The two of us were so naive that we hadn't even asked how much the call would cost.
We waited for more than half an hour, but Chen Gang never called back. Meanwhile, the shopkeeper kept urging us to pay.
As Lijuan reached for her money, she asked, “How much?”
The woman behind the counter answered expressionlessly.
“One hundred and twenty yuan.”
Lijuan and I nearly collapsed.
One phone call—and Chen Gang hadn't even answered it. Back home, a call like that would have cost fifty cents. Here they wanted 120 yuan?
I summoned my courage.
“We only made one call, and nobody even answered. How could it possibly cost that much?”
The woman looked annoyed.
“One hundred and twenty is expensive? Seeing that you two look like poor country girls, I've already charged you less.”
I was about to argue again when Lijuan quietly tugged at my collar.
I turned around.
At some point, two large, heavily built men had appeared behind us.
A chill ran through me.
I immediately shut my mouth.
Lijuan obediently took out two hundred yuan and handed it to the woman.
The shopkeeper straightened the two bills in her hand. Then, all at once, her expression changed.
She pointed at one of the hundred-yuan notes.
“This one is counterfeit!”
Lijuan cried out, “Impossible!”
She snatched the bill back and looked at it carefully.
“That isn't my money. Mine was folded into a neat square when I took it out just now. This one doesn't have a single crease.”
The woman froze for a moment, then began making a scene.
“I say it's fake, so it's fake! I say it was yours, so it was yours!”
Lijuan was still trying to argue when one of the big men behind her patted her on the shoulder.
He gave her a smile that never reached his eyes.
“Girl, don't you know what kind of place this is?”
I clearly saw a bright tattoo covering the arm he had placed on Lijuan's shoulder.
How could something like this happen in broad daylight?
I looked around for help.
Then I saw a policeman standing not far away, watching everything with a cold, detached expression, as if none of it had anything to do with him.
The policeman noticed me looking at him.
He simply turned away and walked off as though he had seen nothing.
My heart sank.
Lijuan was still trying to say something, but I quickly caught her eye and shook my head.
I emptied every coin and small bill from my pockets. Together with the change Lijuan had, we managed to scrape together another twenty yuan and handed it to the shopkeeper.
She took the money and gave a contemptuous snort.
Lijuan and I quickly picked up the nylon bags we had left on the ground and hurried away.
We had been cheated out of more than a hundred yuan for no reason at all, and we both felt terribly wronged.
We had barely walked a few steps when we saw another policeman.
I thought perhaps the first officer had simply been short-sighted and hadn't understood what was happening. Surely, if we explained everything to this one, he wouldn't just stand by and do nothing.
So I took Lijuan by the arm and walked up to him.
We approached him almost as if he were a relative we had finally found in a strange city.
“Officer,” I said, my voice full of grievance, “we were just cheated out of more than a hundred yuan for making a phone call.”
The policeman glanced at us without expression.
“I’m on duty. If you want to report something, call 110.”
Lijuan stared at him in disbelief.
“But aren't you a policeman? Doesn't telling you count as reporting it?”
The officer became impatient.
“There’s no way to explain this to you.”
Without even looking at us again, he turned and walked away.
I happened to glance back.
The woman from the shop was watching us.
I grabbed Lijuan and quickened our pace. We needed to get away from the square as fast as possible.
Just as we reached the intersection, the same bus with “Armed Police Sports Academy” painted on its side came driving toward us again.
The young man standing at the door immediately waved enthusiastically, inviting us aboard.
He was wearing camouflage fatigues. To us, clothes like that naturally evoked the image of soldiers, and we couldn't help feeling a sense of trust toward him—and toward the bus.
We asked again how much it cost to get to HM Town.
Still twenty-five yuan each.
There were already more than a dozen passengers on board, some with bags beside them.
Lijuan and I looked back at the little shop where we'd just made the phone call.
Then we let out a long breath of relief.
Without another thought, we climbed onto the bus and found seats by the window.
Thinking that we would reach HM Town in no more than two hours, we finally began to relax.
But after what had happened with the counterfeit bill, we knew we had to be careful. This time we prepared the fare in advance, each of us clutching a fifty-yuan note that was neither new nor particularly worn, waiting for someone to come collect the tickets.
But we waited.
And waited.
No one came.
The young man in camouflage remained by the door, constantly calling out to people outside and urging them to get on.
Before long, the bus turned back toward the railway station.
We assumed there must have been a traffic jam.
But when we passed the station for the third time, we finally understood.
The bus was deliberately driving in circles.
Just then, shouting broke out near the door.
We looked over.
A young man who had boarded not long before was demanding to get off. The man in camouflage refused to let him.
The young man wasn't particularly handsome, but he had a gentle, educated-looking face and was dressed neatly. He said he had just arrived in Guangzhou and had somewhere urgent to be. If he didn't leave soon, he would be too late.
Several times he tried to force his way through the door.
Each time, the man in camouflage shoved him back roughly.
The bus erupted into chaos.
A few other passengers began demanding to get off as well.
Then a middle-aged man stood up from the seat in front of me.
I assumed he wanted to get off too, and I began pulling Lijuan up with me.
But instead of heading for the door, the man charged toward the young passenger.
In just a few steps, he reached him and began slapping him from both sides.
The young man's lip immediately started bleeding.
He looked bewildered and frightened.
“Why are you hitting me?”
The middle-aged man answered as though he were completely in the right.
“Because I feel like it. What are you going to do about it? If you try to get off again, I'll hit you again.”
By then, four or five other strong, heavily built men had gathered around him.
They all wore the same arrogant, threatening expression.
The young man immediately realized that something was seriously wrong.
Smartly, he said nothing more.
He quietly walked to the back of the bus and sat down.
Everyone else on the bus had seen enough.
No one dared to say another word.
The passengers who had just been shouting to get off fell silent and quietly returned to their seats.
Lijuan and I pressed ourselves together, trembling from head to toe.
We had no idea when this bus would finally leave.
We had no idea what was going to happen next.
The beating of the young man temporarily restored silence inside the bus.
But the bus continued crawling around Guangzhou, stopping again and again to pick up passengers.
Every time I saw the familiar sign of Guangzhou Railway Station, my heart sank.
Round after round.
How long was this going to go on?
I had always suffered from motion sickness. On the train, it wasn't too bad, but a bus that kept stopping and starting was the worst possible situation for me.
I fought desperately to keep myself from vomiting, but my stomach kept twisting into painful spasms.
Several times I thought I was going to throw up.
My eyes filled with tears.
Then I suddenly remembered the packet of Sichuan peppercorns my mother had packed for me. She had given it to me specifically to prevent motion sickness.
I hurriedly dug through my nylon bag, pulled out the packet, and held it under my nose, breathing in the sharp, pungent smell as hard as I could.
I still felt miserable, but at least I didn't vomit.
When every seat on the bus was finally occupied, I felt a surge of hope.
Surely now we would leave Guangzhou.
But we didn't.
The man in camouflage continued standing by the door, calling out to people and persuading them to get on.
And something even more frightening began to happen.
Every time he brought a new passenger onto the bus, someone already sitting inside would stand up and give up his seat.
Some got off.
Others moved to the empty space at the front of the bus and sat on the floor.
That was when I finally understood.
They were all working together.
In other words, all those neatly seated passengers we had seen when we first boarded were nothing more than bus touts—people planted there to make the bus look legitimate and attract real passengers.
The bus had been circling Guangzhou since ten in the morning.
By three in the afternoon, my hope had turned into despair.
I began to think I might spend the rest of my life on that bus.
Finally, the man in camouflage shut the door.
At last, no more passengers were allowed on.
The bus soon reached a proper highway and began accelerating.
Everyone inside breathed a sigh of relief.
But the relief didn't last long.
The bus erupted into another commotion.
We had just discovered that the fare from Guangzhou to HJ Town was actually eighty yuan.
The passenger who had been charged the eighty-yuan fare was a large, powerfully built man who looked as though he worked with his hands for a living. He had a booming voice and kept shouting, arguing his case at the top of his lungs.
He had been the last person to board the bus.
He hadn't witnessed the young man being slapped earlier.
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