Quantum Physics, Roald Dahl, and the Trade Deficit

Pop quiz: You're standing in a place so crowded that the handle of the umbrella held by the girl next to you has actually fused with your L4 and L5 vertebrae and the person on the other side of you has skillfully managed to pinpoint your floating rib with their elbow. Suddenly everyone lurches forward, though 'forward' for everyone else seems to be directly at you. Where are you?

A Chinese bus, obviously.

At least it should be obvious if you followed the clues from the introduction and you've seen the movie Speed. Maybe you haven't seen the movie, but Chinese bus drivers definitely have. The only difference (aside from the distinct lack of morons with shaved heads hanging out of the bus and desperately trying to emote after losing Jeff Daniels) is that the drivers have absolutely no qualms about bringing the bus to a complete stop from an initial speed of about 60mph in about 1.8 seconds. How they accomplish this feat is beyond me.

The reasons for these stoppages naturally range from strange to idiotic, but never even veer close to reasonable. A little old lady is crossing during a walk signal with 18 bags of groceries and a newborn puppy? She'd better keep her wits about her lest she end up traveling the next 50 feet adorning the side view mirror of a bus. A taxi is switching lanes away from the bus to escape to a safe distance? Better hit the emergency brake for this one; not sure we can stop in time before we hit... the open lane stretching before us. It always amazes me when I see a bus blast its way through a crowded intersection and not come out with hapless pedestrians and bike riders flapping against the side like so many Christmas ornaments.

It took me a while to groggily realize that my chances of sustaining massive head trauma are probably greater on the bus than on the football field or while sparring for martial arts. At least I'm expecting those impacts. I remember looking up after a few incidents where my head slammed into the metal handrails with a force normally reserved for action movies or slapstick comedy to find absolutely nothing threatening within eyesight. Of course it's not just your head you have to watch out for when holding on for dear life during one of these G-force tests. Many of the elderly simply don't have the arm strength to maintain their (probably already precarious) positions, transforming them into a kind of geriatric missile aimed for my sternum.

When not finding some way to injure or annoy me, the passengers on the bus pull a trick that I will never be able to explain or duplicate. Being enclosed spaces located in China, buses are frequently the site of physics experiments involving how much of the available volume of the bus can actually be occupied by living, breathing flesh. The bus will often pull up to a stop and a load of people will get on, apparently packing the bus to capacity. I mean, you couldn't fit a dumpling into the space between any two people.

The bus then merrily pulls out in front of a dump truck and two taxis and makes its way to the next stop, where more people get on. Not having seen anyone exit, I look around, my mind thoroughly boggled by this phenomenon. A second ago, I had to bench press two peasants just to breathe, yet somehow ten people just boarded the bus loaded down with bags of rice, four children, and a futon. How is this physically possible? Did some of the people spontaneously accelerate to the speed of light squared and simply become energy? If so, I'm pretty impressed. I mean, what are the other explanations? Were they unplugged from the Matrix to avoid overloading the system? Is there a trap door under the bus that I don't know about? I feel like this has to involve quantum physics in some way or other. Were they simultaneously on the bus and not on the bus at the same time? Somebody get me Schrodinger's cat.

Maybe this is finally the answer to the question of how China manages to export so much stuff to America every year. It's all placed on one container ship, which is then unloaded non-stop for literally an entire year by baffled, yet unquestioning dockworkers. Is there a Chinese Willy Wonka involved in all this? Are the dockworkers really Oompah Loompahs? What the heck is going on here?!

Any proposed solutions are welcome...