Surprise on a Public Bus

Now here’s another story about life in rural China.

On days when I end classes early before the school day is over, I take the public bus home. Now the public bus I have to take from Ligong travels on a rural route and then into the city, so the people on this bus are usually farmers or more rural people. Often I see a lot of interesting things that they bring on the bus, like huge amounts of vegetables and other agricultural items. Now this particular day, I was standing near the side door on the bus because there were no seats, and though I wasn’t looking around, out of the corner of my eye I could see someone getting up nearby me to get off the bus.

I still didn’t look around because hey, it’s just someone getting up to get off the bus, that’s what people do on the bus, it’s not a very special thing. But then I heard *fwapfwapfwapfwapfwapfwap*, and I felt a light breeze nearby me accompanying the sound. Hmm, that was weird...meh, whatever. Then I hear it again. *fwapfwapfwapfwapfwap* So I slowly turn my head around to what’s next to me, and guess what I see?

The lady that had got up out of her seat was carrying in one hand two chickens by their feet. As I continued to watch, I saw that one of them was trying to put up a fight and was flapping its wings furiously no more than two feet away from me! I’m not a farmer, so I’m not used to seeing this kind of sight.

Now that was an interesting experience, taking a public bus that is such a seemingly urban thing and coming pretty much face to face with a live and flapping chicken!