Live en route to Boston from NYC

The Fung Wah bus leaves promptly from New York City to Boston at the top of every hour, promptly. It’s one of the multitude of fleets that bridge the East Coast Chinatowns from New York to Boston to Philly to Baltimore to Washington D.C. to any other big city that has a couple of blocks reserved for the local Chinese enclave. It’s so Chinese. The only way you'll ever be able to coast five hours to New England for only $15 each way, shoved into a mobile zoo with an assortment of old Asian men with plump bags of fruit, Black mothers with their toddlers slipping between their grasps to climb the seats, and white emo kids...being white emo kids. I must confess, before my first trip on a Chinatown bus I had my presumptions, as I heard stories from my friends I formulated images of a rickety stretch hooptie filled with cackling Chinese grandmas with wooden crates of squawking chickens hung by their feet, and a triad of mobsters with eye patches, intent in a game of mahjong to determine control of the local opium ring. It's not quite so bad, unless you arrive during the chaotic couple of minutes before the bus is about to take off, in which there is so much commotion you begin to wonder if you're going to Boston or being smuggled into Taiwan.

As a traveler, just making the trek across town onto the bus is enough validity to earn your spot in one of the seats. The first time I used the bus, I (being the stupid Cali boy) dragged all of my luggage through SoHo to get some last minute Uniqlo hoodies and ended up voyaging 15 blocks down Broadway and Canal, sweating like a disco wig in my baking overcoat.

Today's trip to the bus wasn't as bad, except for each of us trying to lug 10 days worth of clothes up and down a total of 12 flights of stairs on the hottest New York winter day on this side of the Apocalypse. Dragging our wheels through slush and sewage, brushing off people trying to sell us bootleg copies of Music and Lyrics and Astronaut Farmer. Yes, iLL-Lit is far from private jet status. It's not all glamour, baby!

But regardless of it all, the shit smell and massive amount of bodies clumped together like ants on a crumb reminds me of home. Call it what you want, this is the culture that created the largest nation in the world, son! I can't ever really get pissed off or utterly shocked about anything that happens in a Chinatown, because there's always the excuse that, "hey, it's Chinatown." Things like watching an old woman unapologetically blow her nose onto the sidewalk. Or seeing a giant sign that reads "WE SELL NAME BELT" and knowing that the final "s" wasn't left out because of bad English, but because it probably cost more to have an extra letter on a sign that people would understand anyway. Once I was standing on the corner of Canal and Mott and was startled by a bellowing of a man behind me, only to turn around and nearly get knocked over by a butcher with two whole pig carcasses heaved over his shoulders, their pale cold hooves brushing across the faces of a couple of horrified bystanders. Oh yeah, that's my people.

It's all real, and typical, and if it glides across the realms of stereotypes, so be it--it hasn't stopped Chinese folks from doing their thang in the past couple of thousand years, anyway. It does get a bit annoying, especially as the two hipster girls sitting behind me discuss how the streets must be so grimy because "Chinese people are mad poor and have mad babies."

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UPDATE: 1:20pm, Live via (??????????)

it seems that the bus has broken down. if i didn't understand cantonese, i'd probably be just as confused as the rest of these poor passengers. luckily, i have the office on my computer. you'll keep me company, dwight.

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UPDATE: 12:54am, Live via Cambridge, MA

here at my homie theresa's crib. it's ridiculously hot in boston too, the snow glosses the sidewalks and my wannabe snowboots / hightops make me swear i'm going to fall on my ass in any minute. but regardless, needless to say i survived the chinatown bus.

boston's one of those towns i just melt into. shortly after being picked up we found ourselves sprawled across the couches, reggae whining from the speakers, local brew in our bellies, j's in circulation, you know how we do sucka waat. as transients, we're able to make home pretty much anywhere it needs to be. the past week has been such a swarm of everythingness, ruby and i finally get a chance to indulge in past due phone conversations with our cali contingents and whatnot, and in certain situations i realize that maybe it's not that i've grown to be awkward, just that i haven't been able to exchange words much with the somebodies that ascend our spirits, summon us to speak as we love to speak and be heard in the way that sounds best. those who offer interaction to thirst for, when you swear that the couple of weeks of silence that lay dormant between you was really eons long. it seems things find a way of circulating back in the timeliest of fashion.