Praying the No. 31 Bus
The bus pulls up to the terminus and the smattering of potential passengers crowd around the door, anxious to get one of the few seats in a vehicle designed for standing. I have a long journey ahead so I join the mad scramble, certain of only one thing; that the lady beside me trying to jump, what might be loosely called the queue, was not going to get on before me. A newly acquired skill in the careful positioning of elbows and briefcase ensure that I win my point without the loss of face that actually admitting we were competing would have involved. I settle into my hard blue plastic seat, hoping that no elderly late arrival will shame me into giving it up.
Since we are outside the city limits, my fellow passengers are a varied bunch. Behind me a farmer shouts into his mobile phone that he has set out on his journey and will be at the station in half an hour. Rather optimistic I surmise, but somehow resist the urge to correct him. In front is a middle aged gentleman whose demeanor suggests that he is a man of position wearing casual wear because of the heat. He is probably an academic returning home after the first classes of the year. A young woman with a mobile phone that thinly tinkles the soft centered pop music that is so popular here spends her time giggling girlishly into the aforementioned phone, oblivious to the rest of us. Some likely lads get on at the next stop, gangling all over the place in basketball outfits that are more Harlem that Handan, but the way they gape at me suggests that, for all their swagger, they are not long left the farms that raised them.
Approaching the city the remnants of country side give way to the rather grubby suburbs of Shijiazhuang. For those used to the images of Beijing sophistication, the reality of this second tier city might disappoint. The developments which have transformed the capital are only fleeting felt here, and new constructions glitter in the evening sun, towering over their more humble and more numerous neighbours. The “neighbours” are mom and pop affairs, endless series of haberdashers selling cheap version of Japanese pop fashions, followed by rows of hardware shops offering useful but hardly hardwearing plastic basins and finally the ubiquitous restaurants, dispensing noodles and lamb kebabs to the evening strollers. All the storefronts are attempting to seem new and modern, but one carries the slogan “Our whole heart and profit is at the service of the people”. It is probably considered too expensive to replace the glass onto which this improving communist motto is etched, but it has long since been drained of any meaning in Modern China.
Our bus is filling up now, with prim office girls trying, not quite successfully, to suggest that the normally travel by a car and they are actually returning to their own home and not their parents tired old two (barely) roomed apartment. Many are wearing the cheap clothing mentioned above which makes them, to writer’s eye at least, ,all look alike rather as Mao suits robbed their grandmothers of their individual allure. Commerce has been more successful than communism in this regard. A mother with babe in arms struggles on board, forcing the able-bodied among us to feign willingness to give up our seat. I loose and she graciously allows me to play peek-a-boo with her pudding-faced son in recompense. Her obvious delight in her son is touching and opens, briefly, in me that Pandora’s Box where thoughts of what-might-have-been are kept. Passing a building site, we pick up some construction workers. Grizzled young men with safety helmets still on, giving the (false) impression, that despite the statistics, their work is safe. The friends who board with them fill the last spaces on the bus with enormous piles of belongings carried in old fertilizer sacks, the newly arrived migrant’s trademark. There are so many of these now and they all have hopes of making it good in the “big smoke”. I think of the Irish arriving in America in the 1850’s looking for gold in the streets and I wish them better luck.
As we trundle through the gather dusk the movement of the bus creates a flow of slightly cooler air past the window. In it refreshing sensation, I feel the hand of God, moving from one passenger to another, gently blessing each one individually at the end of the day. I become almost tearful that they know nothing of the benediction that is bestowed upon them. In the murmur of bus-bound conversations I hear Our Lady whisper endearments in unhearing ears; reassuring mothers anxious for their children, men missing their homes… I, following her lead, glance at each companion in turn, whisper unspoken encouragements and add, as if to gild the lily, my blessing to His.
We pull up at the Railway Station, (it was more than half an hour). The bus empties quickly and our solidarity is lost. I ask God that he may allow His hand to stay with each one as they disperse and that Mary’s words will get past unhearing ears to lodge deep in comprehending hearts. I turn and head for the mad scramble of the ticket office, all recollection lost. But for a moment, a brief moment, this is how I prayed on the No 31 bus.