5.18, Mi Shi -> Jingzhou -> Wuhan
Continuity is going out the window at this point; my journal is just a mass of notes for the past week or two, so I'm just writing what I feel like writing now.
After two nights in Fenghuang and two nights at Sun Zhi Jun's apartment in Mi Shi with both Jun and Molly, it was time for me to head back to Wuhan. Quite aside from other things, despite all protestations to the contrary, at times I felt like I was intruding on some kind of romantic interlude in their lives.
We levered ourselves out of bed around 9am, red-eyed and yawning after drinking tea and chatting until the wee hours the night before. After a breakfast of eggs fresh from Jun's parents' chickens, freshly made soy milk, and highly suspect supermarket "ham," we grabbed a bus to Jingzhou.
Arriving in Jingzhou, they led me to the central bus stop. After our goodbyes, which I admit were not without somewhat more than their fair share of emotion on my part, Jun and Molly sat me down on a bus, paid my fare over my objections, and went off on their merry way.
I wasn't left alone to mull over my own thoughts for very long, though; I was soon joined by a Chinese man, cast from a very recognizable mold. I consider men of this type to be possibly the least pleasant company available on public transport here in China, trumping even the incontinent baby demographic, or the I'm-hot-and-I-know-it girls who are constantly tapping texts on glittering mobile phones, with similarly bejewelled fingernails.
At any rate, these are men in what I like to call the "I Don't Give A Shit" phase of their lives. There's no specific age bracket. Some men may never enter this phase, and some men never leave it. Tellingly, I have never met a woman in this phase of her life; although, I suppose it is possible that I just choose to ignore them so completely that they fail to figure in my memories.
Despite having no discernible age or ethnic grouping, men of this type are easily recognizable. They're usually wearing business casual clothes, sometimes sport coats, which look increasingly old fashioned and dingy as you get closer. Their personal hygiene is questionable at best, they are great proponents of the oft-lamented practices of spitting everywhere and hurling litter with reckless abandon, and their voices are tweaked above everyone else's by several decibels.
This guy was a perfect example. I'm not even sure how it was possible, but he was somehow simultaneously greasy, moist, and scaly. His short-cropped hair clung tenaciously to his head like an oil slick, but a shower of dandruff clumps -- not flakes, clumps -- detached regularly from his scalp whenever he moved or itched his head, which was regrettably often.
While personal space is a fairly nebulous concept in China anyway, my new friend took this to an entirely new level. Crossing his legs into the aisle, he'd lean his upper body toward me, so eventually he'd be resting against my shoulder, dripping dandruff oh so gently down the front of my shirt.
Uncrossing his legs was another fun habit of his, the end result being the full length of his leg pressed warmly against mine. There are more than a few people from whom I would welcome this kind of contact, but a greasy man in his 40s with halitosis and a penchant for picking his nose in public does not rank among them.
He also liked to sing along with the music videos on the bus's television, grabbing my knee whenever a girl in a miniskirt appeared. Never before that day have I lamented the invention of the miniskirt.
After about four hours of this, I was grateful to be able to get up, brush the dandruff snowdrifts from my jeans, and bid my new friend a hasty goodbye.
Now thoroughly disgusted with my fellow man, I decided to splurge on a cab back to the hostel, and what I consider my home in central China; the bar at the Pathfinder hostel in Wuhan.
Greeted with smiles, hugs, a cup of tea and an invitation to dinner, it was like the sun coming up after a long night.
There have been many moments like that here for me; sometimes I fear for the consequences when I have to finally board my return flight.