Crossing to the Far Side of the World

I woke up to bright light beaming through the window of my sleeper bus. My watch read 8:30 am. I stretched as far as I could in my upper bunk. I pulled back the curtain to be greeted by white. Everything was white. A fresh snow during the night had covered the entire landscape, or lack of, with a blanket of white. The sky was even white and I couldnt tell where it ended and the ground started. In all this nothingness my bus hurdled across a lonely highway to the only thing that stood in such a place: the Chinese-Kazakstan border.



My trip had already started out rough. The bus was delayed by the passengers packing every square inch of the cargo hold. We were supposed to leave at 7:00 but we actually left around 10pm. I didn't get a chance to eat because my taxi driver got lost and stuck in traffic. I also ripped a hole in the seat of my jeans trying to climb into my top bunk. Hungry, grumpy and with a breezy backside is not a good way to start out a 24 hour bus trip.



My bus came to a sqeeky stop. Everybody bundled up and walked outside so I followed. I asked my bus driver if I needed to bring my bag but he said no and off I went, another ant in the line. A cold breeze blew into my jeans and the snow crunched under my boots. The sight before me sparked a realization of what the rest of my day would be like. Hundreds of people, crowded around in a semi-circle against a steel fence, huddled around their declarations. People were carrying everthing they found cheaper in China. Crates of oranges, blankets, cookware and even tires. The mob was at a standstill. I had wondered why we spent so much time at a rest stop for lunch. The boarder was closed, the Chinese weren't letting anybody out.



I just joined the crowd and cluelessly waited liek everbody else until a girl motioned to get my attention. She was trying to get me to follow her. Ha, sure. This is the part where I follow and then some guy jumps out and hits me in the face with a crowbar so he can have my wallet. Eh, its a wallet with nothing in it so I followed. Turns out they were on my bus too and the had decided to adopt me.



The crowd suddenly got ancy. An arial view would have looked like the mob was quivering. Everybody shouldered their bags, dollies were tilted into their mobile position and my new family looked at me and said "Shvanya!" I think it meant "come on!" because I just saw why everybody was moving. A gate, about one meter wide, had just been opened.



The sea of white gave way to an island of brutality. "Shvinya!" Everybody was pressed up against me from all directions, shoving hard, reating an equilibrium standstill. More shoving and shifting, crates and dollies were being used as plows. At first, everybody chuckled, the mob of people chuckled, smiling, thinking "of course the Chinese government would do this to us!" The chuckling melted to annoyance and then crumbled into violence.



Women were screaming, mens' faces turned furious and people were being thrown aside so they others could move in, only to be thrown themselves. A Chinese guard stood there with a look of boredom on his face, as if he was once ammused by this long ago. A bundle of tires flew through the air and hit somebody in the head. A crate of oranged was digging into my back. A dolly was starting to run me over. My family was now two people lengths ahead of me, a long distance in this game. I was trying to be polite, slipping into gaps as they were created and not joining hte savegry. I didnt last long. I stiff armed the dolly of oranges, putting it on one weel and showed the rest of the Chinese American football. I made my own gaps and tossed a few people. I made it through the gate pretty quickly.



Everybody that made it through the gate proceeded into the building ahead. Inside I found a similar scene. Everybody was pressed up against eachother, waiting for a small gate to open and when it did the tires flew and everybody got violent, except this time there was soft Christmas jazz playing overhead.