Face The Sun: Let There Be Light!

To Stand on Jericho's Walls and Face the Sun.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Note: is seems upon reading that this post, more so than any other, is CRAZY reminisce heavy. For that, I apologize.

Enough pontificating: Qinghaiward! Train departs from Xizhan on Saturday at 2, and I in standard fashion get to the station exactly 8 minutes before departure. I'm off to the frozen northwest, and having left myself exactly 9 minutes to pack, have forgotten hat, scarf, gloves, deodorant, notepad, and camera. Killing me.

When I was a student, I rolled into Beijing a month early to roam around China for a month before I started studying. I arrived at night, stayed at a buddy's place, and then went to the train station the next morning. My first train experience was a hard-seat 30-some hour train to Guangzhou, a grueling ride that to this day people -- self included, really -- find hard to believe I've done. (My teachers have made it clear that they would never have taken a 33 or so hour train ride in hard seat).

I didn't know how to read the tickets at that time, and so when the gate opened, all the people in the waiting area started SPRINTING for the train. I assumed they were running for seats, and that if I took my time, I'd be standing for the next 30 some hours. It turns out even in hard-seat, the seats are assigned and listed on the ticket, and that people sprint to lockdown scarce overhead rack space. Despite having assigned seats, I now find that every time I'm on a Chinese train platform, I can't help myself: I sprint.

And this time is no exception: I'm late, as usual. I sprint through the station, hit the waiting all area, figure out where I'm headed, and make a break for it.

The waiting hall: as a student, I switched from Beijing Normal University (Beijing Shifan Daxue) to Nanjing University (Nanjing Daxue) about half way through my time. I had to renew my visa, and doing so required leaving China, either to Mongolia or Hong Kong. I ended up going to Hong Kong, carrying everything with me. The train to southern China (for an onward bus connection to Hong Kong) left from Xizhan.

By that point in my life, I hadn't figured out that I'd there's nothing I'd rather have more than an almost non-existantly light backpack. I was carrying enough junk -- textbooks, clothing, and a ridiculous amount of trinkets (a mahjongg set, chinese chess set, go board and the requisite dozens of black and white stones, a beer mug from a bar we used to go to, what have you) -- to fill two huge backpacks, and was wearing one on the front and one on the back. It was heavy enough that breathing became a bit of a struggle. I remember standing in line for the ticket takers and having a guy across from me sneer out -- that foreigner has so much STUFF! And I, mortified but thinking fast, responded that a fellow student's father had just passed away, so I had his stuff too, was taking it to him in Hong Kong, don't judge, it's not all mine.

I'm not sure if that flew or not. I just remember my shoulders aching for days from those two stupid backpacks and all that stuff I neither wanted not needed.

Right o. 8 minutes to go, I fly through the waiting room, hit the platform, and fly towards car number 8. I've got a sack full of ramen noodles (Chinese ramen comes in a remarkable variety of flavors and is considerably better than US ramen) as well as some other snacks to entice my fellow travellers to chat with me. I'm in hard sleeper, my preferred class of train in China (the beds are longer than soft sleeper, and it's easier to talk to people). I make it on board just before departure, rip open a can of Thai Curry Crab flavored potato chips, and try to fire up a conversation with the woman across from me.

She doesn't speak Chinese. She's a Korean tourist, 67 years old and on her way to Lanzhou in Gansu province. Blast.

Throughout the trip, due to her inability to speak Chinese and my white skin, everyone will assume that we are together, and that I can translate for her. Neither of these things are true.

I try to entice some of the actual Chinese people to talk to me by opening up a bucket-apparatus that's full of mini-snickers bars. Everyone likes snickers. Find me someone who doesn't like snickers bars, and I'll either show you a near-death diabetic or a liar. And yet: No one wants the Snickers. Everyone wants to help the Korean lady learn very basic Chinese characters. No one cares that I'm reading the newspaper! A Chinese newspaper, no less! No one wants to discuss events of the day! This is all a complete disaster! I console myself by eating approximately 26 mini snickers, which, on top of a complete can of Thai Curry Crab potato chips (my favorite flavor!) leave me feeling really ill.

In 2000, I and my roommate to be, Mark Christopher (Ma Guifu in Chinese, a name which Chinese people found to be very turn of the century; all of them wanted to correct it to Ma Fugui, but he was having none of that) took the train from Shanghai to Urumqi in the northwestern-most province of Xinjiang. It was a 72 hour train, and it was awesome. Everyone was bored by day 2, so everyone was sharing snacks and chatting and playing cards and chess and whatnot, and it was GREAT. I was expecting that my 25 hour train to Qinghai would be similar, but the distance it seems just isn't quite far enough to cross that friendliness threshold. And not for lack of trying: there isn't anyone on that damn train who didn't get offered a snickers.
Labels: China, reminiscing, trains, travel

Posted by Dakota on 4:25 AM link |

Further updates on India will have to wait: the notebook containing my notes on India is in myat-home-office. I, in the mean time, have been given a week off by my language training program to head off to anywhere-I-want China, to stay in Chinese hotels and chat up real-live Chinese people and in general put the ol' Chinese into action.

And so I'm in Qinghai, on the outskirts of Tibet, surrounded by Tibetans and other people who don't so much speak great Mandarin. It seemed to make sense: I've got questions. The monks have answers.

I bought my ticket on Saturday morning from the Beijing West Train station (Beijing Xizhan). Xizhan is, I believe, the largest train station in Beijing and serves pretty much any place that's west of Beijing, including my destination. I could've gone to any number of places more convenient than the train station itself to get the ticket, but when I was student I came into and out of Xizhan an awful lot, and I wanted to see if it was as I remember it.

It is, and it isn't. It's still huge, but it's now well signposted in both English and Chinese (the Chinese signs are bracingly specific -- "Ticket Sales, 138 meters -->"). There's an information booth that's clearly signposted as "FREE INFORMATION" to cut down on hucksters charging to tell you where the bathroom is or when the next train to Xi'an is or what have you. The information booth is even broken down into logical subsections -- train timetables, lodging in Beijing, tourist information, restaurants and nightlife. I have no recollection of any of that being there in 2000.

And then tickets sales. In 2000, I remember there being a single huge room with dozens of windows, each with a cluster of about 20 people surrounding it. There was no semblence of a line, and when you finally pushed your way to the front, people would still jam their money into the window ahead of you to break queue.

It was like the Seinfeld Soup Nazi: you had one single chance to ask for what you wanted, and if they didn't have it or you didn't understand, you'd be muscled aside and the next person would already be barking out their ticket order. More likely than not, even as you're asking for your ticket, the people on either side of you would also be shrieking out what they want, so understanding the ticket seller's response to anything you might say -- muffled through barely functioning microphones -- was pretty much impossible. You'd spend your time in line rehearsing: tomorrow night, Xi'an, hard sleeper. Tomorrow night, hard sleeper, Xi'an, and if you screwed it up, it would take you at least 10 minutes to get the ticket seller's attention again. All in all, there was only about a 50 percent chance you'd end up with what you wanted, and there sure as hell wasn't anything fast about the process.

I remember thinking that the lack of lines and general chaos when trying to purchase tickets was my least favorite thing about China, and how everything -- EVERYTHING -- would be better if they would just LINE UP.

The ticket hall is still big, but they've got metal bars in place that force people to line up. I was there at an odd hour -- about noon on a Saturday -- but there was almost no one there. There were two people in line in front of me, and while I waited, 2 people came up behind me. They waited patiently and didn't break queue. They ticket vendor was perfectly polite, and repeated the train departure time without complaint. She smiled when she gave me my change. No one pushed me, even once. No one shouted anything.

It was all a little disappointing.

This is, I suppose, the fundamental dilemma of the expat: when there are no lines and the hall is nothing but jostling and shouting, we complain about a lack of civilization. When they put in bars and people learn to line up and it all becomes so easy, we say that it's become sterile.

So then, Xizhan: in the run up to the olympics, the Chinese government is running a series of campaigns to teach people western-style politesse. They include large-character posters that say things like "I line up, because I am civilized," and "my behavior reflects on China". Rumor runs that they've made 11th of each month "Line up, Beijing! day" to emphasize standing in line instead of jostling for position. Everyone I know -- expats and Chinese folks alike -- supports this plan.

Xizhan has, I would say, undergone exactly the sort of transformation that the Chinese government is hoping for. But it made me a little nostalgic for the way the place used to be. The fact that the way the place used to be drove me absolutely batshit insane doesn't bear mentioning at all.
Labels: China, reminiscing, trains, travel

Posted by Dakota on 3:48 AM link |

Face The Sun: Let There Be Light.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007