Culture

Driven by a love of buses

By Qin Zhongwei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-27 07:51

Wang Jinqi, a student who just turned 16, has been an "expert" on public transportation for eight years and has made a collection of bus models (above and below). [Photos By Wang Jing / China Daily]

Men love cars. It is almost an instinct and, usually, the fancier the better. But for Wang Jinqi, a high school student who has just turned 16, the love affair has started earlier than it does for most - and on a much larger scale.

Wang is probably one of the youngest in the city to have fallen "helplessly" in love with big buses.

If you want to get somewhere and have no idea how to go about it, ask him, he probably has better answers than most elderly citizens and other regular bus drivers.

As an active member of Beijing's forums about public transportation, he has information about nearly every type of bus running on the city's bustling roads.

Instead of putting up popstar photos like many of his peers might, his bedroom is adorned with posters of buses that he has collected at auto exhibitions.

But this is not simple curiosity or a temporary impulse, it's an ever-growing passion.

Described by his mother as a boy "who never chooses to sit in his father's cars or take the subway to get around", he always prefers to ride on buses.

Wang began to be fascinated by the giant vehicles when he was an 8-year-old and had to take the bus every Thursday afternoon to get home alone from school when his parents could not pick him up.

Now Wang's passion has extended to a collection of dozens of bus models in his home that looks like a museum exhibit.

The paper models are all made and put together by the 16-year-old.

Before he had a computer, Wang indulged his love of buses with drawings, now, PCs and software make it even easier for him to design and create his own paper models.

"No one taught him," his mother said. "And he can stay in his room all day making these things."

But Wang himself is highly critical of his bus models and in the interest of accuracy.

He sometimes takes the same bus several times to make sure the location of details, such as if the mirrors are perfectly drawn whenever he makes a model.

"Many people are confused, even the bus drivers ask me why my hobby is buses and why I make these models that are so time-consuming," he said.

According to him, it is like the "chicken or egg" issue as to which came first.

"I don't know if it is because I love buses that I got interested in making models or if I made models and that fired my love of buses. Whatever it is, I feel a connection."

While he mostly works alone, he believes he can share the joy with others.

For the birthday of one of his classmates, he sent a meaningful gift, a bus model based on the one that his friend usually took to school.

He also sometimes sends models to some of his favorite drivers.

Although the young boy still has no idea what he will do in the future, he hopes the city will one day open a bus museum and fill it, not with his models but the real thing.

"After all, the bus is the most common vehicle associated with our everyday lives, it is the witness to our changes," he said.