Random Thoughts and Observations

A few days ago, I witnessed an event which I think exemplifies one of the many paradoxes of daily life in China that we expats encounter on almost a daily basis.

About 5:30 in the afternoon I was waiting for a bus to take me to Wanzaisha at the bus stop in front of Hita Plaza shopping center. Of course, there was a larger than normal (whatever “normal” is) number of people waiting there as well. As far as I could see, I was the only “laowai” in the crowd.

Within a very few minutes a nose-to-tail procession of three #2 busses pulled into the stop. Each bus was separated from the other by about 10 to 12 meters. This was enough separation for me, and anyone else who cared to look, to easily see that all three were #2 buses.

Before the first bus in line, which was quite full, came to a complete stop, a group of about 20 to 30 people, many carrying full shopping bags and/or infants in their arms, surged towards the front door of the lead bus. Before the driver could get the front door open, the group were pushing, shoving and trying, by whatever means, to be the first one to board a bus on which, obviously, there were no unoccupied seats.

Here’s the paradoxical part of the story. The other two #2 buses were virtually empty! I leisurely walked to the second bus in line, boarded, and settled easily into my preferred seat (the one immediately aft of the rear door). There were no more than five people on either the one I boarded, or the last #2 bus in the procession. The #2 bus that I boarded, and the one immediately behind, after waiting with the front doors open for a reasonable amount of time, during which not a single passenger attempted to board either one, pulled out of the stop while the first #2 bus was still loading.

My only regret is that I did not have a camera with me at the time to record this uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

My apartment is located on the 19th floor of a 27 story building in Wanzaisha. I really like this apartment. It has a balcony with a great view, and provides about every convenience that I or my wife could ask for in a Zhuhai apartment. The only problem (if you could call it a problem) is that there are only 2 lifts to service the whole building, and about 15% of the time one of these lifts is out of service for one reason or another.

When these out-of-service conditions occur, (and other “normal” times as well) attempting to get either in or out of the building can be somewhat of a frustrating ordeal. The outward bound (down) half of the journey usually goes something like this.

After waiting for 5 to 7 minutes for the one functional lift that is headed in the correct direction to reach my floor, the door opens to reveal 7 or 8 people already inside. The doors close, and the downward journey begins. Of course, because this is the only functioning lift, it stops at every floor on the way down. At each floor more and more people get in until the lift is now packed beyond capacity.

When it finally reaches the ground floor and the doors open, there are about another 20 people wanting to take the lift up to their apartments. The instant the doors open, those waiting to go up (there are, many times, one or two who have their bicycle with them) begin pushing and shoving their way into the lift before the people already inside can get out. This practice makes for an interesting scene.

Why do they do that? Don’t they realize that there are no seats to be had in the lift, and whether they are the first one or the last one into the lift, it’s still going to take the same amount of time for them to get to the desired floor?

The inbound (up) half of the journey is no less eventful. As I mentioned earlier, there are sometimes one or two people waiting in the ground floor lift lobby with their bicycles, and another with two overflowing buckets of some unknown, very odiferous, fishy-smelling, semi-liquid substance; but, more often than not, there is at least one, 6 year old “nosepicker” dressed in his playground-soiled, yellow white and red primary school uniform, with one of his index fingers buried firmly in his nose up to the second knuckle.

As soon as he boards the lift, he squirms his way to the control panel where he then removes his freshly booger-coated digit from his nostril, and gleefully applies it to every floor button that he can reach on the panel. He can usually reach up to about floor 22 or 23. All the while, his minder (usually his grandmother) looks on approvingly.

Little Mr. Nasal Excavator and his granny exit the lift on the second floor, secure in the knowledge, or perhaps oblivious to the fact, that the lift is now going to stop at every floor on its upward journey. They don’t seem to have too much concern for the unfortunate, sweating delivery man in the lift who is trying to juggle the two large and cumbersome bottles of cooking gas that he is attempting to deliver to an apartment on the 24th floor, or for any of the others in the lift for that matter.

Now, before some of you climb my frame about my “China bashing” let me say what I have said several times before. I have made the conscious decision to make Zhuhai my home. I can think of no other place in China (with the possible exception of a sun-soaked beach on the southern tip of Hainan, where an endless parade of smiling, bikini-clad local girls would bring me an endless stream of gin and tonic) that I would rather be.

Such is life in the "Most Romantic City in China".