Brick, baby

I don’t know how many Chinese cities have these, but in Xian the buses mostly have Emergency Bricks

Brick

They are set on those two pins, so they don’t move around, but you can easily lift them up. Why are they there? Well, if the bus flipped over you might need to break a window to get out. You would need like a brick or something to do it with. Well, here is the brick. There is even a sign pointing to it sometimes, in case you can’t find it.

BrickSign

This struck me as a very Chinese-y low-tech safety measure, but one that would probably work.1  Sadly I did not take one of these bricks home with me. It would have been theft of state property, which is bad, and it would have killed my weight limit. Now of course I regret it. My office really needs an Emergency Brick for those occasions,  usually involving administrators, when one feels that all one’s problems could be solved with the application of a brick to the right spot.


  1. Some buses had little hammers for the same purpose. I think a brick would work better. Also people might steal a little hammer 

3 Comments

  1. Interesting post. I’m a Chinese but have never been to Xi’an. There are only hammers in my city Shenzhen. And I agree, bricks work better.

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