It was a rainy day and the traffic had jammed up like mud filling a gutter. Instead of taking a stuffy neihuan bus, we took the cheaper waihuan one with fewer passengers. It was a welcome change from our normal routine. It was one of those bendy buses, except the metal bend of this bus had been left exposed, so I wasn’t able to lean on the side without hurting my back. After getting on, I fumbled for a few minutes with the latch of the umbrella. In front of us were two fat women. The one sitting down was wearing the skin-coloured socks that foreigners in China love to hate. To my left there were two women and one man standing in the middle of the aisle. All three were shorter than average. The man, who had a pug-face, stepped down onto the stairs that led to the backdoor of the bus. Using the poles either side of him as a balance, he leant forward while chatting to the women. I immediately thought that the man’s posture and facial expression indicated that he was trying to act ‘cool’. The three of them rapidly chatted in hushed tones, which made them sound like they were gossiping. I felt that they were looking at me and I braced myself to hear the word ‘laowai’. I hate when people talk about me on the bus. I tried to tune into their conversation, but they were talking too quickly.
The waihuan traffic ground to a halt and everyone felt trapped. Wondering whether our decision to catch a waihuan bus was wise, I looked out the window and tried to assess the traffic situation on the neihuan. The windows of the bus had misted up so I had to lean forward and squint. Apart from the chassis of a bus, I couldn’t really see much because the neihuan is higher than the waihuan. After I finished squinting, I realised that the three short people were all staring at me. ‘Gezi ai de ren,’ I haphazardly exclaimed to my wife. I noticed that one of the short women had thin, curvy eyebrows, which naturally gave her an indignant look. The other woman had snow white skin and looked like a mouse. Their stares made my anger meter creep up a bit.
I noticed that the fat woman with skin-coloured socks was examining my wife from head to toe. She was doing so with a rather sceptical look on her face. I found it strange that a woman was checking out another woman. The traffic had been trickling forward and we came to the next stop. The bus became crowded with countryside workers. A particularly miserable worker shuffled past me and stood on the stairs leading to the backdoor (the pug-faced man had moved back to the centre of the aisle). The man clung to the left pole like it was his mother. He wore a yellow hardhat and a bandaid hung loosely from his left cheek. When he walked passed me, I had noticed that the cut on his cheek was still red and sore. I remember that his eyes were soft and lonely - they would have been more suitable for a shy child. From his position leaning on the pole, he was directly facing my side. I could feel him looking at me, but I didn’t worry too much.
The problem with people who stand on the stairs is that they block others from getting off the bus. It was now our turn to get off the bus so my wife asked the miserable worker whether he was getting off. He said ‘no’ and promptly began to adjust his position to accommodate our leaving. At that moment, the three short people burst out in high-pitched laughter, seemingly because they had been making fun of the miserable worker. I think I overheard one of the women recounting the time she had to sit next to one of ‘them’. ‘Them’ was seemingly a reference to countryside workers.
We got off the bus and began to walk across the wet concrete of the street. I glanced back at the bus stop and spotted the woman with curvy eyebrows standing next to a sign. Her natural look of indignation had been heightened because her open mouth formed an ugly sneer as her ignorant eyes stared at me.
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