Free Ride

One of the perks you get when working for a Chinese company is free transportation to work. Not everyone gets this, of course, but from what we can tell, it's pretty common.

The free ride typically comes in the form of a bus or van. The buses that are used are coach-type buses, which are incredibly common on the roads of China (people often take coach buses for long- and short-distance trips). Our college offers several options: the Big Bus, the "special bus," and the van.

There are two Big Buses (coach-style buses). Each one runs along a slightly different route. They start in the west and south of the city and run along main traffic arteries, picking up UIC workers all along the way. Our compound is the final pick-up spot along the route. One of the Big Buses stops at the back gate at 8:10am. There's always a collection of teachers waiting for the bus, and it's a good time to catch up on chit-chat and general office gossip. Here, my college Francis points out the Big Bus for you:

At 5:40 pm, the big buses reverse their routes and take most of the college's workers home.

Recently the college added a mid-sized bus to its fleet:

This 'special bus' replaced two vans. The special bus only picks up teaching staff, so it's a bit more exclusive (i.e., no office staff on it). And unlike the big buses, the college owns this vehicle (they even had the college's name and logo painted on the side). It only picks up people who live in our compound, and it drives around the compound so you don't even have to wait at the back gate if you don't want to. I usually take the Big Bus to school instead because I find the atmosphere in the special bus to be a little too rich for me. At the end of the teaching work day (6:10pm), the special bus drives us home to the compound. It seats around 18 people.

When the special bus breaks down, the college sends two vans as a replacement. The teaching staff always hates it when this happens because the vans don't seat as many people, so there's always a bit of a battle at the end of the work day to see who will get the available seats. The Chinese teaching staff always want to award seats by seniority; the non-Chinese teaching staff always want to award seats on a first-come, first-served basis. As you can imagine, this sometimes causes tension.

I really enjoy this free ride to and from work. It's great not having to take the public bus, and it does encourage car pooling-type behavior. It also saves me 6RMB each day (which is what bus fare would cost).