The Drama Behind the Fung Wah (or Fung Ahhhhh) Bus Line

**Discussion begins at 5:55**

All aboard on this episode.  Come with us on this trip through wild tales, smelly buses, and political drama.  Join us for another listener request, as we discuss the secrecy behind Boston and New York City bus lines - specifically the history and drama of what was the Fung Wah, or should I say, the Fung "Ahhhhhh", as some of the passengers often did.  Fung Wah was a bus system that would transport people to and from Chinatown in New York City to Boston, that closed suddenly in 2015.  Today we are going to determine what happened to the buses after it’s closure.  Were they bought by the MBTA, repainted, and sent back onto the streets?  What really happened to Fung Wah?  

Transcript

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

3SchemeQueens.

3SchemeQueens who?

3SchemeQueens recording a new episode in the new year.

How was your Christmas, guys?

It was great.

It was great, I got a Kindle paperweight.

I got a coffee maker slash espresso maker, so we can make some espresso martinis.

It's so funny.

I'm so happy that you finally sent them to me.

And then guys, look, I got these fun flippers from LL Bean.

Colleen, did your family love their paper crafts?

Yeah, it was a very small, low-key Christmas between the siblings.

And then our family, at least on my mom's side, we do a theme every year.

So for the Secret Santa, it is rhyming.

So I was assigned one of my cousins and I had to get a gift to rhyme.

So I got my cousin Nick, which I got him last year, too, which makes me laugh.

Nick is so easy.

Well, I did Nick hockey stick and I got him hockey hockey tickets.

Oh, that's good.

Colleen, you're really hard.

Yeah, actually, I didn't even think about how Colleen.

I bet you whoever got you was like beans.

I didn't even think about that.

If somebody gets me beans, I'm going to lose my mind.

Jeans?

Colleen, beans, and then they give you a fart joke.

I hope not.

That would be so funny.

Sing.

A microphone.

My name is hard.

I, to be honest, didn't even think about my what I was going to receive.

We'll see.

Ketamine.

Oh my god.

It's so funny.

So we'll see.

And then for our Yankee Swap, which down here, they call it White Elephant, the theme was Thrift Shop.

So whatever we could find at a thrift shop.

But yeah, low key Christmas.

It was cute.

It's cute or whatever.

Guys, just a reminder, don't forget to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages at 3SchemeQueens.

That's the number 3SchemeQueens, all one word.

We're also on Reddit, same username.

If you want to check out our website, go to 3schemequeens.com, and you can find links to our social media accounts, our Buzzsprout page, all of our episodes, additional content, our contact page, and our discussion board, where you can engage with us and share any updates on the topics that we have discussed.

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There are also opportunities to financially support us.

There are links to buy us a cup of coffee, links to our recently updated merch store, and affiliate links.

And as always, if you choose not to financially support us, we appreciate the follows, the downloads, listens to likes.

Kait, what should the people do?

Yeah, they should scroll on down, leave us a five-star review, leave us a comment, share us with your friends and family.

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And if you had a great Christmas or a terrible Christmas, you should take out your phone right now, and then send one of your favorite episodes of this podcast to somebody that you would like to share it with.

Right now, do it.

So is it time for our drink check?

Drink check.

Colleen, what are we drinking today?

You know, we're starting the new year outright with our favorite.

And this favorite also just liked our story yesterday.

I don't know if you guys saw that.

Diet Coke.

Old Faithful.

Yeah.

Yeah, they did.

Let me ask you this, Colleen.

When you were up in Massachusetts, did you hype this episode up to your family and friends?

Because this is a listener request, a family request.

This one was requested by my future sister-in-law, Kelly.

New future sister-in-law.

She's freshly engaged.

I say freshly lately.

She got engaged a month ago.

Kelly, when we first started the podcast, was very enthusiastic and offered a lot of different ideas.

And she offered a lot of local ideas, and local to my family means Boston.

So this is a request for Kelly.

I'm gonna get into the intro to explain what her request was.

But we love listening to requests.

Yeah.

Whoever they come from, sisters, brothers, cousins, strangers.

Yeah.

There's a link on the website for you to submit something.

You guys can email us.

You can Instagram us.

You can Reddit us.

Do it.

Let us know what you want to hear.

So there's many ways to travel, many ways to get to and from home.

I've done them all, except walk.

You can drive a car.

You can fly a plane.

You can take a train.

Or you can take a bus.

I wouldn't want to take a bus because I got to tell you, I always see them broken down on the side of the road.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned that actually.

I took a bus home one time.

I think I spent $60 in total, the worst day of my life.

And I mean day literally.

I think it took like 16 hours because three of them were me sitting on the floor of Port Authority in New York City.

Can't you just take a train for like $50?

No, the train is about $300.

It's the same as flying.

But you can bring a lot more physical stuff on train.

You have to get there two hours early.

Yeah.

Does the train stress you out less than the airport?

Significantly less.

You don't have to walk through security for a train.

Because Colleen gets very stressed through security.

But once she's through security, she's all good.

Yeah.

Even train though, I still get there two hours early.

But so anyways, all aboard on this episode.

I didn't know what bus conductors say.

Bus drivers say.

Bus conductors.

Come with us on this trip through wild tales, smelly buses and political drama.

Join us for another listener request as we discuss the secrecy behind Boston and New York City bus lines.

Specifically, the history and drama of what was the Fung Wah.

Or should I say, Fung Ahhhhh.

As some of the passengers often did.

Fung Wah was a bus service that would transport people to and from Chinatown in New York City to Boston that closed suddenly in 2015.

Today, we are going to determine what happened to the buses after its closure.

Were they bought by the MBTA, repainted and sent back onto the streets?

What really happened to Fung Wah?

So, Kelly told me, Kelly is my main source, first person source, that Fung Wah was this popular bus.

I'm going to get more into details about the history of the company itself.

And when it closed, she and many locals believe that Boston's transport organization, the MBTA, bought the buses, relabeled them and called them brand new MBTA buses.

Oh, like a titanic situation.

Like exactly, like a bait and switch, claiming they were brand new buses.

When I was googling Fung Wah buses and this conspiracy, I could not actually find anywhere on the internet that also backs up this conspiracy.

I'm so sorry, Kelly.

I couldn't find anything that specifically related MBTA to Fung Wah, other than that it was just a crappy bus service.

But I did spell Fung Wah, F-U-N-G space W-A-H.

That's such a weird name.

Yeah.

So well, let's talk about what Fung Wah was.

Okay.

So Fung Wah, like I said, is the Chinatown bus line that ran from Boston to New York.

It was known for being the cheapest option at just $10.

Whoa.

That's insane.

It operated.

How many weird people were on this bus?

Oh my God.

I'm going to read.

I have a whole list of personal experiences from the Fung Wah.

It is so freaking funny.

It ran from 1996 to 2015.

Okay.

And the name means Magnificent Wind.

But I just thought it was funny that it was called Magnificent Wind, because it felt like a fart name.

Like what would you name your fart?

Magnificent Wind.

Oh, I'm thinking this sounds like Feng Shui.

Oh, I thought it sounded like the funniest name for a fart.

It's like when Megan let out a Fung Wah.

It's no massage.

I was really relaxed during my massage.

It was really tiny.

Okay.

We've all tooted.

It was tiny.

We've all had some Fung Wah.

Bourbon Boy lets out Fung Wahs every morning.

My aunt calls it the morning symphony when all the kids wake up and just fart.

So true.

And like I said earlier, so many people call it the Fung Ahhhhh, because it was a not safe ride.

I'm not going to get into that.

So I could not say anything.

I could not learn anything specifically correlating the MBTA to this bus line.

What Fung Wah did share was the bus stops.

And so maybe the conspiracy derived from just seeing Fung Wah buses at the same bus stops.

Oh, I see.

And correlating.

My first thought was, okay, so they repainted the buses.

So thus the MBTA buses must look like the Fung Wah bus.

Do they?

So this is what the Fung Wah bus looks like.

Okay.

That's one picture.

Not really sure, I guess, why this would be such a conspiracy.

Like if they just like sold their buses to another company and painted them, what makes that?

Well, the whole point is that the MBTA was claiming that they're brand new buses.

Oh, okay.

And then this is what the MBTA bus looks like.

It's a completely different bus style.

Oh yeah, very different.

Yeah.

And by the way, these pictures of the MBTA buses that I'm showing you are from 1996 and 2015.

As an expert witness.

Yeah.

That's a no.

But it's not a good idea of me to have looked up what the MBTA bus looked like in 2015, 2019.

Well, it's actually, it's like something that you would have looked up.

And then if I was giving this conspiracy, you also would have looked that up?

No, I would have said, well, no, I didn't look it up and you would have said, well, how do you know?

Yeah, because I'm like, this proves that the MBTA buses on the streets are not the same.

Yeah.

Which by the way, if you go to the MBTA website, you can look at the history of every single bus design.

And not one of them looked like the Fung Wah buses.

Wait, so why is this a conspiracy?

I don't know.

I couldn't find it anywhere.

I don't know where Kelly heard it.

Well, okay.

So one thing you got to know about Boston and New York locals is that we love to complain.

Wait, hold on.

I do have another question.

Okay.

Follow up question.

Let me hear it.

Were there something wrong with like the Fung Wah?

Yeah.

I'll talk about that.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So what was wrong with the Fung Wah bus?

Well, let me like you reuse them.

I'm not there yet.

Okay.

You want to talk about the New York people?

Yeah.

New York and Boston.

Well, people just love to complain.

So that's why I'm thinking the origin of this storyline comes from the fact that people just like to complain about the MBTA.

And then one thing to know is that this is a private bus company.

This was just started by some random guy who often transported to and from Boston and New York.

And it's like a small owned company.

He was like, wait a second, what if I pick people up?

Yeah.

So he just bought a bunch of random buses.

And I do have a question.

If it was only $10, how, I mean, that toll.

Well, this is the 1990s to 2015.

And the tolls were still like, this was pre-recession era.

So it's a little bit different.

I want to live in the 90s.

The 90s were a different vibe.

Yeah.

Right?

The 90s were like a great time to be growing up.

They were also a great time to be an adult.

Yeah.

All right.

So $100 million for a house bullshit.

I'm going to read through.

I'm going to talk about why Fung Wah ended.

And then after that, we're going to read through all of the personal perspectives of their travels through using Fung Wah because it is so freaking funny.

Okay.

So what happened to the company?

The ending of Fung Wah all started in February of 2013, when a local news company ran a series on the cracked frames of the buses, the news channel.

It was like WBZ channel 5, which is like a big channel in Boston.

Their link to their video is not working anymore.

So I couldn't get the specific news video about this, but it's cited multiple times in Wikipedia, and it comes up when you Google Fung Wah.

Okay.

And they just ran a video about how dangerous the buses were because of how many cracks in the framing there were.

In response to this video, the Massachusetts State Transportation Authorities declared the company an immediate hazard and ordered a stop to the bus service until full work was completed.

How many times did you ride this bus system?

I've never ridden it.

It closed in 2015, so I was only a sense of a will doer.

It's like when you're like, don't you guys remember that?

We were like, no, we were not born.

It then escalated all the way up to the US Department of Transportation for a full investigation.

Whoa, that's how shitty this bus line was.

Of course, the federal government had been involved.

So in order to come back on to service, the company had to prove that they went through an extensive work and training of their employees.

So things that they were doing wrong, they were doing no maintenance on the cars, on the buses.

There was no documented maintenance.

Well, it sounds like they were just like really cheap and it's kind of like you get what you buy.

It's like an under the table situation.

That also sounds like-

And like the drivers had no background checks.

That also-

Majority of them only spoke Chinese.

Yep.

The bus driver couldn't communicate with the passengers to evacuate the bus appropriately.

This is like the types of accidents they were getting into.

Oh my gosh!

He hit the button!

Yeah.

It's not even one of them.

So I'm going to go through a list of the accidents.

What did he do?

Did he drive through an intersection?

He blew a red light.

So none of the drivers had background checks.

None of the buses had documented services.

Some of them weren't even registered appropriately.

The company applied to reopen again in 2014.

They were allowed to open for like a couple months, and then were completely shut down in 2015, and never reopened.

Another reason why they didn't reopen, in addition to the fact that it was just a shitty company, is the fact that the Boston bus stations refused to give them access to the bus stops.

And so like the Fung Wah company couldn't get into South Station, because the MBTA was just like, no, we don't want anything to deal with you anymore.

And they just were like, okay, well, then we're just shutting down.

Well, then it sounds like the, the drivers were the problem, not the buses.

It is insane.

Okay.

So it would just be good business to...

Well, the buses all had cracks in the framing.

You did say that.

Yeah.

All right.

So here's a list of accidents.

I guess also if they've all been in accidents, then we probably shouldn't be...

I've read this list, guys.

It goes on and on.

So these are the lists of the major accidents.

2005, the bus caught fire, spontaneously combusted, and the passengers were not able to be evacuated appropriately because the bus driver was untrained and did not speak English.

In 2006, a bus rolled over in Massachusetts, Western Mass, because it was driving too fast.

In 2007, the bus lost two of its rear wheels, just mid-drive, two wheels came off.

Sounds like the bowing of the road.

2007, again, the bus lost control in snow and hit a guardrail.

In 2007, again, the bus got stuck on a concrete barrier in front of a toll booth because they went through not the truck's toll, they went through the car toll.

He didn't even try to go where he was supposed to go.

He just tried to drive through where the cars went.

2008, the bus was hit by a dump truck.

So I guess that's not really their fault.

But I just think it I'm like, there's so much that went on with this.

Now we'll read the personal perspectives.

To get tickets for the Fung Wah bus, okay, you had to walk into a random bakery in Chinatown and pay only cash.

This is the Chinese mafia, I swear.

And it started as a small shuttle bus with no bathroom.

And just for perspective, the ride from New York to Boston is anywhere from four to six hours.

This person says, I used Fung Wah for years until one day, I watched my driver smoke a cigarette while refueling on a bus full of passengers.

I then switched to Lucky Star, which cost the same and departed a block away.

Then within a week of the Fung Wah closing, Lucky Star's prices jumped to 30 bucks.

The golden age of Boston NYC bus travel ended.

And that comment leads me into my next topic, which is going to be about the bus fare drama.

But let me finish reading some more perspectives.

And the Fung Wah I was on caught fire on two separate occasions on the same trip.

Once in Connecticut and once again near South Station in Boston.

In Connecticut, we waited for a replacement at the bus station for hours.

The Boston one, they just pretended we weren't there anymore until all the passengers left the bus independently.

You know what this is giving?

So I organized this wine tasting where it's like 40 bucks.

They just like meet you at a metro.

There's one metro stop.

Everyone meets there and they pick you up and they take you to like three wineries and come back.

And it was snowing and there were like four people who were not in our group.

It was like our group plus four people, but the four people were in the back.

And one of them goes, I think there's a problem back here.

And so the driver pulls over and they've like blown out a back tire and it's snowing.

And we're like on the exit ramp.

And so we had to wait for someone to come rescue us.

We walked to the Wawa and that's when Dan drank a Four Loco.

And it all went down from there.

But I have all these pictures on the side of the highway with the snow and we're all freezing and we're like taking selfies by like the broken down bus.

This person goes, one trip I took, I had what looked like a 200 year old lady driving.

She floored it the entire time.

My sister was taking a Fung Wah from New York to Boston to see me.

And she said, the driver was on the cell phone yelling at someone, then pulled over on the highway in Connecticut, got off the bus and walked away down the road.

The passengers were all confused.

And then 30 minutes later, a truck showed up.

A different new guy got out, started the bus up, and they just continued off to Boston with no communication to the passengers.

Again, you get what you buy.

So I saw someone eat soup out of a bag on one trip.

That's like Megan eating cereal, milk.

These girls had Thanksgiving dinner together, as you probably saw on the chaotic Thanksgiving drink check.

Everybody loved that.

Yeah, it did.

It blew up.

And I, so they sent a selfie of themselves.

And then I sent a selfie back and it was me at work.

And all I had was some cereal and I didn't have a bowl.

So I just poured the milk in the Ziploc baggy and I was eating my cereal.

I was like, Happy Thanksgiving, guys.

That's what it's giving.

This person says, The real ones remember before they were even allowed in South Station.

This was before they they just started the bus line.

But it was actually a Chinatown to Chinatown bus, like Chinatown, Boston to Chinatown, New York.

And you had to find the pickup spot on some Chinatown side street by word of mouth only.

You just had to figure it out.

It's like the speakeasy.

You have to know the secret code of where to go.

This had to have been like a Chinese mafia thing.

Or they were like busing illegal immigrants as well as like people.

Or were they like trafficking people?

That's what I mean.

They were doing.

They were something that's something is now.

All these comments I'm reading are from Reddit, so we can take this with a grain of salt.

But this one says, My favorite Fung Wah memory is the bus stopping behind a fast food place shortly after leaving the city.

First, I watched the driver throw a few bags of trash into the dumpster.

Next, he picked up some full trash bags next to the dumpster and stowed them in the luggage compartment.

I told you, before we were continued on our way.

I'm telling you.

What are they doing?

We know.

It is so funny.

First of all, my parents would have never let me get on that bus.

My mom doesn't even like when I take Ubers.

Like I told her I was going to take an Uber home tonight, and she was like, Well, I'm in.

I hope you just need to be careful, Kait.

I'm like, You think everyone's going to get me?

This comment says, I used to watch the people exit off the Fung Wah bus when they made it to Boston.

The people looked like those on the Titanic survivors getting off the lifeboats after you see dry land and that it isn't on fire.

I would never see.

I forgot more.

This person says, In June 2005, I was on the Fung Wah sitting across from the emergency exit seat.

We were leaving Park and Ride in Framingham and getting on the Pike.

The emergency door flies open and the people's stuff starts spilling out.

Yeah.

And they just kept driving.

Yeah, they were probably like, all right, it's either get off here or we lose our lives.

It was insane.

So those are some examples of the accidents and then personal perspectives, which I'm just like, what a time to be alive.

And how long was this in business?

1996 to 2015.

Yeah.

So this was like almost 20 years.

Yeah.

How did this company remain in business for 20 years?

I have, I think because 90% of the time it was under the table.

Yeah.

And you just, you just knew, I risked my life.

But for a good deal.

I don't think even authorities even knew about it.

Yeah.

So my personal conspiracy when reading into this, I learned a lot about bus fares in the early 2000s.

Okay.

So there's something that's called the bus fare war.

And it was all about how there was so many bus lines that the prices were getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.

Okay.

And so Fung Wah was the cheapest and therefore one of the more popular ones because what an experience it was, right?

In the early 2000s, there were so many competitors that the prices were continuously dropping from $40 to as low as $10, which we know was the Fung Wah.

Okay.

My theory is were the feds purposely shutting down these smaller, cheaper bus lines to then boost the prices of the bigger national bus services, Greyhound or the Peter Pan bus.

That's just what I, that's just your theory.

That was my theory.

Not that it's just like, a bunch of trafficking Chinese illegal immigrants, who are just ripping people off.

Yeah.

If you don't read into all the accidents and how bad it was.

But why would the government be invested in Greyhound?

I don't know.

It's always the government.

I don't know.

I just, the suspicious thing is to me, is that like the Lucky Strike bus line immediately, oh, excuse me, Lucky Star bus line, which was also popular for their Boston to New York service, boosted their prices three times the price.

The second Fung Wah was taken off the streets, because they were only trying to match Fung Wah.

Well, they probably had no competition.

Yeah.

All about rate, demand goes up, price goes up.

So it's like, were they purposely shutting down the cheaper lines?

That's your civics and economics lesson today.

Well, you might be on to something.

Thank you.

Because the federal government has invested a lot of financial support into Greyhound bus.

There we go.

And specifically Greyhound terminals.

Boom.

You're on to something, Colleen.

Maybe, yeah, maybe I'm gonna have to deep dive again.

I was diving pretty deep though, guys.

Like I was in Reddit.

It sounds like you did a very good job.

Down the Reddit rabbit hole.

It was a lot.

I do have, this one made me laugh so hard.

A fan of the Fung Wah made a music video about Fung Wah being over.

We're gonna post it.

That was a really well done video.

Thanks for the ride.

It was Fung, produced by Miles Kane.

Miles Kane, that was great.

It was really good.

So, final thoughts then, so what's, what's, what's Kate's poll?

I don't think there is a conspiracy.

Yeah, I don't think there's a conspiracy here.

Maybe about the fare prices, but another historical lesson from Colleen.

I think the question is, was there some sort of underground illegal activity happening on the Fung Wah bus line?

And my vote is yes.

Yeah, for sure.

This, this was like an illegal trafficking system.

I do, the owner of Fung Wah is a Chinese immigrant.

So I do believe the origin of the company was that he wanted to see family members in New York and Boston and like connecting the Chinatowns together.

But it sounded like a real sketchy service.

I'm glad I never took Fung Wah.

Listen, not everybody's good.

It's just like, he's like, Oh, they just wanted to see his family.

Or he was part of the Chinese mafia that was trafficking.

Like, trash bags full of cocaine.

Were there people in the luggage compartment?

Yeah, 100%.

But did MBTA reuse the buses?

No, I don't think so.

Yeah, no.

Well, that was a really interesting lesson about Boston transportation, public transportation.

I personally have only ever taken a bus for a field trip.

I've never taken a public bus.

Oh, wait a second.

You've taken a public bus.

No, you and I were on a public bus in Richmond.

So, you know, yeah, I take that back.

I mean, I lived in...

And I've done it in Disney World.

Disney doesn't count.

I know.

I mean, I used to be a big...

I lived in Georgetown for a while and there's no metro in Georgetown.

I was a big D6 girl.

I bussed everywhere.

You're big Ds.

So I used to like bus around DC, but I've never taken like a road trip on a bus.

I took a gray hound from Union Station to South Station, and I never will again.

It was the worst experience of my life.

Yeah.

It was dirt deep though.

Yeah, I just don't trust public transportation, but that's likely related to the fact that my parents have anxiety.

Well, I mean, my dad works for public transportation, so I've got nothing wrong with that.

Okay, join us next week for a deep dive into a national conspiracy, guys.

Next year, next week, it will be our first episode of 2025.

Oh, see you next year.

So yes, join us next week.

Next year.

Yeah, join us next year.

We'll talk some more conspiracies next week.

Nay, next year.

All right, see you next week.

Bye.

See you next year.