Always Expect the Unexpected

Another school year was about to begin. I had been back in country for only a few days but had no groceries to speak of in my fridge, necessitating a trip to Metro (a warehouse type store similar to Costco). Also added to the list, at the last minute, was a new television. My original television (only one year old) was permanently disabled after a bolt of lightning hit my apartment at about 4 a.m. the day after I arrived home. The trip was planned for Friday after school.

Friday came and, fortunately for me, I was able to save the cab fare to Metro by riding the school bus downtown. After a half hour ride, I was dropped off next to the store. The shopping experience was pretty standard. I was able to get my groceries and my new television rather quickly. It took a bit longer to arrange for my television to be delivered to my house. There was paperwork to fill out and questions to answer, all in Chinese of course. In the end, I walked away satisfied that all had gone well, and the night was young. I would be home in plenty of time to make some food for dinner. All that was left was the bus ride home.

I walked out of the store, played Frogger (dodging moving cars) while crossing six lanes of busy traffic and walked five city blocks to the nearest bus station. Upon arrival I found that the bus I normally take home, the 311, was in the station and had an empty seat. It was a seat over the wheel which required my knees to be at almost shoulder level, but I could sit with my very large, very heavy tote bag full of a week's worth of groceries rather than standing and being tossed back and forth for the next hour every time the bus stopped or started up. The bus seemed less crowded than usual, and the other riders seemed more surprised than that a foreigner was on the bus. It struck me as a little strange and made me wonder if I should check to see if the route had changed. Buses here do that a lot. You never know when one will change its route. Yet I figured that this bus hadn't changed routes significantly for four years. Why would it do so now?

Finally the driver finished his break, and we were off. The ride was quite normal. The bus was going the same way it always had. Once it got to the main highway I was about to take a little nap, when it happened. The bus turned right. I wasn't panicked at first. As long as it kept to the same general area I was fine. After awhile it turned left, and we were on the old highway that ran parallel to the highway from which we had come. No problem. That highway runs behind my apartment complex. I will still get home.

I started to relax again as it went by the familiar rock and statue warehouses which line the highway. I started to think about whether I needed to come back there to buy rocks for science class. We were just blocks from my house and the bus turned right again. I could have kicked myself. The bus stopped right before it had turned. If I had gotten off there it would have been easy to get home. I didn't, and now I was being taken to a part of town which I did not know.

While I was a bit worried, enough to get up from my seat and stand next to the door ready to jump off at the next stop, I wouldn't say it was a horrible ride. The section we drove through was very traditional and had all sorts of shops selling hand make baskets and brooms. Places which rarely see foreigners. Places you just don't see in Chengdu that often. It really made me want to come back and explore some. Yet exploration was not something I could do right at that moment. I had been on the bus more than an hour. I had butter and frozen chicken and vegetables which were fast defrosting in the 90+ degree heat of the day. I needed to get home fast.

To my dismay the bus didn't stop once along that strip of road. It took me a good mile in the wrong direction and then turned left. Soon after turning it stopped, and I jumped out. I vaguely knew which direction I needed to go, but would not be able to walk home from where I got off. To make matters worse the road wasn't that busy and, though I stood in the heat for 15 minutes, I didn't see a single taxi.

Finally, I saw some petty cabs down the road. A petty cab is basically a covered cart attached to a bicycle or motorcycle. I asked the first driver if he would take me to my apartment complex. He said, "No." I don't blame him since he had a bicycle petty cab. He told me to ask the woman behind him. She said yes but wanted 20 kuai. That is really expensive for a petty cab, but at this point I just wanted to go home and put my groceries away. I hopped into the back with her little daughter. A cute little girl with two buns on the top of her head, wearing a flowered dress with red sandles and eating a green plum.

At first the little girl was pretty shy. I think I was the first foreigner she had ever had a conversation with, and she looked like she was afraid of me. I asked her lots of questions in Chinese. I found out that this little four year old girl likes flowers, the color purple and big cats (not little ones). She does not like dogs, fruit (because her mom makes her eat fruit), and spicy food. The ride took about 20 minutes or so, but by the end she had opened up and was chatting away telling me all sorts of stories about her mom and life. She even reached over and touched my bracelet (one my niece gave me) and told me how much she liked it. When we finally reached my apartment, she definitely wasn't afraid any more, and I think she was sad to see me go. She turned around and looked out the back window and waved at me until she couldn't see me anymore. It was a great ride!

No one expects to be detoured, nor do they wish for it, but it is the unexpected things in life that make the best memories. I know my detour was.