close to the time that the buses stop running, and I was a little worried that I’d be waiting forever for nothing. In my 20 minutes or so of waiting, this woman who spoke a little English struck up a conversation with me. She reassured me that the bus would come, and she was going to the same stop I was so I knew I was at the right place. Another barrier I almost hit was money, I wasn’t sure if I had any small bills or coins with me. It’s always imperative to have the right change when you get on a bus (or close to it), because I don’t know how to ask for change in a store. But luckily, I had just enough with all my really small coins to make 2 Yuan, and I didn’t have to worry about getting change somewhere. So the bus finally arrived, and heaps of people made a mad dash. Not having been in China long, I haven’t perfected the “push and shove” method of getting a spot on a crowded bus yet, so I got pushed to the back of the heap. Now in the States when you think of a crowded bus, you probably think of not getting a seat right? Well a crowded bus in China means there isn’t one square inch of you that isn’t touching someone else. For a few minutes I couldn’t even get up on the first step of the bus. But I was not about to be left behind, so I just sort of flattened myself against the crowd and hoped that the door would clear me when it closed. It did, and that woman I had met sort of watched out for me and was able to pull me up a few steps. My next dilemma was getting off at the right stop. I couldn’t see out the windows because of the weather and people, and I can’t understand Chinese well enough to know when they call out the name of my stop. The woman helped me, though, because she was at the same stop. By the time I got home, I was wet, cold and tired. But proud to be able to say that I braved my first mini-dilemma all on my own, and made a new friend (the woman) who I’m getting together with for Chinese-English practice.