Dartblog

Traveling from New York to Hanover yesterday, I chanced my first experience with a so-called Chinatown Bus—a fast, no-frills mode of transport from Chinatown to Chinatown along the string of multicultural metropolises of the northeastern United States. There are a number of young companies that run these Chinatown Buses, and all are notorious for their… how do I put this nicely… aggressive cost-cutting. (Their managers would have a thing or two to say to James Wright on that score.)

The most persistent rumor about the Chinatown Buses, and it’s not just a rumor, is that they drive fast. Really fast. One commenter on a travel website I consulted approved of the buses, but advised not to sit near the driver, for “when you see how fast he is going, you will instantly remember all those prayers you were forced to memorize when you were a kid.” Another rumor, in the same vein, is that they drive like madmen, swerving from lane to lane to avoid even the slightest need for such trivialities as the brake pedal. Speed is time and time is money, so to the extent that these rumors are true, they relate to the bus companies’ ferocious cost-cutting. They also relate to my choice of words when I say I chanced a trip on a Chinatown Bus.

I was pleasantly surprised. The company I used was Fung Wah Bus—the name, I am told, translates from Cantonese to “magnificent wind.” Fung Wah offers service between New York’s Chinatown (the corner of Canal and Bowery Streets) and Boston’s South Station, which I understand is quite near that city’s Chinatown. The price is $15 one way. The advertised trip duration is four to five hours, and they made it in three and a half—well, really just under four, but the bus departed half an hour early. This would have been infuriating had I not already boarded the bus by that point, but as I had, it was quite convenient.

And though the driving was fast, insane it was not—excepting a couple of hairy right-lane passes, I suppose.

One small detail was puzzling. When I first boarded the bus, I was struck by the presence, tied to each and every pair of seats, of a clean, empty, bright orange plastic bag with the Fung Wah insignia. Not only are these bags a major cost-cutting failure, they also struck me as rather ominous, hanging there neatly, one in front of the other, all down the aisle. What is the justification for their abundance? Could it be that Fung Wah anticipates sick, regretful faces buried in each of those bags?