Traveling in China is always an adventure. I'm sure it isn't as adventurous for the nationals, but for a foreigner it is always interesting. Our lack of ability to fully grasp the language leads to some "fun" experiences.

October Holiday break began on Saturday the 29th as Meghan, Joel and I rushed out of the school complex with our bags.  We were running a little later than planned due to some circumstances we couldn't change so we were a little behind schedule. We jumped into our taxi (with my favorite taxi driver ever!) and were on our way to the Beijing bus station. About two minutes into the ride, Liang and I already ran into a bit of a language barrier when he tried to explain something to me and I just wasn't understanding. I knew about 90% of the words he was using but apparently the 10% I lacked were the important ones because he kept laughing at me as I tried to answer his questions. Oh well... after a while we both gave up and spent the rest of the ride in silence. We arrived at the bus station around 7:30 which was way later than originally planned. This was a station I hadn't been to before but it was a large bus station and I figured the buses would be running frequently.

Observation#1: Just because you read something about bus schedules online does NOT mean that it can be fully trusted.

So we walked to the entrance of the ticket hall and a guard was standing next to the LOCKED door. I asked him if we could buy tickets and his response was "meiyou." This is not a phrase you want to hear. Meiyou means they don't have any tickets. Now, because my chinese is not good enough, I'm not sure if there were any buses or tickets because we couldn't seem to get that answered. So, a wonderful chinese guy who speaks some English put us in a cab with some chinese guy that DOESN'T speak any English and sent us off to the other bus station nearby. About 10 minutes into the ride the chinese guy gets out of our cab at his stop and shuts the door. There was a moment of uncertainty in our minds as to whether the cab knew where we were going and how much we were supposed to be paying him. But to our delight we arrived safely at the bus station about 5 minutes later. We walked in and easily bought tickets for a 9somethingo'clock bus. Not too bad. Once the bus left Beijing we had a 7 hour ride to Taiyuan where the 3 of us were meeting up with 6 other teacher friends who would accompany us to Sichuan.  We got to Taiyuan at about 4am and had a few hours of sleep before we started our Sunday.

Our train to Chengdu was to leave Taiyuan at 3pm and we arrived at the train station about 10 minutes before that (thanks to the wonderful traffic of the main street through taiyuan). We rushed through the station and down to the platform and found the car our tickets were for.

This is where the fun begins...  

Dave and I (the team leader in Taiyuan and fellow CTFer from my first year in China) knew what we were getting ourselves into. Both of us have taken a hard seat on a train in China before, but our teammates had no idea what to expect as this was their first time to experience it.

 

Now, what you may or may not know is that China only has three major holidays a year that give you time off work. Since this was October Holiday, most people were going home for the week or taking a vacation. There are 1.3 billion people in China...  and I really wouldn't be exagerrating if I said that at least half of those people travel over the holiday...so that is a LOT of people traveling.

We entered our assigned car on the train and couldn't even get in the aisle because there were so many people with all of their junk. The thing about Chinese trains is that the ticket people sell "standing" tickets. So in the hard seat section there are benches where people are sitting and there are people standing in the aisles (or standing in front of you or leaning onto you or practically sitting on top of you). Lets take a look at it...

now i don't think this picture does it justice. You can tell though by Joel's face that he is a "little" uncomfortable. The kid next to him decided to sit down on the seat with Joel even though there wasn't any room. You can tell that there are a lot of people standing but you just can't tell how squished we truly are. Let's just say that if you have an issue with crowds or if you don't like people invading your personal space then you shouldn't take a hard seat on a train during a holiday.

Next key point:

You may wonder why Amy finds it necessary to bury her nose in her shirt rather than experiencing the air of the train. Well...

Observation#2: Just because there is a "do not..." sign does NOT mean that it will be a) obeyed or b) enforced

When you enter the train there is a sign that says "no smoking." The train does have parts in between cars where you are allowed to smoke though so they sell cigarettes on the train. If you're not aware...about 1/2 the men in china (or maybe more?) smoke. And I guess if you're a smoker then you need to smoke several times during a 27 hour train ride. Understandable. But since the local men decide to NOT use the "designated smoking area" we all got to take part in their intoxicating habit. This is one of the parts of the Chinese train that I will never adjust to or appreciate.

Observation#3: There are some things on a chinese train that you just get used about 18 hours into the trip. Such as: dirty, wet squatty's, strange smelling food, strangers sleeping on your shoulder and singing drunks sitting next to you.

I don't want to leave you with negative thoughts....this was merely a "cultural learning experience" for most of us on the trip. But it was also a very beautiful trip down south. Southwest China is covered with mountains and rivers that take your breath away (in a positive way...not as in how the polluted north takes your breath away). So I'll leave you with a few shots out the train window of the view we had for the last half of the train trip....