Train To Zhong Wei

We thought we'd wake up at 7:00am so we could check out the Forbidden City and Tienenmen Square before meeting up with the tour group at 11am to catch our train out of Beijing. The alarm went off and we woke up. After another hour or so, dead tired and quads a-burning from the Great Wall, we pulled ourselves out of bed and got ourselves ready for the road.

We didn't have enough time to really do anything, so we thought we'd grab ourselves a Starbucks (there were no Timmies in sight) and take a crispy walk down towards the square to see how far we could get before having to turn back to the hotel for our meeting. We made it to Chairman Mao's memorial building and had a chance to take a few pics, but then got nervous and headed back. Better to save a few things for our next trip to Beijing (sigh.) On the way back we passed a guy getting his haircut on the sidewalk. Fun.

We also passed a delicious looking stall of hearts and gizzards, but didn't have enough time to stop for any :-(. We grabbed our bags from the hotel and hit the metro with our group to head for the train.

We got there just in time. We headed to our gate and our train was there waiting. No lineups or anything which was a bit surprising. A good thing though, as waiting in line for a 21 hour train ride would be a bit much.

The train was a sleeper train, and in the "hard sleeper" class there are six bunks in each room, two sets of three bunks high (as opposed to the "soft sleeper" class where there are two sets of two.) There are eight of us in our group plus the tour leader. Luckily, we ended up in the room withall six from our group, as we've since heard that the three in the other room were paired up with a motley crue of snorers and random question askers at all hours of the night.

How to describe the bunks... well, the beds were exactly 1cm less wide than my body with my arms at my side and exactly my height, give or take. This means that while I could lie on my back, I couldn't do so without my pressed hard against my body with the bars cutting off the circulation to my forearms and hands. And lack of headroom there was a-plenty. I was on the third bunk and the ceiling was exactly the combined height of my elbow to the tip of my fingers plus one hand. Try lying on your bed and drawing a fake ceiling there. To be honest, it really wasn't so terrible, but it was a bit claustrophobic at first.

We found the dining car for lunch shortly after we got started. It was a bit intimidating to say the least. There weren't very many tables and they were all full. We didn't really even know how it worked or what we were supposed to do. So we turned around and walked right out. Halfway back to our car, we realised how stupid we were being and mustered up enough courage to head back and figure things out. When we arrived, we kind of suspected that you just sit with random people in their 4 seater booths if there are any seats. As luck would have it, two people were leaving as we were arriving. We sat down across from two men for what was a very awkward moment. When the waiter came over, he handed us a sheet of paper with the day's menu all in Chinese. The other two men had just ordered. I saw something that looked tasty at someone else's table and just pointed there. We gave the waiter a crapload of money and he took what he needed and walked away.

A while later, our dates' food came and they warned us that they were going to start eating first (Yen figured that out, and it was quite thoughtful of our dates). They got rice and some pork dish. Then our food came... A plate of stir fried onions and a plate of tofu. We were a bit disappointed, but hungry. It turned out to be delicious so all was well. We saw some garlic chives and a steamed fish at another table so decided to learn how to ask for that before we left to get us prepared for our next meal. We did get it for our next meal, though we believe that there was a very popular noodle special on for dinner and getting the fish and garlic chives and even the rice was a mistake. Think steamed fish. Think lunch leftovers eight hours later. The plus side is that our of sheer coincidence, our two favourite eating dates were there again and had nobody sitting with them.

Toilets. Or lack thereof. Squatters. Plugged squatters. Puddles. Mounds. Horks. Unflushable disposables. There aren't enough explatives available to describe this, so I'll stop here. Although the one cool thing is that one of them was stuck in the flush position and I could pee directly through the floor and onto the tracks. 21 hours is a long time...

We spent most of the day playing UNO, drinking and chatting. At some station stops there were food carts on the platform that we could quickly sprint to before we got moving again. One had the most delicious roti style bread. No butter or other forms of lubrication necessary.

The scenery from the train was incredible. Desert, snow, nuclear power plants, strange villages, people manually working massive farm fields, tunnels through massive hills...

The train also had a movie style soundtrack. There was a button in the hallway just outside our room that controlled the speakers for our room and the next few beside us. They broadcast nonstop Chinese music. There were Broadway hits played on synthesized Chinese instruments, Christmas carols with Chinese lyrics, Chinese pop and some nice Chinese classical music. However, despite its appropriateness, it was better when the switch was off. Unfortunately, one of the three strangers in the room next door (with the three from our group sharing) kept turning it back on. Luckily, at 10pm they shut off the lights and the music for the evening.

In the end the 21 hours actually seemed to go by quickly. We've got a few more overnight trains to go in the coming weeks and we've recently found out that they're not usually this nice. We'll see. I think this one was the longest though.

When we finally arrived in Zhongwei at 9:30 the following morning we were all pretty tired. We got to our hotel and cleaned up a bit and quickly oriented ourselves to the small town (of 500,000 people). It was immediately noticeable how different it was from Beijing. People stared but not in a judgemental way. It was more curious and they were quite happy to smile back and attempt a conversation. There was no hassle or heckling or harassment. Just genuine interest. Zhongwei isn't really a foreigner destination yet so I guess we aren't necessarily expected. In fact this is the first time our tour company has come here. I really like it. It's pretty small and easy to orient yourself in.

We checked out a Buddhist temple from 1403 that apparently has the most unique architecture of all the temples in China. Since I've got nothing to compare it to, I'll have to take their word for it. It was quite nice and very strange. There was a room full (and I mean full) of pathways surrounded by a zillion different Buddhist statues ranging from happy to sad to downright scary. The other bizarre thing was that the old bomb shelter tunnels below the temple had been converted into a cheap feeling haunted house, complete with black lights and screaming and growling sound effects. Scene after scene of strange and gory torture methods. Buddhist hell.

After the temple, we walked for a bit with the other couple in our group to find lunch. We found a noodle house which was fantastic. Yen and I had some great fresh noodles for about a buck fifty total!

After that, we started our journey by foot down to the Yellow River. We'd heard it was a 20 minute walk and had a nice old water wheel or something else cool to see. We walked for 20 minutes and ended up in a construction zone. Almost about to turn back, we found a path through the construction and found ourselves on an empty eight lane highway! We continued down the highway and eventually (like 30 minutes later!) landed on the bank of the Yellow river. There was a hut selling water and juice and a ferry that was taking its two passengers to an island that looked less than exciting.

We had some juice and watched as the two ferry passengers got off the ferry at the other side and had completed their island circumnavigation by the time the OJ was done and were boarding the ferry back. Well that was fun.

We headed back up the deserted highway towards the hotel. About halfway, we came across a herd of sheep trying to cross the highway. When they were about five lanes in, a dump truck came out of nowhere and instead of stopping, it kept on coming and honked. I guess the sheep were ok with that and they quickly recoiled back to lane 4 while the truck sped past and continued on their merry way.

All along the highway there were teams of people working the dusty dry dirt with hoes and shovels preparing for some fancy landscaping of sorts. We later saw a billboard with a drawing of what their plans are for the highway and surrounding land and it looks quite grandios. Not sure where all the people are going to come from, as this was a massive area all being developed at once. Ready for 2008. I guess we'll have to come back and see.

Just before we hit the hotel, we noticed a little side street with a bit of hustle and bustle. About halfway in, we found a woman making what looked like pancakes but they were formed by wrapping green onions and tofu in a ball of dough and flattening them in hot oil in a pan. She had two big bowls of fresh onion and tofu, one spicy and one not. She was making them to order, and flipping them, hot oil and all, with her bare hands! They were fantastic!

When we finally made back to the hotel it was nearly time for dinner. Our leader had arranged a local guy to assist in navigating the night market for dinner for anyone who was interested. Who wouldn't be interested in a market for dinner? We hit the night market with a mission. We were starving after our massive hike down to a disappointing river and this was just the place to make it all worth while! There were all kinds of booths there cooking all kinds of things over coal fires in metal drums. We eventually settled on a few fried dumplings and a noodle booth. Mostly because the guy would literally make the noodles from a ball of dough when they were ordered! They were hand-pulled noodles - he'd start with a ball of dough that that he would keep stretching and twisting until they became long, thin noodles. It was incredible.

After the night market we found a department store to see if we could find a scarf for the upcoming excursion to the desert. No luck, but did find underwear for fat men. No joke. I might have to come back here after this trip is done. Too much food, too little time.

So that's it and here we are typing away. Tomorrow morning we meet up at 8:30am to start our camel caravan out into the Mongolian desert for two nights in the sand. We bought a soccer ball in some randomly out of place sports store to take out there with us. Should be fun. Actually, now that I think of it, the soccer ball purchase was a bit funny. We looked for the cheapest ball we could find, which had a price on it of 100 Yuan (about $15 Canadian). When we asked the shopkeeper about it, he said a bunch of stuff in Chinese which turned out to be reverse bargaining of sorts. I guess we were supposed to bargain for it and since we didn't, he took it upon himself to bargain the price down to 90 Yuan. Sweet. Nice ball too. We split the cost with the Aussie couple on the trip and will probably end up donating it before we leave, but it should serve its purpose in the cold dunes.

So hopefully we'll get another chance to catch up after we get back into civilization. Hope all is well with everyone!