Profile

On the road with a Route 300 driver

By Cui Xiaohuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-31 08:12

Liu Shufang drives on one of the city's longest bus routes. Wang Jing / China Daily

Liu Shufang, 38, is a driver on one of the capital's longest bus routes, Route 300, which circles the 48.8-km Third Ring Road.

METRO spent a day with the veteran model worker last week and she talked about how the spirit of "life on the road" had made her passionate about driving and made traveling a life-long hobby.

5 am

Liu usually starts her day early because her shift is always an early one. She is always the first in the family to leave home, a 12-sq-m room in an old courtyard near Xuanwumen, in south Beijing.

"I am not much of a cook, so I seldom make breakfast for my husband and my daughter," Liu said.

Each of the family members is busy in the mornings and they leave home on their own.

6 am

She boards a bus bound for Shilihe Bridge on the southeast Third Ring Road. Liu has been working for the Beijing bus group since graduating from junior high school at 16.

Both her mother and father-in-law has worked for the same organization since they were young. Her husband, who is five years older then her, is an accountant working for the bus company.

"I'm not sure whether it is loyalty. It's more like a family tradition," Liu said. "I know what my education background is and I think I am competent for the job of a bus driver."

6:15 am

After two stops, she arrives at the Route 300 terminal hidden in a street that usually goes unnoticed.

Liu is always in early and her partner, conductor Li Yuying, usually arrives at the same time in her husband's second-hand sedan.

"Drivers and conductors work as partners and they usually stick to the same buses as a team," Liu said.

The two immediately register their alcohol level through a detector on the wall and then start their regular checks of their double-carriage bus, numbered "X40725".

Liu is also responsible for keeping an eye on nine other vehicles. When the drivers and conductors finish their check-ups, they go to Liu to register the state of their wheels.

6:40 am

Liu's first loop of the day starts at 6:40 am. The buses leave the terminal every two minutes. The GPS systems installed onboard can be tracked on a tiny computer screen in the monitoring room of the terminal.

The first stop is Huaweiqiao South and passengers, wrapped in their early spring clothing, get on the bus from the door in the middle. Their transportation cards beep as each passenger scans them through the machine.

Sometimes, Liu swaps positions with other teams and her bus leaves at 7:25 am but each bus has to go through 35 bus stops in the loop which usually takes 130 minutes if the traffic is smooth.

"The first loop always begins with the morning rush hour and it is not easy to steer a 20-meter long vehicle in the morning rush hour," Liu said, with a wry smile.

"More private cars have make the roads ever more crowded and inexperienced drivers have made the roads more chaotic," she said. "But the bad traffic does not put me in a bad mood. I stay focused on steering my vehicle and I am comfortable in my territory."

8 am

The bus reaches Guomao and the blackened burned-out CCTV tower amid heavy traffic. Liu steers her eyes swiftly between the rear mirrors of the vehicle, looking focused and composed. Years of practice on the familiar roads have given her experience but she takes nothing for granted on Beijing's challenging roads.

But one morning 10 years ago, the then inexperienced driver could have lost her job thanks to a rush-hour disaster.

Liu was driving a dated manual steering bus that morning and it reached the bottom of Hangtian Bridge on the west side of the Third Ring Road. Suddenly, she steered badly and the bus lost power halfway climbing up the bridge amid heavy traffic. Vehicles were honking behind her.

Liu, already rattled by the situation, could not get the engine restarted. And the worse thing happened; a motorcade of a foreign diplomats leaving Diaoyutai State Guesthouse passed her by, leaving echoes of sirens behind.

"I felt as if my seat were scorching me," Liu recalled.

After loading her passengers onto other buses, she waited with her vehicle till the rescue vehicle arrived and pulled her bus away.

She paid 200 yuan for the rescue service, one-fifth of her monthly salary at the time.

9 am

The bus continues its loop anticlockwise from the southeast corner of the Third Ring Road, one of the most congested sections of Beijing. The near-50 km-long Third Ring Road was completed in 1994 as an expressway. Now, the 4.17 million cars in the capital have overburden Beijing's roads and the ring roads have long been a traffic nightmare.

Liu said the worst sections of the ring road are Guomao, Liangma Bridge, or Landmark Bridge, Madian Bridge in the north and Hangtian Bridge in the west.

"Traffic flows come with the growth of business and population in these areas," Liu said.

There are over 500 buses running the route, both clockwise and anticlockwise. Each bus takes on one to two thousand passengers during each run, Liu said.

After years of driving the same route, Liu has developed a book of guidelines for Route 300 drivers. The book was recently published and circulated among the 500 drivers in the fleet.

10 am

Liu finishes her first loop and arrives back at the terminal, which is already half full of other buses. Drivers chat outside the monitoring room and wait for the time to begin their next loop.

Liu usually has a snack during the break- yogurt, fruit and pies - and shares her food with colleagues while talking about the latest TV series and news.

"I enjoy eating healthy food. It makes me feel I am not leaving behind the best part of life," Liu said.

11 am

Liu undertakes her second two-hour loop, before doing another one at 3:00 pm. During the busy season, such as the peak travel periods before the Chinese New Year, Liu may make as many as four loops in a day.

She is a familiar face to many passengers. Once, an elderly couple walked up behind her, and asked if she was married. "It was such a lovely acquaintance between people. A simple greeting or a small chat makes life all the happier," Liu said.

In contrast, Liu said driving an empty bus during Chinese New Year, when most residents had left Beijing, made her feel quite lonely.

5 pm

Liu's shifts are over and she gets home and transforms into a housewife "without the responsibility of cooking".

Liu's Route 300 circles around the traffic-packed Third Ring Road.

"My mother-in-law does the cooking and I sometimes help out. I am mainly responsible for the dishes," Liu said, smiling.

Liu and her family live with her parents-in-law in two tiny rooms. She and her husband share a bunk bed with their daughter, with the daughter sleeping on top while they sleep on the bottom bed.

"It's a simple life, almost too simple," Liu said.

7 pm

Liu usually reads her magazines and newspapers in the evening and chats with her mother-in-law about work and listens to her father-in-law's social commentary.

She says her daughter does not take much looking after, being independent, open and hard working.

"Our family is the easygoing type. We don't ask for much from life. We often tell ourselves, saving up for a narrow dwelling is no better than saving for a family trip," Liu said, adding that the family takes a trip each year. The most recent one was to the seaside at Tanggu, near Tianjin, in February.

Liu said her biggest wish is to travel to Tibet.

"That's where life ultimately is," she said. "I would like to stay there as long as I like but I may have to quit my job to do it."