Although undoubtedly a richly diverse country with much to be proud of, some of China's residents' behaviour quite literally has to be seen
to be believed. A visit to the capital some weeks before had revealed
incredible scenes within the subway, trying to get oneself onto a Beijing
underground train at almost any time of day proving to be something of a test.
In an effort to try and ensure such uncivilised argy bargy is not present within the public bus system, a numbered seating system has been put in place.
With a guaranteed spot to park your behind safely on, you would assume that any pushing and shoving would be quite unnecessary. And you would be
wrong.
ChongQing Province; 48 happily seated people patiently awaiting the
departure of the 11.30 to Wanzhou.
“Ok, everybody off – we’re changing buses” yells the driver,
although
perhaps not exactly in those words. Before he could even finish his
announcement, the other 46 people seemed to have immediately forgotten
how comfortably they were repaired in their allocated seats and were
piling through each other to get to the doors. Within another minute, a
full scale brawl had broken out on the station forecourt, the two
fellows closest to the doors of the replacement bus fist-fighting in a
vain attempt to get their mitts on the door handles. In the midst
of the seething mass, a young, heavily pregnant lady was being thrown
about with nauseatingly careless abandon.
After finally beating back some of the more frivolous alpha male contenders from the partially opened driver’s cabin, the mob was allowed entry- where the pushing
and shoving continued apace for some minutes further before finally abating.
Whether or not anyone was blinded by the sudden realisation that they
were now all in exactly the same position they’d been in ten minutes
earlier was unclear. Apart from one or two bloody noses, everybody was
enjoying precisely the same level of comfort they had all enjoyed in
their specified seating on the last bus. No-one was suddenly crawling
around between half a dozen pregnant sows with a chicken wedged up
their backside, no-one now perched up on the parcel shelf. How we were
the only people who didn’t seem surprised by this I am still unsure
about.
