I thought I woke up in the middle of the night but the time on the bus clock said 5:11. 5:11, is that possible? It's so dark. I tilt my head which started a stabbing pain just below my shoulder joint. I see the side of a mountain shrouded in fog. The bus picks up speed and the bus fishtails pulling itself around a corner. I grip the bed rail, tight, the bus tilts my way. I prop myself up enough to see to the front of the bus and I see nothing but fog in the headlights, thick, soupy fog. We fishtail again and the bus makes another hairpin turn. I don't know how fast we are going. I lay back down. I have a headache. Headlights appear out of the fog and it's an eighteen wheeler grinding it's way up the mountain. We pass each other with little room to spare. So close I thought, I can't look. So I close my eyes. My legs hurt. My eyes burn. Someone lights up a cigarette again and the smoke wafts it's way through the bus, and in to my lungs. I want to scream, "some one, put that F'ing cigarette out!! It's disgusting you're disgusting! I've had enough! Get me off this bus!!" I want to curse like a New Yorker. What the __ you __ing __! put the __ing cigarette out already! It's bad enough to smell it outside but smoking in enclosed spaces is mind numbing. To think there are no restrictions to smoking anywhere in China. Everyone who smokes lights up anywhere anytime. It is considered, social and appropriate. Bad enough to light up in a drafty bus but to tolerate this for over forty hours on a sealed train car with the only ventilation at either end of the car where they are coupled is beyond words. It is one of those cultural behaviors I have a hard time coming to grips with. Every fifteen, twenty minutes someone would light up at either end of the car and the air would thicken with the noxious gas. Once in a while several smokers, usually young men would light up, savoring every draw off their stick. They slowly inhale, looking very Dean like, then exhale, their faces disappearing behind a dense impenetrable fog, that eventually drifts apart and snakes it's way down the train corridor, only to be inhaled again by everyone else. Baby faces these boys, acting like men, acting cool, smoking because they can. Smoke it to the butt, fingers stained brown. Seeing them, I see me many years ago. Now I think, and then I stop. Three hours to go. It must be. We're getting close. The fog is lifting. I fall asleep head pounding, thinking about fresh air.