I'm Leaving on a Slow Train

At 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 30, I departed Xiaolan with my pack of American teachers destined for Beijing and all it’s offers of greatness. October 1st marks China’s National Day, which celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China in the 1940s. This week is a holiday for pretty much the whole country, so our school decided it was the most convenient time to allot us our week long vacation. 

As this is the only vacation we have time enough to travel North to Beijing and other historical landmarks, we are headed towards China’s capital city, despite the reports of throngs of people there at this time. We are determined. 

Due to our status as visitors to the country, we were only able to buy our tickets 18 days beforehand and were therefore only able to obtain tickets for the infamous slow train on hard seats. 

The past two weeks have presented an increasing sense of dread over the impending horrors that seating in an insanely crowded train on a hard seat for 21 hours would present. Only discovering more about the awesomeness of Xian, one of China’s oldest cities which holds the Terra Cotta Army, alleviated this trepidation. 

After traveling for three hours on a tuk tuk, a fast train, and a Subway-housed in a surprisingly nice station, despite presenting the everyday sight of a mother holding her toddler over a trash can to defecate- we arrived at the mass of people that marked the entrance to the slow speed train station. 

Side note: China has a very interesting transportation system. Besides its inability to meet the overwhelming demand for cross country public transportation, its modes of travel are as follows in decreasing order of expense and niceness: Planes; fast trains (aka pure luxury)- sleeper seats, soft seats, hard seats, and standing room; slow trains- sleeper seats, soft seats, hard seats, and standing room, and buses. In a sentence, slow trains are slightly hellish- smoke and smell included, although thankfully without the lakes of brimstone and not as many hopeless souls.

The hordes of locals waiting to gain entrance to the train station did much both to bridge the gap between children and adults and to bolster my belief in the necessity of trivial rules and regulations, such as the installation of tape and boundaries to enforce the simple idea of forming and waiting in a line. Not only were Chinese people shrilly reprimanding each other across the sea of heads for cutting in line, there were also quite a few lithe young men jumping over the turnstiles, seemingly without any consequence. And I just may have participated in the madness by physically refusing to let an tiny, aggressive, elderly Chinese lady jostle her way to in front of me. 

After getting past this bedlam, we dozen maids from school finally managed to board our own version of the Hogwarts Express- only instead of pumpkin pasties we were offered chicken feet, and sadly there were no Weasley's to share in my gingerhood. The following 21 hours passed thusly:

4:30-6:30 Enjoy a dinner of pre-prepared noodles and a bonding game of “Kill, Slay, Marry”

6:30-9 Pass the time with some conversation with the English speaking Chinese on the train, who gathered to us as bees to honey. These nice people included: Mary Joe, a health care management student who was ever so excited to hear about my own hospital administrator of a father; and Victor, another University student who was all too pleased to give us tips on the best way to tour Beijing. 

9-11 Jam out to a muffled A.B.B.A karaoke session in a mood of frivolity derived from the readiness to avoid contemplating another 14 hours on this blasted train. 

11-7 Make melatonin aided efforts to sleep interrupted by frequent stops throughout the countryside. Sleep was eventually abandoned in favor of a certain beloved BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series starring the timelessly delightful and clever Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. 

7-1:30 Spend the time absorbed in novels and observing the countryside views. 

Overall, our 21 hour train experience was not as terrible as anticipated. Maybe the sight of the poor standing room tickets sitting on the ground made our own position seem not quite as undesirable. Anyway, it was all worth it; in the next week, I will have explored many of the attractions the Middle Kingdom has to offer. 

Train station of insanity!

Cheerful survivors

Happy National Day!