The 35-hour "express"

It turns out that getting train tickets to leave Beijing is a much harder task than I would have imagined. Despite the fact that I had inquired about getting the tickets 10 days in advance, I did not physically have them in my hand until 11:30PM on Saturday night, just 8 hours before we were scheduled to leave for Beijing and then Chengdu the following morning!


Having not been able to get the soft sleeper bunks, Janet and I settled for a "hard" sleeper (6 people, tiny room) on a 32-hour train for Chengdu. Once I finally boarded the train, the anxiety of not having the tickets and the tight timeframe for getting to Beijing and then across the city to the station settled; or maybe it was the Kenny G version of the Titanic theme song that was playing when we boarded that calmed my nerves...


At first the ride went by quickly and Janet and I kept entertained by reading and playing cards in our cramped bunk. For meals we had really conveinent Ramen Noodle bowls. The Ramen here comes in a big cardboard bowl that includes seasoning and a fork and all you have to do is add boiling water. It seemed like an easy and fun meal, though 35 hours and 5 Ramen bowls later, I was sick of them, but that is getting ahead of myself.


In the evening, Janet and I sat in the hallway of the car and talked with a Chinese man for a while. We found out that he was an engineering teacher in Chengdu and excited to be able to practice speaking English. He explained that he had taken English classes while in school, but not having a chance to practice speaking much since then, his spoken English was not very good. We were happy to speak with him for a while and tried asking questions about what we should do while in Chengdu. As he struggled to answer, I couldn't help but think that it was frustrating that two educated people could barely communicate. He clearly had much he wanted to say and I had many questions to ask, but our language barrier limited us to only the most basic of conversation.


A little while later, it was time for bed. I climbed up into my top bunk (with just enough clearance above me to roll over) and went to sleep to the steady sound of the train rolling along over the tracks.


In the morning, I woke up at the late hour of 7:40am to a jazzy version of What Child is This? I was excited to see a completely different landscape outside the car window. We were now rolling along through the mountains. The train ran a course alongside a river that also meandered its way through the mountains, occasionally winding away from the tracks for a while before moving back closer on the next bend. Periodically we would pass a small village nestled between the tracks and the river and mountains on the far side of it.


Chinese people were gathering in the hallway eating and reading. Some would cluster around a table of men playing Chinese Chess, with everyone offering commentary on each move. Unfortunately, the fun was short lived.


For some reason, I'm not quite sure why, our train was delayed and we came to an abrupt standstill on the tracks. For four hours we sat there in the same place as the people inside the car became steadily more anxious. Kids were running through the hallway, younger children starting to cry and everybody growing more frustrated by the minute. Once the train finally started moving again, it was relieving, but by this point, the romantic notion of train travel had died and my mind was only concerned with getting to Chengdu and getting off!


We did eventually arrive in Chengdu around 10:30pm (all of China is on Beijing time, there are no time zones) and rushed through the hordes of people who were waiting to meet someone at the station. Once we made it to our hostel, a short taxi ride away, we discovered that our room had been given away since we missed check-in and we were stuck in a dorm room without A/C!


It was a long, unglorious trip into Chengdu that reminded me of my first day in China. After getting off the flight and arriving in a smog-filled Beijing and then a subsequent three-hour bus ride to Tianjin, I was horrified at the thought of being in China for the next year. After a good night's sleep however, I was much better and I expect that this time will be the same as well...