Back in college, I used to ride the Chinatown bus to go home to New York during breaks. The bus went from Boston’s Chinatown to the Chinatown in Manhattan, and at $10 per ticket, it cost less than half as much as Greyhound or Peter Pan. The ride was sometimes a bit loud — a Hong Kong flick might be showing – and occasionally ghetto — one bus driver kept answering phone calls during the trip because he was also the bus line’s customer service rep.
The bus companies were rumored to be fronts for Chinese gangs (actually, they were blackmailed by the gangs). And once in a while an accident involving a Chinatown bus would make the headlines. But no one cared; it was cheap as hell and that’s what mattered.
What’s the Chinatown bus like nowadays? I found out this weekend when I took the bus up to Boston for a college reunion.
A search online revealed that several bus companies offer the route, but I went with Fung Wah for old times’ sake. Actually, Chinatown buses can take you to cities up the down the East Coast — Albany, Philly, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Cincinnati — the West Coast and even as far as Toronto. Check out this map.
A NY-Boston ticket for the Fung Wah bus cost $15 this time, and almost none of the passengers was Chinese. One college kid was slowly, intently reading Lolita: a freshman, I guess. A collegiate-looking group in front of me munched on fried chicken from Popeye’s.
Across the aisle, a tattooed guy was explaining to his girlfriend how to eat zong zi, which, if you haven’t had one, are one of the most delicious and fun Chinese foods. He took out his zong zi, slipped off the white string, and unfolded the bamboo leaf that held together the pyramid of savory sticky rice. He noticed that zong zi were rather similar to the Latin American tamale, and we started discussing whether these two foods could be related somehow. (I’m guessing they developed independently, but I’d love to hear from any food historians or Chinese-in-Latin America specialists out there.)
An hour into Connecticut, we were crawling along I-95 in Friday afternoon traffic when the driver suddenly pulled over. Turned out another Fung Wah bus had broken down; we took on 10 people.
But for the most part, the bus ride was very normal.
Five and a half hours later, when we arrived in Boston, I discovered that Fung Wah even had a proper gate at South Station — no more offloading passengers in the middle of Chinatown. Plus a real ticket counter.
Now if only they could do something about the traffic on I-95.
I wonder how they can maintain the counter and be so legit and still charge just $15. Do they pay nothing to the bus drivers? Or do the Greyhounds and others just really overcharge us?
Good question, I also wonder about this. Fung Wah’s costs must be higher than that of the smaller other Chinatown bus companies, but I think in general these companies have little overhead and accept slimmer margins. Skeleton crew, lower salaries, no corporate offices, no HR departments, no traditional advertising, no proper bus stations. Fung Wah has a counter and gate in Boston, but in New York their passengers are just waiting on the sidewalk, and their buses are parking on the side of the street. Basically, they’re using (free) public space to conduct business.
My guess is that running a bus operation is probably cheaper than most people think, provided it is run efficiently. Megabus (a British company) is now running some extremely cheap routs from its Chicago based network, with surprisingly comfortable buses, and surprisingly unsketchy employees. I took it to Cleveland in January and to St. Louis two weeks ago, and round trip none of my tickets exceeded fifty bucks. I know they also have an East Coast network based out of New York with rates similar to those of the Chinatown bus. Plus they have wifi onboard for some of the ride.