Reflections on China…

(Steph) : I wanted to reminisce slightly about China seeing as I haven’t personally updated the blog since Xi’an - Chris has been far more disciplined with updates since then.

First of all, and I know I talked about this in the very first blog but it has to be reiterated, I have to comment on how helpful and fantastic every single Chinese person we met was to us while we were visitors to their country. Without exception, they were calm, jolly, happy to help: not once did I meet a grumpy Chinese person or one who didn’t attempt to help us when we needed it. If we were ever having a communication difficulty anywhere (booking train tickets, in a restaurant etc) some kind person would just appear as if from nowhere, asking ‘Excuse me, would you like me to help you? I speak English’ and proceeding from there was so much easier. One fine example of this was in a very large Dim Sum restaurant the other day when we were trying to explain to the non-English-speaking waitress that we didn’t want anything with seafood in it (I know, we’re both ridiculously not fans of our old underwater friends - we hope to change this gradually of course). She couldn’t understand and we continued to receive delicious looking dishes with shrimp, prawns etc in them. All of a sudden (when I asked for a coca-cola and she couldn’t understand), the restaurant translator (or so we thought) came over to make everything perfect for us, telling the waitress to remove any fishy items and bring a coke…the translator came over to help us four times during our meal (recommending dishes from the menu etc) before we realised she was actually only a guest in the restaurant herself! Being a typically helpful example of someone going out of their way in this country!

Another amazing example of people going out of their way (and we have sooo many!) was when we were trying to find a bus to a small town outside of Shaoxing one day. The staff at our hostel had kindly written down in Chinese the name of a small town they’d recommended we visit and also the bus number but hadn’t been able to articulate exactly where the bus left from. We thus went to the first bus stop we found and asked the people who were waiting for their own buses there. One lady who didn’t speak English recognized the town name and also the bus number and communicated that we needed to cross over to the other side and walk quite a way down the road to find the correct bus stop. We had been walking in this direction for at least five minutes (it was the hottest and most grueling day we’d experienced too) when the lady came running after us (probably at this stage missing her own bus) to explain that she’d been wrong and we needed to catch it on the original side of the road after all. That someone would have ran all that way after us and possibly missed their own bus in that incredible heat when they didn’t even speak our language nor we theirs was extremely touching. This lady ran back to her bus stop as we began strolling over to our new destination and it wasn’t long before she ran back AGAIN (slapping her head as if to say ‘How daft of me!’ and touching her heart to say ‘I am so sorry for making you walk in the wrong direction‘) to communicate that she had remembered the exact place we needed to catch our bus, and to follow her. Gosh, if that had happened in England and someone had told a tourist the wrong direction for a bus stop before realising their mistake five minutes later, many people probably wouldn’t think twice, especially if they were waiting for their own bus which could arrive at any minute - running after this daft tourist who didn’t speak their language would mean their whole schedule would be ruined! We’d probably assume that they’d figure it out eventually or ask someone else (not any of you good people reading this blog, of course. The pillars of society that we all are!).

Apart from experiencing wonderful examples of human kindness in this country, we have also experienced…night trains. In total, we experienced three - each experience wholly different from the other. In a previous blog, I commented on the luxurious 40 pounds each ‘soft sleeper’ train we took from Beijing to Xi‘an. For night trains there are four classes unless you pay ridiculous amounts for a personal cabin: soft sleeper is the best class, followed by hard sleeper then soft seat and finally HARD SEAT. Feeling that luxury was a sin (yes, Mr. Kassim, luxury IS a sin when taking year off work to travel even if it isn’t quite so sinful when caravanning in rainy Wales in March and nature calls in the middle of the night!), we decided to go for the lower class option of hard sleeper (for 34 pounds each) when traveling the 15 hours between Xi’an and Shanghai. I must say that this was a rather pleasant experience for 15 hours - despite the carriages not having cabins meaning all we could see was bunk after bunk after bunk (three bunks tall just like in Europe, 66 in total per carriage), it was clean and a great cultural experience - see photo below. After everyone had dined on pot noodles (boiling water was again provided for this culinary delight), lights went out promptly at 10pm leaving us in pitch blackness and in need of our trusty headtorches - our only warning for this darkness as Anglophones was the rush of people diving into their bunks after one of the oh so many announcements in Chinese (OH SO MANY Chinese announcements - one thing to note here is peace and tranquility do not seem to feature in this country. On every train or bus ride we’ve taken there has either been music playing throughout or some recording of someone babbling on for ever and ever in Mandarin. The Chinese don’t seem to like QUIET!). At 10pm then, seconds after one such announcement (quite literally) darkness enveloped us; I actually thought this was rather a good idea seeing as there weren’t many places to sit anyway beside your bunk (two fold out seats per six people) plus we were all disembarking at 7am in Shanghai so an early night wouldn’t hurt anyone. 7am came and went with another few announcements and the train stopped, people got off… but NOT in Shanghai! Sitting with our bags packed and ready at 7am we assumed ours must be the next stop. EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS of Chinese music and announcements later… we finally arrived in Shanghai at 4.30pm after a 23 hour train ride with…a stomach upset. Hmmm. Not good. Thus, the moral of the story for all future visitors to China is… hard sleeper = fine and dandy, clean, fab. 23 hours = NOT good, especially when you’re expecting only a 15 hour journey AND you get a tummy upset. Somehow try to find out the length of journey before the man at the ticket office puts you on the slow train.

Now, our third and final night train journey was going to be from Shanghai (which we both LOVED by the way - so much character, a fab city) to Beijing. We had checked and the longest that this journey could have been was 14 hours, so no more 23 hour journeys - phew. Still believing luxury to be a sin we this time chose the cheapest and lowest class option possible: HARD SEAT. This meant no cabin, no bunk, but just a train chair for the 14 hour night train up to Beijing. Fully equipped with our travel pillows, eye patches, ear plugs and fully charged iPods, we embarked on this journey with a quiet confidence: how hard could it be? It’s only sitting down over night instead of lying flat - just like a plane ride, right?

NO. Never again.

Each carriage had 118 seats and approximately (according to our calculations and counting) 37 people standing. In the aisles. Sleeping standing up. Or sleeping lying down in the aisles. Or next to the toilets. Or… UNDERNEATH our chairs! For 14 hours! Gosh. We both agree that this was a great adventure and we are happy to have tried it but it’s all over for hard seats for us: we have reached a mutual agreement that a little bit of luxury is not too big a sin.

I hope these observations and assessments of Chinese trains and people are of use to anyone planning a trip to China! In any case, I have enjoyed a good old rambling and will sign off after this long reminiscence. Until next time, Adios!