Because Sometimes it is More Fun to Edit.


Wherein Our Heroine Lets Someone Else Tell the Stories.
I'm obviously on an "Other People's Travel Stories" jag and lately my friends have done much more interesting things than I have (really - my friends are quite possibly the most interesting thing about me). Mel went to New York this past weekend, via the Chinatown Express bus. There is something Fellini-esque to me about going to New York on a Chinatown Express bus during the ramp-up to the RNC (yes, I used the term, "Fellini-esque." Beat me with a slim volume of Sartre, for I am un poseur). I attempted to add to the surreality by calling Mel on her cell phone during her trip back, leaving a message starting with, "Ni hao. Ni hao ma?" It would have been better had she answered, seeing the familiar caller ID and expecting English, but one does what one can with whatever one has. She apparently contemplated asking her seatmate to call me back and talk to me in Chinese, but decided against it for some obscure reason. Her story follows:

All in all, $35 return to NYC is a bargain. On the way up we cruised at 80 (based on the observation that we were passing all other traffic). Coming back resembled a polite version of the fall of Saigon. Regardless of what tickets were purchased on what bus line for what time, it was first-come first served for a long line of buses all heading in the same direction. An Asian woman with a sign stood by the door of each bus and let people on. If people came out again she knew it was full. By not speaking any English she avoided having to answer questions, thus maintaining a high-level of efficiency: after all, no bus was going anywhere but DC (famous last words). People shopping in Chinatown’s busy streets had to maneuver through the lines of people getting on the buses, but it was all done nicely. Unlike Amtrak/Penn Station, nobody was the least bit interested in security.

Going up was far less exciting. I joined an orderly queue of people at the designated address in Chinatown round back of the MCI Center. The bus arrived. We got on. Easy.

I passed two little groups assembled outside my parents' apartment in preparation for their protest further uptown. The Bell Ringers for Peace, all four of them, were being filmed by a cop. Other cops were arriving on the scene as backup. Just behind this group and thus far unencumbered by law enforcement were the Cyclists Against Oil. There were maybe a dozen of them debating which road would garner the most publicity/cause least punctures. Have to say NYC streets were unusually terrible to discourage all vehicles and pedestrians equally. The police may have scraped clean the tarmac while removing protesters and irrelevant pedestrians. Out in the harbor there were numerous little police and Coast Guard speedboats flitting about trying to make themselves useful by escorting dodgy cruise liners and suspicious-looking sailing school yachts. Each speedboat had at least one heavy machine gun mounted on the deck, pointed safely skyward - towards the downtown skyscrapers.

The Chinatown Express bus was beautifully ignored, indeed the entire operation seems to be under transport authority radar (but so clean!)

The sound from the pirated movies ("I, Robot" and "La Femme Chat" - "Catwoman," pirated from the French edition of the film, which must have been the one shown with subtitles in Hong Kong before being re-pirated and dubbed with the words from the English version. So much work, such a bad film. [Ed: Is Halle Berry rendered more or less annoying in an American movie dubbed into French on a Chinese bus? Discuss.]) was dubbed back in. This was most noticeable in "I, Robot," when explosions could sometimes be heard before they happened. More importantly, both "I, Robot" and "La Femme Chat" featured a tabby stunt cat (sometimes he was CGI in the latter, particularly where he had to breathe tuna-scented life into Halle Berry). Was it the same one, I wonder?

I may not have mentioned that in addition to just-released movies, we retreated to Chinese pop videos of the universal "he or she does not love me/am unhappy" variety, filmed in pretty train stations and shopping malls. Young Asian John Cougar look-alike in shades and blue denim saunters down train tracks, guitar over shoulder, looking at feet, singing of love (thinking of bullet trains?). In other scenes he sat in open boxcars, on deserted platforms, up against train wheels. Sometime he held the guitar, but he never appeared able to play it. Other songs were similar. Man waits by fountain in park for lost love, woman wanders through park (same one?) singing to the trees of love. I want to learn to speak Chinese -I don't know which dialect, but I suspect Cantonese, as I believe Mandarin is historically the language of government, not love songs and bad movies.
Posted: Tuesday - August 31, 2004 at 07:38 AM         | |

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