Sideways

A bell is ringing.
Shut up bell.
Ring ring ring.
Shut up, I mean it.
Ring ring ring.
Hey bell, stop it.
Ring ring ring.
Are you—
Ring ring ring.
—f---ing serious?!?
Ring ring ring.

My eyes open. There is a round sideways woman staring at me. Two seven-year-old boys sitting next to her, also sideways, also staring. She has two gold teeth. I know this because she is also smiling while she is staring. One of the gold teeth is the left front tooth. An incisor. The other is a pointy tooth, oddly pointed, not at all appearing in any type of organized formation with its fellow yellow-brownish brethren.

Ring ring ring.

The boys have empty eyes. They’re wearing the same faded yellow shirt. Not twins though. Their feet don’t hit the floor.
In an act of sheer courage, I’m sitting up. The sideways people are no longer sideways. My brain is a bit slow catching up with this move, swishing back and forth in my skull like a pair of jeans in a washing machine.

Ring ring ring.

Oh. China.

The ringing stops and a voice is jabbering in my ear. I think its coming from some speakers, somewhere. I’m on a plastic chair next to my backpack, surrounded by scattered paper napkins and a flower pot. I don’t even wonder what the flower pot is doing next to me. Six years of college have killed this curiosity in me entirely.

Why am I in a train station?

I look at my watch.

Ring ring ring.

SHUT THE HELL UP BELL.

My train out of China has left two hours ago. I consider myself a hero for standing up. The backpack is slung over my shoulder, the flower pot glanced at once more and a close-lipped smile/semi-nod combo is offered to the upright folks across from me as I make for the exit out onto the street.

There is another option for getting out of China. I need to find the bus station. Conveniently, this bus station is situated on the other side of the city and I will first need to find a bus that will take me there.
My guidebook says bus six will do the trick.

Actually, my guidebook did not say that at all. Guidebooks, loyal and compassionate as they may be, cannot speak.

On the street, I see a man in a suit with a briefcase in hand.
“Excuse me, sir, where is bus SIX?”
“---“
“Six? Bus? Bus number six?”
“---“
A woman walks by, pushing a stroller.
“Do you know bus six? Ma’am? Six?”
“(something in Chinese I don’t know)”
“Ah, sorry. Shye shye.”
Next, three more women, all potentially midgets, stride past at breakneck speed.
“Bus six? You know where bus six? Six? Six? …Bus six?” I’m almost running after them to keep up, these tiny power-walking midget women. This time, I hold up six fingers and then pump my fists up and down like my name is Big Stan at the helm of a nine-ton 18-wheeler hauling spark plugs.
“This… bus there,” the center woman points over her shoulder at the street corner across the big public square from us.
“There? Bus six? Ah, shye shye! Shye shye!”

I’m plowing through a pedestrian underpass, trying to find a way out of the country while vendors tout their counterfeit Rolexes and the white-collars are headed for another day at the office. My pocket contains just enough money to pay for the bus ticket. It is immediately obvious I’m the only white person on the bus .
Nanning is a tiny city by China’s standards, home to just over a million residents. It probably barely makes the cut to show up on maps in this land of sheer extremes. Outside the bus window, skyscrapers rise high and huge steel signs tout the names of American and Chinese banks. We drive past three McDonald’s and a steady stream of local shops, garish sentries lined up like dominoes.

I have an idea how big the city is. Yesterday I made two trips on a similar route on my way to picking up my Vietnamese visa at the consulate on the other side of the river. It takes over a half hour to get to the other side of this “tiny” city. My bus is stuck in gridlocked traffic at 9:30 am. There are no seats left and I’m forced to twist my back such that my pack is not thrust in the face of a teenage girl typing madly away on her cell phone.

After picking up my passport with newly acquired visa inside, I headed out to meet up with Vicky, who had already planned a night out with her friend from England who had moved here several years earlier to avoid credit card debt back home.
Tom is a tattooed, skin-tight black tank top wearing bartender who led us on a bar crawl of the city which stretched out into the unremembered territory of blurred images, bar games, the slamming of beer and (I think) a stop at a local diner with a whole contingent of Chinese characters who were amused, or possibly enthralled in a way that makes people watch the kid who could turn his eyelids inside out back in second grade, enough to follow us around as we went from bar to bar to club to bar to club to diner and on and on into a crazy night on the other side of the planet.