Bus Riding in Cangzhou

Not only does Hyundai have a large car manufacturing facility near our residence, but the entire transportation infrastructure in Cangzhou is focused on cars, with wide multi-lane roads lined by numerous parking lots. For example, a new road leading to our residential area is built with 8 lanes, and the road directly passing by our house has 6 lanes. The wide, heavily used scooter lanes—though I prefer not to call them bike lanes since they are mostly occupied by electric scooters and mini-tuk-tuks that take up the width of an entire lane—significantly relieve car traffic. However, during the cooler season, we utilize the city bus to get to the city center instead of the scooter, as it runs every 5 minutes, with our residential area served by two bus lines. The city buses are exclusively electric buses (see my Taibang blog post via this link: Electric Buses in China), but the service ends relatively early in the evening, so we often have to rely on taxis later. By the way, the bus fare decreases in colder months: 26 cents in summer, only 13 cents now in autumn, and in winter, bus rides are free. For travel to the region, we utilize small regional buses. Since we have to handle matters in Nanpi (35 km south of Cangzhou) multiple times, we start our journey from the regional bus station. However, we notice that passengers board not at the bus station but outside the gate at another stop, paying 1 yuan less, probably avoiding the bus terminal fee. On our next trip, we want to be clever and wait outside for the bus as well. The bus comes out of the gate and... to our surprise drives past us, while the bus staff shouts from the window that we should go around the corner. We promptly start walking, have to wait for a red light, and indeed, the bus is waiting for us. It is illegal to board outside and save the terminal fee of 13 cents. The bus driver wanted to avoid any fines and hence drove past us. However, in China, there's always a pragmatic solution, and so the bus waited for us around the corner.