I knew the train ride to Chengdu was going to be long, 30 hours long to be exact. I had been on trains that took longer, like the train from Shanghai to Chengdu which was 36 or 40 hours. However, there was one little ticket difference which made all of the big difference. To give some background, on Chinese trains, there are 4 types of tickets you can buy:
1. Soft Sleeper: the soft sleeper ticket buys you a bed in a private compartment that has 2 regular sized bunkbeds. This is the most expensive ticket and "luxurious" way to travel via train.
2. Hard Sleeper: triple decker bunk beds where you have about 3 to 3.5 feet from your bed to the bed above you. You can't sit up. However, the bottom bunk has a normal amount of space, and therefore it costs more. The middle bunk costs the 2nd most, and the 3rd bunk costs the least. This is because you are about 3 or 4 feet away from the ceiling, where the blinding lights are located, so when they turn them on in the mornings, your eyes are assaulted by vicious white light.
3. Soft Seater: I have never ridden via soft seater, but I imagine it's like an airline seat that can recline, but I am not really sure.
4. Hard Seater: The hard seater is the most inexpensive mode of train transportation. Rather than having all of the seats facing the same direction, there are groups of two seats facing another two seats with a miniature table in the middle. The seats look deceivingly comfortable. I say this because they are not in the least bit comfortable. In fact I would go as far to say they are extremely uncomfortable. Uncomfortable to the point where if you are relatively tall like me, by the 4th or 5th hours you begin to lose feeling in your legs.
On my Chengdu-Shanghai trip I traveled via soft sleeper. This time, on my Beijing-Chengdu trip, I was going via hard seater. I traveled with my coworker Sun Qiang, who is in his early 30s and has not ever traveled very far outside of Beijing in his life. He had many interesting questions about hostels in his research of Chengdu. Are there man with woman in one room? Do man and woman shower together because I think this is strange maybe. If I have to go to the bathroom, where should I go? What should I wear in the hostel?
We arrived at our train departing Beijing at 11AM, and pushed our way through the swarms of Chinese travelers to our specified train car. When we found our seats, there was a problem. The problem was that a short little Chinese man who seemed to have red hair and copper skin was passed out with his head on the table and his hand clutching a half empty bottle of bai jiu (chinese liquor). Sun Qiang tried to wake him with words. When that did not work, he tried tapping him, then shaking him, then finally with one of Sun Qiang's hands slapping his back and the other one shaking his shoulder and yelling "WAKE UP" "WAKE UP" the guy finally sat partially up and looked at us - me to Sun Qiang, then Sun-Qiang back to me, and proceeded to go back to sleep. That's when one of the train stewardesses, a short middle aged Chinese woman, started screaming at him and finally came to and started yelling at her, and then yelling at us, and then yelling at no one in particular, and then vanished to another car, presumably to appropriate another seat.
The two seats facing us were occupied by a couple that Sun Qiang and I would later learn was very fond of PDA. The man looked like a big hairless baby who liked to lift his shirt above his big hairless belly whenever he got hot (also known as The Chinese Air Conditioner). The girl was super skinny and literally acted like she was 5. Hitting her boyfriend and pouting, being really restless and ordering her boyfriend to switch places with her, it was pretty jarring after 30 hours. To make matters worse, apparently there is a fifth kind of ticket that I did not mention in the above ticket order because I did not know about it until I got on the train. Since we were traveling during national day (1 of 2 yearly Chinese vacations that lasts at least a week), all 1.3 odd billion people in China travel. Naturally, there isn't room enough on the trains to seat everyone, so people who can't buy or afford a hard seater seat ticket will buy a hard seater standing ticket. What this means is that the aisles and the connector portions of the train cars were literally packed with people standing and leaning on the seats. Many of these people were going all the way Chengdu, and I suddenly felt fortunate for my extremely uncomfortable hard seat.
The trip itself was more or less uneventful. The drunk man came back and wanted his instant noodles from his suitcase, which was stashed above my seat, so I obliged. He said thank you and I told him not to use thanks. Later, I played cards with Sun Qiang and the couple sitting across from us. Naturally, half of the train came over to watch this white guy get his ass kicked in cards, and I soon had 3 of the standing passengers leaning over my shoulder and debating amongst themselves what I should do. That turned into them literally taking the cards out of my hand and placing them on the table for me when it was my turn. After, whenever I won they would pat me on the shoulder and say 'good job.'
Sleep was probably the worst part of the ride down. On hard seaters, the lights stay on all the time, glaringly bright. My seat was rigid and stuck straight up with no way to lean back, the other couple facing me made me disgusted as they clung onto each other but also reminded me of my own bitter solitude, I couldn't put my feet far enough out to get my legs to reach a 90 degree angle, so I would try to weave them through the legs of the couple in an effort to stick them out further. This would often lead to blood coming back to my legs, as well as severe cramps. I tried sticking my legs in the aisle, but they kept getting kicked by random people walking up down the aisles during all hours of the night. Sometimes I would jerk my head up in a sweat, completely disoriented, forgetting where I was and how I got there. I would look all around, blinded by the omniscient white light with my eyes all but closed, while the sheer power of the lights made my eyes water, although that also might have been tears of frustration and helplessness. I also read a lot. I started Haurki Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World and had to pace myself so I wouldn't finish it all on the ride over. By the time we arrived, I had only 50 pages left. When we got off the train, I noticed my legs felt weird. I looked down and saw that my ankles were swollen. In fact, I no longer had any ankles. My legs literally went from calf to heel. If you know how large my ankles are to begin with, I leave the rest to your imagination. The first thing we did when we arrived in Beijing was walk to the ticket building and waiting in line for 30 minutes to buy our return tickets. Weeks earlier, when Sun Qiang and I were buying our hard seater tickets (those were the only tickets available from Beijing to Chengdu), I asked if we could buy our return tickets as well. He told me that we could not. When I asked why, he simply replied: because we will buy them when we arrive in Chengdu. And that pretty much settled it. So, when we finally made it to the front of the line in Beijing, we asked if they had any return tickets on October 5th. The woman at the desk said they did, but the only tickets available were hard seaters. I felt dread creep up my spine and work its way into every extremity. My fingers tingled, my legs quivered, and my testicles started their slow ascent into my stomach. I might have well been sitting on the floor hugging my legs, rocking back and forth and whispering "no, no, no." Seeing my obvious ambivalence of taking a hard seater back to Beijing, she said she also had a hard sleeper the night before our intended departure date. Sun Qiang and I gave each other one quick look and both said yes.
We bussed from the train station to our first hostel, which was only 5 stops away, and which I was very thankful for. The Mix Backpackers Hostel was only a block from the bus stop and we staggered in looking like many of the other travelers, the only difference being that the other travelers looked disheveled from their week long mountain backpacking trip and not a 30 hour train ride. Sun Qiang wanted to walk around the city, and I was being led by the hostel reception into a dumpling making party in the lobby, but I did not want to sit down. I realized with an especially strong movement in my bowels that I had not gone to the bathroom in nearly 48 hours. I rushed off and by the time I got back the dumpling making party was underway and it looked like all the seats were taken so I walked around outside as well.
I found a little hole in the way restaurant that was bustling with people. They all stopped what they were doing and looked at me. One of the guys had a mouthful full of food that was agape when he saw me. It looked like noodles. I quickly ordered pork fried rice. When you look back on things, like the taste of food, sometimes we have the tendency to romanticize or idealize the taste, look, or feel of whatever we are thinking about. I was worried about this when the plate of steaming deliciousness was set down in front of me. But after the first bite, it was just as delicious as I remembered. Even better, actually. It made me think of a little restaurant close to where I used to live in Chengdu called Little Rain, but I will get to that place later. After I finished eating, some random Chinese lady came into the restaurant and gave both the restaurant and myself a bottle of pepsi. She said something about me being American (not sure how she knew), and the restaurant being Chinese and something something something, but she was speaking in Sichuan Hua so I didn't understand and my Chinese probably isn't good enough yet to catch what she was saying anyway. I got up with my free bottle of pepsi and went on my way.
When I lived in Chengdu in 2005-06, I lived in the south-western area of the city. Our hostel was located very far north in the very middle of it. I also realized, for having lived in Chengdu for 8 months, I really didn't know it all. I knew a few street names that came back to me as I looked at a map, but I sometimes wonder how I survived there for so long while being so ignorant. I think much of the credit goes to Dan, Tim, and Jordan. Anyway, the city was very similar to how I remember, except that now there is a subway line that goes down the main street from Ren Min Bei Lu to Ren Min Nan Lou. I walked to Tian Fu square smack dab in the middle of the city, where there is a very large statue of mao, and saw an incredibly large square with huge fountains and water works, beautiful cropped gardens and well over a thousand people. I remember thinking, this is new, when I remembered that this whole area was under construction the entire time I was in Chengdu before. I randomly ran into Sun Qiang, he told me he was going to walk around some more and then I left him again because I walked back to the hostel and went to sleep. So I did.
1. Soft Sleeper: the soft sleeper ticket buys you a bed in a private compartment that has 2 regular sized bunkbeds. This is the most expensive ticket and "luxurious" way to travel via train.
2. Hard Sleeper: triple decker bunk beds where you have about 3 to 3.5 feet from your bed to the bed above you. You can't sit up. However, the bottom bunk has a normal amount of space, and therefore it costs more. The middle bunk costs the 2nd most, and the 3rd bunk costs the least. This is because you are about 3 or 4 feet away from the ceiling, where the blinding lights are located, so when they turn them on in the mornings, your eyes are assaulted by vicious white light.
3. Soft Seater: I have never ridden via soft seater, but I imagine it's like an airline seat that can recline, but I am not really sure.
4. Hard Seater: The hard seater is the most inexpensive mode of train transportation. Rather than having all of the seats facing the same direction, there are groups of two seats facing another two seats with a miniature table in the middle. The seats look deceivingly comfortable. I say this because they are not in the least bit comfortable. In fact I would go as far to say they are extremely uncomfortable. Uncomfortable to the point where if you are relatively tall like me, by the 4th or 5th hours you begin to lose feeling in your legs.
On my Chengdu-Shanghai trip I traveled via soft sleeper. This time, on my Beijing-Chengdu trip, I was going via hard seater. I traveled with my coworker Sun Qiang, who is in his early 30s and has not ever traveled very far outside of Beijing in his life. He had many interesting questions about hostels in his research of Chengdu. Are there man with woman in one room? Do man and woman shower together because I think this is strange maybe. If I have to go to the bathroom, where should I go? What should I wear in the hostel?
We arrived at our train departing Beijing at 11AM, and pushed our way through the swarms of Chinese travelers to our specified train car. When we found our seats, there was a problem. The problem was that a short little Chinese man who seemed to have red hair and copper skin was passed out with his head on the table and his hand clutching a half empty bottle of bai jiu (chinese liquor). Sun Qiang tried to wake him with words. When that did not work, he tried tapping him, then shaking him, then finally with one of Sun Qiang's hands slapping his back and the other one shaking his shoulder and yelling "WAKE UP" "WAKE UP" the guy finally sat partially up and looked at us - me to Sun Qiang, then Sun-Qiang back to me, and proceeded to go back to sleep. That's when one of the train stewardesses, a short middle aged Chinese woman, started screaming at him and finally came to and started yelling at her, and then yelling at us, and then yelling at no one in particular, and then vanished to another car, presumably to appropriate another seat.
The two seats facing us were occupied by a couple that Sun Qiang and I would later learn was very fond of PDA. The man looked like a big hairless baby who liked to lift his shirt above his big hairless belly whenever he got hot (also known as The Chinese Air Conditioner). The girl was super skinny and literally acted like she was 5. Hitting her boyfriend and pouting, being really restless and ordering her boyfriend to switch places with her, it was pretty jarring after 30 hours. To make matters worse, apparently there is a fifth kind of ticket that I did not mention in the above ticket order because I did not know about it until I got on the train. Since we were traveling during national day (1 of 2 yearly Chinese vacations that lasts at least a week), all 1.3 odd billion people in China travel. Naturally, there isn't room enough on the trains to seat everyone, so people who can't buy or afford a hard seater seat ticket will buy a hard seater standing ticket. What this means is that the aisles and the connector portions of the train cars were literally packed with people standing and leaning on the seats. Many of these people were going all the way Chengdu, and I suddenly felt fortunate for my extremely uncomfortable hard seat.
The trip itself was more or less uneventful. The drunk man came back and wanted his instant noodles from his suitcase, which was stashed above my seat, so I obliged. He said thank you and I told him not to use thanks. Later, I played cards with Sun Qiang and the couple sitting across from us. Naturally, half of the train came over to watch this white guy get his ass kicked in cards, and I soon had 3 of the standing passengers leaning over my shoulder and debating amongst themselves what I should do. That turned into them literally taking the cards out of my hand and placing them on the table for me when it was my turn. After, whenever I won they would pat me on the shoulder and say 'good job.'
Sleep was probably the worst part of the ride down. On hard seaters, the lights stay on all the time, glaringly bright. My seat was rigid and stuck straight up with no way to lean back, the other couple facing me made me disgusted as they clung onto each other but also reminded me of my own bitter solitude, I couldn't put my feet far enough out to get my legs to reach a 90 degree angle, so I would try to weave them through the legs of the couple in an effort to stick them out further. This would often lead to blood coming back to my legs, as well as severe cramps. I tried sticking my legs in the aisle, but they kept getting kicked by random people walking up down the aisles during all hours of the night. Sometimes I would jerk my head up in a sweat, completely disoriented, forgetting where I was and how I got there. I would look all around, blinded by the omniscient white light with my eyes all but closed, while the sheer power of the lights made my eyes water, although that also might have been tears of frustration and helplessness. I also read a lot. I started Haurki Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World and had to pace myself so I wouldn't finish it all on the ride over. By the time we arrived, I had only 50 pages left. When we got off the train, I noticed my legs felt weird. I looked down and saw that my ankles were swollen. In fact, I no longer had any ankles. My legs literally went from calf to heel. If you know how large my ankles are to begin with, I leave the rest to your imagination. The first thing we did when we arrived in Beijing was walk to the ticket building and waiting in line for 30 minutes to buy our return tickets. Weeks earlier, when Sun Qiang and I were buying our hard seater tickets (those were the only tickets available from Beijing to Chengdu), I asked if we could buy our return tickets as well. He told me that we could not. When I asked why, he simply replied: because we will buy them when we arrive in Chengdu. And that pretty much settled it. So, when we finally made it to the front of the line in Beijing, we asked if they had any return tickets on October 5th. The woman at the desk said they did, but the only tickets available were hard seaters. I felt dread creep up my spine and work its way into every extremity. My fingers tingled, my legs quivered, and my testicles started their slow ascent into my stomach. I might have well been sitting on the floor hugging my legs, rocking back and forth and whispering "no, no, no." Seeing my obvious ambivalence of taking a hard seater back to Beijing, she said she also had a hard sleeper the night before our intended departure date. Sun Qiang and I gave each other one quick look and both said yes.
We bussed from the train station to our first hostel, which was only 5 stops away, and which I was very thankful for. The Mix Backpackers Hostel was only a block from the bus stop and we staggered in looking like many of the other travelers, the only difference being that the other travelers looked disheveled from their week long mountain backpacking trip and not a 30 hour train ride. Sun Qiang wanted to walk around the city, and I was being led by the hostel reception into a dumpling making party in the lobby, but I did not want to sit down. I realized with an especially strong movement in my bowels that I had not gone to the bathroom in nearly 48 hours. I rushed off and by the time I got back the dumpling making party was underway and it looked like all the seats were taken so I walked around outside as well.
I found a little hole in the way restaurant that was bustling with people. They all stopped what they were doing and looked at me. One of the guys had a mouthful full of food that was agape when he saw me. It looked like noodles. I quickly ordered pork fried rice. When you look back on things, like the taste of food, sometimes we have the tendency to romanticize or idealize the taste, look, or feel of whatever we are thinking about. I was worried about this when the plate of steaming deliciousness was set down in front of me. But after the first bite, it was just as delicious as I remembered. Even better, actually. It made me think of a little restaurant close to where I used to live in Chengdu called Little Rain, but I will get to that place later. After I finished eating, some random Chinese lady came into the restaurant and gave both the restaurant and myself a bottle of pepsi. She said something about me being American (not sure how she knew), and the restaurant being Chinese and something something something, but she was speaking in Sichuan Hua so I didn't understand and my Chinese probably isn't good enough yet to catch what she was saying anyway. I got up with my free bottle of pepsi and went on my way.
When I lived in Chengdu in 2005-06, I lived in the south-western area of the city. Our hostel was located very far north in the very middle of it. I also realized, for having lived in Chengdu for 8 months, I really didn't know it all. I knew a few street names that came back to me as I looked at a map, but I sometimes wonder how I survived there for so long while being so ignorant. I think much of the credit goes to Dan, Tim, and Jordan. Anyway, the city was very similar to how I remember, except that now there is a subway line that goes down the main street from Ren Min Bei Lu to Ren Min Nan Lou. I walked to Tian Fu square smack dab in the middle of the city, where there is a very large statue of mao, and saw an incredibly large square with huge fountains and water works, beautiful cropped gardens and well over a thousand people. I remember thinking, this is new, when I remembered that this whole area was under construction the entire time I was in Chengdu before. I randomly ran into Sun Qiang, he told me he was going to walk around some more and then I left him again because I walked back to the hostel and went to sleep. So I did.
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