The Train!

I actually had a seat for the first couple of hours. I was crammed onto a lightly padded bench with women who kept hocking grotesque loogies into a tissue, and kids who slept like contortionists.

Then the first stop came, and the rightful owners of the seats kicked us all out. They were mostly students, as I had the terrible fortune of traveling during the end of China's Spring Festival. Everyone was going back to Beijing from their hometowns. The population of the car actually doubled at that first stop, as if it wasn't crowded enough. Then at the second stop at midnight, even more people crammed on. It was inhuman.

I recently read an amazing book on India called Bombay: Maximum City. The author mentioned that in India, there are limits to how much livestock may be shipped in one car on a train. There are no such limits for how many humans can cram into a car, and I suspect it's a similar situation in China.

The floor was covered with sunflower seed and peanut shells, and people were squatting in the aisle, nestled up against others doing the same. The "No Smoking" signs were blatantly ignored, and people were constantly shuffling up and down the aisles somehow, picking out patches of floor among the writhing masses.

Even the snack carts came through, with the vendors yelling at everyone to make way which somehow they did. At one point during the sleepless first night, I was offered the corner of a seat as a kind student squished in to his friends to make room for me. It was enough to rest one ass bone on, but not enough to sleep.

Stop after stop during the night, people shuffled on and off. I read Emperor: Gates of Rome almost entirely through. It's a bad book. A pulp, substanceless imagining of Caesar's youth, but it was all I had, and I was grateful for it.

I somehow made it through the first 12 hours, alternating between perching on a seat corner, standing with my hand on the overhead luggage rack to keep from getting knocked over, reading, and listening to music and carefully conserving my battery power while vainly trying to catch some sleep.

Around 11AM I pushed my way through the next car towards the dining car, where I was gambling on sitting down and eating something. It took me about 15 minutes to get through one car, and there were four more to go. I decided to wait for the next stop and walk down the platform, but then a snack cart came through, and I followed in it's wake to the dining car. I was the only foreigner in five cars of Chinese, with probably 150 people in each car.

I'm not trying to brag that I was a foreigner getting a "real" Chinese experience. I want to admit I was the only idiot stupid enough to take a standing ticket during Spring Festival. It was truly miserable.

I did get a seat, after squeezing through the hallway. I ordered a pork and pepper dish, and drank beer for a couple hours until I was too tipsy to stay awake. I thought I should get up because I was taking up space at a table that could be occupied by paying customers, and I did. Then I realized that everyone else at the tables were sleeping, and I sat back down and tried to nap.

I spent about 24 hours in or around the dining car. I knew my luggage would be safe, buried under a mountain of other people's belongings back in car 17. No one was going to run off with it. No one could possibly run.

The closed the dining car for the employees meals, and I stood around the toilets in between cars with everyone else until it opened for dinner. Then I ate with a fat businessman who called himself John Forest, and a woman with her young niece and the grandma. John Forest told me I could sleep in the dining car for 30 yuan. Sounded good, but then he recommended I find another seat - there were none - because his friend was coming to sleep here. I waited for awhile, it was around 9PM at this point, and I was tired. I had finished the book, and a Chinese girl was happily listening to the exotic Western bands I had on my MP3 player, and killing my battery as she ran the video.

The cute little girl I'd been sitting across from finally warmed up to me, a foreign white-devil, and I made faces at her. Then her grandma started clearing out the bags from under the table for some reason. Then the little girl was squatting underneath, pissing right on the dining car floor. John Forest just laughed when I gave him a surprised look. People were still smoking everywhere, even the employees. Earlier I had seen meal attendants loading trays with pre-made meals, just stacking the uncovered cartons on top of each other. God knows where the bottoms of those cartons had been, but they were now resting on food someone would eat. So much for sanitation.

I left big fat John Forest, not entirely sadly. He was really fat and didn't even push all the way over in the seat. I was on the edge, almost like the night before when a student gave me a corner of his seat. I crept into the next car, a sleeper car which was kept clear of the riff-raff of the poor people crowding the area between the cars and sleeping on the floor of the dining car, which don't forget, the adorable little girl had just pissed on.

For some reason, probably because I'm white, they let me into the hallway of the sleeper car, and I sat on a fold down seat until the wee hours of the morning when a car attendant finally told me to get lost. It was cold, and not conducive to sleep, but I had space, along with the crippled guy who was laying down on the floor next to the heater. I think they just felt bad for him so they let him lie.

I had breakfast in the dining car and got out around 8:30AM and made my way back along the platform to car 17, where my bags were. I stood for another three or four hours, watching the grim landscapes roll by, industrial slums fighting for space with highly farmed paddies and terraces. A friendly Chinese student was talking to me, and he was interesting at first - I learned an average salary out in the provinces was 1000 yuan per month, about $150, but as an electrical engineer in Beijing, he was hoping to make 3000 yuan per month - but towards the end of the ride, I had no patience for anyone. I listened to music as my battery finally started dying, and finally arrived into Beijing West Station, glad to step off the train, and walk for really the first time in two days.