Bus travel in Kham (an essay)
(See also: Sample transportation costs)
by Pamela Logan
May, 1999
It's 530 a.m., black as pitch, and a shivering mob stands uneasily, waiting to board a Serxu-bound bus. Half of the people started with the bus at its originating point in Kangding, the other half are local folks hoping to find an empty seat for the last leg of the two and a half day trip.
As the clock ticks twenty, then thirty minutes past the bus's announced departure time, with still no sign of the driver, anxiety grows. There are, clearly, far too many people to fit. In the harsh light of a single bulb, faces look drawn and tight. Young men gravitate toward the passenger door, mindful of that fact that, in the scramble that will certainly ensue, position is everything. KAF researcher Stephen Aldridge and I hang back, pinning our hopes on the idea that Kangding-boarding passengers will get priority, and as the only two foreigners on the bus, everyone knows who we are and will make space for us.
The Leshan 34-seat cruiser is the long-haul standard for public transportation in Kham, a boxy, low-tech rolling contraption with high ground clearance and horsepower to negotiate what must be among the world's most punishing public highways. Not that the Leshan is very durable. Their chief virtue, in a developing nation like China, is that they cheap to produce and fix. Every driver knows their simple workings inside and out, and carries the minimal equipment needed to repair them. How else can bus companies offer transportation at 137 yuan ($17) for 700 kilometers of travel?
At last the driver shows up. The passenger door hisses open, and the mob surges in. In seconds, every seat is full; the aisle is jammed with standees and baggage. Stephen and I are still outside, as are many other ticket-holders, especially women, children, and elderly. The folks occupying seats wear looks of dogged determination. I can easily imagine that most of them have urgent reasons to be in Serxu family illnesses, business deals, school, monastic ceremonies. Every one of them is thinking I've just got to get on this bus. An old monk has grabbed a prime seat just behind the door, and now he's withdrawing into catalepsy, the better to rebuff attempts at ejection.
I've been riding these iron chariots since 1991, and I can testify that no trip is without incident. Blown tires are the commonest. In 1998 a KAF art conservation team on its way to Dege had a blow-out so powerful that it blew off a flap of metal shell and permanently raised the floorboards. We taped the shell back together, and swapped the exploded tire for the spare, which is carried beneath the chassis. Every town has its contingent of tire-fixers lithe, wiry grease-monkeys equipped with crow-bars, rubber patches, and squat, roaring machines to pump air and tighten nuts. If, as sometimes happens, a second tire blows before you can fix the first, then the bus simply rides to the next town on three rear tires instead of four.
Stephen and I wait outside the bus, unwilling to leap into the fray with our precious food and camera bags. The seat-squatters hold fast to their hard-won territory. A stand-off ensues for some twenty minutes, until a tall Chinese man, a transit company employee, breaks the deadlock. He tells everyone to get off the bus. His authoritative tones, coupled with the knowledge that the bus will never leave until people like Stephen and me regain our original seats, convinces almost all of the squatters to give up. Sheepishly, they get off. The old lama, however, hunkers down, seemingly catatonic, and doesn't move even though the official pulls on his robes and shouts at him. When the bus is nearly empty, we ticket-holders squeeze on board. The old monk is among a handful of new passengers for which there is room. The others will have to wait three days, then fight this battle again.
For the bus-riding Tibetan and Chinese public, travel is laden with inconvenience and uncertainty. Nominally, the Kangding-to-Serxu trip takes two days, but that's subject to delays wrought by equipment failure, road conditions, and weather. During Stephen's and my trip, we were delayed seven hours on Tseto La due to another bus getting mired in the snow ahead of us, forty minutes in Bamei to repair a blown tire, two and a half hours east of Dawu waiting for a truck to get pulled out of the mud, forty minutes in Luhuo to repair the same tire for the second time, and about three cumulative hours because of road construction between Luhuo and Ganzi. All of this added an extra day to the trip. You couldn't call this a good-luck run, but at least the bus did get to its destination, and that is something.
The Leshan bus interior, while hardly luxurious, is a great advance over older models with their bench-style seats. The Leshan offers individual padded chairs fitted with cotton covers often showing charming hand-sewn repairs. Each row has three seats on the left side and two on the right. Trouble is, the seats are only 80% of the size of the average Asian, and two-thirds the size of the typical male foreigner of European descent. Legroom is, regrettably, proportionate. Luckily, the seats are so close together that the cracks between them are hardly noticeable. The loser is the guy on the aisle, who invariably ends with his rear hanging half in space.
As you travel further out from Chengdu and "the Innerland" (as they call it), passenger demographics change people become more Tibetan, more male, and heavier smokers. Past Dawu or so, the typical passenger is a Tibetan male, about 28 years old, with worn and dirty clothes, who (except for monks) lights up about once every 20 minutes, or whenever the bus stops for any reason. This means that, at any given time, probably half a dozen people on the bus are smoking, including, very likely, the driver. There is nothing you can do about this except open a window if you happen to be sitting near one and it's not too cold outside. Dust is also a problem during dry weather. The wise traveler equips himself or herself with a surgical mask (kou zhou in Chinese) that are sold in most general merchandise stores.
Baggage. The good news is you can bring as much as you want, and there is rarely an extra charge. Huge sacks of cloth or grain or pelts, bicycles, farm tools, live animals--anything goes. Passengers boarding at the bus's originating point generally put theirs on the roof where it is covered with canvas and a rope net. There it stays, even during overnight stops, until you reach your destination. Usually, some husky male fellow-passengers will haul it up there and tie it for you, but if not then you've got to do it yourself. There's a ladder on the back of the Leshan, covered with road-dirt, for this purpose. If you liked climbing trees as a kid, you'll probably enjoy putting your bags on top of a Leshan. For the security-conscious, a chain and padlock can be used to mate your bag to the vehicle.
Just like airline passengers, a lot of bus-riders try to get away with bringing all their things aboard as hand-baggage. The overhead racks, if there are any, fill to bursting, and the aisle is an obstacle course. After all the people and bags are loaded, it can be tricky to extract yourself from your seat, especially if you're in the back. Some take the easy way out by climbing through the windows. Take care with your fluid consumption, because toilet stops are infrequent.
You might not think that bus-riding requires much fitness, but believe me it's a big help. The roads are so bumpy that you need a Jogbra just to ride on them. All day long you're being thrown around and slammed side to side. To keep from getting bruised, you'll need muscles for hanging on. If you're big, you'll be pinned in your seat, unable to stretch your legs, for hours. This is real physical punishment, and a certain amount of fitness will help you endure it without undue side effects. Also, it occasionally happens that a bus gets stuck, and passengers need to get out and push.
After three weeks in Kham, I'm returning to civilization on a new-fangled miracle a Yaxing luxury bus. This is the wave of future. The Yaxing is big. It's got wide, soft seats, heat and air-conditioning, and carries baggage in a lockable, covered compartment. It's got a television showing the film Casablanca (with Chinese subtitles) on VCD. Even better than that--and this is truly amazing and wonderful--the Yaxing goes all the way from Ganzi to Kangding, a trip of 384 kilometers, without breaking down.
As a panorama of snow mountains and yak-strewn pasture slides past my big tinted picture-window, I am with Humphrey Bogart in Morocco in his Café Americain. The sound is broken, so I have to imagine the famous line Here's looking at you, kid. Happy trails.