Taboo of the Number of Passengers on a Bus

When I first started driving heavy trucks, I asked my master out of curiosity: Why do truck drivers need to perform chong sha (ward off bad luck on the road), while bus drivers don’t? My master told me: trucks carry goods, not people, so drivers fear deadly accidents on the road most. Coaches, however, ferry passengers back and forth, and the worst thing is disasters happening on board. That’s why bus drivers don’t care much for road-clearing rituals, but they take pressing the vehicle very seriously. Nearly all the bus drivers I’ve seen use stones to press the bus; some even use stone statues. Whenever the passenger count ends in four or seven, the driver takes out the pressing stone, treating it as an extra passenger to avoid attracting misfortune. But recently, I took a strange job. A coach driver found me and asked me to act as a living person to press his bus. He said before me, three pressing stones on his bus had already shattered. The driver’s name was Yu Guangping, in his fifties and close to retirement. He looked steady and reliable, with graying temples and a quiet manner. For a moment, he reminded me of my late master. We met at a small stir-fry restaurant. He carried a worn leather bag. As soon as he sat down, before saying a word, he pulled out twenty thousand yuan. The money was wrapped in a plastic bag, which he pushed toward me. “I’ve heard of you, Brother Long. You’re Kong Jia’s apprentice. You often do chong sha for trucks.” I didn’t take the money right away. I just looked at Yu Guangping and said, “Master Yu, chong sha for truckers is basically just having an experienced driver get familiar with a new route first, smooth things over, and make the way safer for others.” “You long-distance bus drivers mostly take main roads with a full load of people. You don’t usually follow such customs, do you?” “We don’t practice chong sha, but I know how it works.” Yu Guangping said, “Anyone who regularly does chong sha must have a strong fate. You’ve driven many night routes and seen many strange things. That’s exactly who I need.” “I want you to press my bus until the end of the month. This twenty thousand is your payment. If anything goes wrong on the way, I’ll give you another twenty thousand.” “Why only until the end of the month?” I wondered. There were only seven days left. “My bus runs from the city to Tongxiang. The second half is an old road. A new highway has been built and will open at the end of the month. Then this route will be canceled.” As he said this, Yu Guangping’s brow twitched slightly. In his weathered eyes, I saw a touch of sorrow and reluctance. “I’m from Tongxiang myself. I remember all my regular passengers; many are old neighbors.” “I’ve been driving them safely for nearly twenty years. Now it’s coming to an end. For these last few trips, I have to get everyone there safe no matter what.” Master Yu didn’t seem well-off. He’d saved up those forty thousand yuan himself to protect his passengers on the final runs. I asked no more questions and took the job. Master Yu then told me about the strange things happening on his bus lately. Truth be told, nothing extremely supernatural was going on. It was just that, for the past half month, the number of passengers on his bus always ended in seven. Seven, seventeen, twenty-seven, thirty-seven… Master Yu’s coach had a total capacity of 48 seats. In the past, trips from the city to Tongzhuang were almost always full, because several villages and towns lay nearby. Road conditions there were poor, and the villages were scattered. Master Yu’s bus was the only one that went directly to the area near the city’s train station. But recently, every time he left the city, there were exactly thirty-seven passengers. On the return trip, after picking up people from village stops, the count always ended up as seventeen or twenty-seven.