My week in Zibo this time around was rather untypical of my usual China traveling style. First of all, I got put up free of charge in a four-star hotel the whole time (the China watchers amongst us can bitch about guanxi all we want, but sometimes it definitely pulls through). Secondly, anyone who knows Zibo also knows there is very little touristy to see or do there, that is if a generic northern Chinese industrial landscape is not exactly your vacation destination of choice. Thirdly, visiting stuff was not high on my list of priorities: I was there to see old friends and also, thanks to my gracious host, check out globalization in the flesh; I got to tour some factories that were busy producing car parts for my esteemed home country of Canada. That was probably one of the more fascinating segments of my trip, and it will definitely get a blog post all to itself soon enough.
However, I still felt slightly guilty that I wasn’t taking in some classic sights. I was surrounded by cultural and historical heavyweights, what with Taishan and Qufu mere hours away. I had entertained the idea of climbing Taishan again (hoping to repeat the truly spectacular experience I had way back in September 2002), but quietly dropped the idea when my friends turned out to be rather busy with work and life (I guess we can’t all be aimless wanderers). So I made the decision that it was time to visit Qufu, of Confucius hometown fame. Somehow, I’d never made it there in my two years in China, pretty ridiculous considering I had lived so close to it for a whole year. Foolishly, I felt my plan to be foolproof: I would leave Zibo early in the morning, spend the day in Qufu, and then return to Zibo by early evening to enjoy dinner and a few drinks with friends. In other words, I wasn’t thinking straight.
The alarm bells in my head should have started ringing soon after I encountered significant difficulty in locating a bus schedule. I searched a multitude of different sites on the net with my friend, to little avail. Finally, we found a pretty reliable site thatindicated the buses from Zibo to Qufu left at 6am and 11:30am in the morning, with two more in the early afternoon. I found that large gap in the morning rather strange, so we tried to phone the bus station and confirm the times. Necessarily, the phone number provided was no longer in service.
So I did what, in retrospect, was incredibly stupid: I decided to show up at the bus station the next morning in search of a ride to Qufu. I was waking up really early in China, but getting myself across town by 6am was still pushing things a little far. Instead, I decided on 9ish, which seemed, to me at least, like a reasonable hour.
When I arrived at the station around that time, I went to the ticket counter and found out that the next bus to Qufu was, indeed, at 11:30am. A bit annoyed, I comforted myself with the consolation that I would at least be riding a decent, ‘official’ inter-city bus rather than some informal, backroad ass buster. My sense of comfort began to dissipate when I found the Qufu bus: rather than the decent long-distance bus I was expecting (considering I had bought an ‘official’ ticket from the snazzy ticket counter), it was a beaten up Iveco van with the usual bundle of goods tied precariously onto the roof. “Oh well”, I thought, “at least the journey will be short if not sweet.”
I was ushered onto that bus by an attendant, but soon the driver was telling me, “No, no, you want the bus over there!”, pointing to a larger vehicle with a larger pile of goods tied precariously to its roof. Funny, I could have sworn the sign saying “Zi Bo-Qu Fu” meant my little Iveco was going to Qufu. Nevertheless, I made my way onto the larger bus, only to have that driver snarl at me in such a guttural, rrrr-ed northern Chinese accent that I couldn’t even make out simple pronouns. I think the dumbfounded look on my face let on that I didn’t have the faintest clue what he was going on about, so luckily he jotted down some characters which I easily understood (thank you, level 3 Chinese class). His particular bus was going to some city that was ‘not close’ to Qufu- which I later found out meant it was only 13km away.
Dejected, I got off that bus and went back to Mr. “Qu Fu” Iveco. By this time both drivers and attendants were utterly confused by this pesky, bus-hopping foreigner, and they decided to go pay the station bureaucracy a little visit. I had been sold a ticket that very clearly said “Qu Fu”, a bus number and time of departure, yet you’d think I was trying to get to the moon.
Things got sorted out in the usual way (think animated discussion and a good dose of official ineptitude), and I was eventually ushered back on the “Qu Fu” bus to rumble off through the bazaar of hawking and honking that is, well, the exit of pretty much every bus station in China.
We didn’t get far out of the station before our bus went into ‘trawling’ mode. Anyone familiar with Chinese transportation is likely painfully aware of this phenomenon: it involves your vehicle of choice cruising the streets of the city of departure to pick up passengers until it is absolutely packed with passengers, often illegally so. Then, after adding minimum 45 minutes to journey time, the bus might finally set off for its destination if the driver doesn’t stop for lunch first. This particular bus was manned by absolute pros in this regard; the attendant would lean out the open door while the driver rolled the vehicle along slowly, and potential passengers would jog alongside the bus to bargain a price. One particular man ran a mini-marathon before the price of his passage was agreed upon, and he jumped aboard satisfied he had just saved himself two yuan and cost the rest of us about twenty minutes.
This fishing continued for a good while and it took us several decades just to get out of Zibo city limits. Once on the road to Qufu, we stopped regularly to pick up villagers waiting at intersections with their belongings. One of these villagers, a middle-aged man in a decent blue Mao jacket, got on with his crew and sat next to me.
After a good long stare at my face (probably about a minute), he must have decided that slumber was more interesting than my nose. So he did what I only wish I could do every time I was on one of these buses: fall asleep instantly. Soon, his head was doing the sideways-leaning thing and came pretty close to resting on my shoulder. Things were getting cozy as we rumbled down the highway into the Shandong countryside.
After a while, my neighbour woke up, stared at me again for a bit and lit himself up a cigarette. What he hadn’t factored into the equation was that we were on a highway, and the window across the aisle was open- so after a few puffs, enough to make some good ash, the wind blew the ash forcefully off his cigarette. Where did it go? Why, all over me, obviously. He didn’t flinch, or really notice for that matter. I just sighed and kind of laughed inside. Ahh China, not much one can do, really.
Our bus exited the highway quite far from Qufu so it could gradually drop off all the villagers in their respective villages. One particular kid looked like he might have been at school in Zibo and was going home for a visit; he got off the bus on the side of the road, and it appeared his whole extended family was there waiting for him. Either that, or everyone in that village was very close and friendly (also a possibility). It was touching, even to a cynic like me.
After bumping down what seemed like half the roads of rural Shandong (I can’t even remember when my seat buddy got off), we finally pulled into the Qufu station. By that time it was 4pm- definitely a few hours later than I had planned to arrive. Four and a half hours for what easily could have been a two-hour journey, if that- thank you, Shandong’s Wild Ride ™.
Elated to be off the Iveco and stretching my legs, I went to the nearest ticket window and asked, as a precaution, what time the last bus went back to Zibo so I wouldn’t get stuck.
The ticket attendant said 4:30pm.
I enquired about passing buses, other buses, ANY buses that were heading to Zibo after 4:30pm. She said “mei you”, and, in that quiet desperation that China seems so good at bringing out in me, I paid my money and was soon right back on a bus heading to Zibo. Qufu had a nice bus station, although I’m not sure how Confucian it was.
I watched the Shandong countryside pass by for hours, with the sun setting into the thick haze. This bus had a grand total of four passengers, making for a quiet and contemplative ride. Farmers toiled in fields overshadowed by spewing smokestacks, accompanied by the 70s Kung Fu kitsch soundtrack of Enter the Dragon which was playing on the onboard television.
When we got back within Zibo city limits (but still nowhere near the main bus station, as some ‘neighbourhoods’ are at least 30km apart), the bus randomly pulled into one of those typical white-tile shed ’strip malls’ that are ubiquitous in the peri-urban and rural roads of China. I caught enough of the attendant’s rapid-fire Chinese to understand that the bus was stopping there and going no further (not sure why; perhaps the driver lived there and felt four passengers weren’t worth the drive into town). So, I and the other passengers dutifully disembarked and were pointed towards a black sedan waiting by the side of the road. In almost any other country this would have been absolute suicide- getting in an unmarked, unknown car with strangers in the middle of nowhere after dark. I would have been found in a ditch a few days later stripped of my camera, passport, cash and life. Yet, in China, it somehow made complete sense.
The driver drove us into town, playing some nice calming music for the ride. He was extremely friendly, and dropped us off where we wanted, no charge and no questions asked. Sometimes even the worst of days end with a smile.
I got back to my hotel room absolutely exhausted and collapsed onto the bed. I got a phone call from my host asking how my trip to Qufu went, and I proceeded to tell her of the whole ordeal. After listening patiently, she told me that she was visiting a factory not far from Qufu the next morning by car, and that I could go with her and check out Qufu if I wanted.
I’m such an idiot.