How bad can it really be, I asked myself. Travelling hard seat on an overnight train journey. So bad I found myself doing it twice. Maybe i could or should have done it a different way. But then travel as something smooth and uneventfully glamorous rarely does justice to the purpose of a meaningful journey.
Afterall, when you've travelled on buses on Africa as the locals have done - http://www.alitravelstheworld.com/zimbabwe - its all relative.
On the first train I was squeezed into a tight, smokey carriage - cattle class - and plonked in the middle of a Chinese family. The man sat opposite me (ie knee to knee) might well have been the Chinese harry Potter lookalike champion. He wanted to ask me anything and everything.
China may be strange, different, and often weird. But that does not mean plenty of its people are unhelpful or unfriendly. Far from it. I have spoken to all sort of people about China, and where it is going, and the general consensus from those who have spent long periods of time here (which naturally lends a certain amount of credibility) is that no one really knows with any certainty what will happen next. Anyone who tells you they do is lying or deluded.
But whatever happens, we are tied in with China. There is very little we can do to alter its course. Perhaps, not for the first time, a few tricks were missed during the Olympics, but we are where we are.
On my second train I was escorted away by a uniformed soldier. I didnt know where I was going. It was the black of night, just me and him marchign along a deserted platform. 'Go! Go!' he kept barking. Then as the train emerged out of the mist he shuffled his shoes to an erect attention and stamped his feet. I felt compelled to take my hands out of my pockets and tuck my shirt in. He was merely escorting me to the right carriage. 'Go!' he implored again, pointing at the door. So I did.
Around 4:30am a baby across the isle shrieked violently into action, roaring for some attention. Then I watched with sleepy horror as his mother swung him around with sudden swiftness to dangle him into the aisle and point him at the floor. His pants were down and he projected out a small jet of urine. It was heading towards my vicinity and she looked like an old lady merrily watering her English garden. The watery trickling sound woke me up fully. Never wear flip flops or shorts on a CHinese train, i silently reminded myself.
I looked up with disbelief and the woman in the next compartment was contentedly engaged in sewing a tapestry pattern. Then I cast a weary glance out the windomw and noticed lots of rushing water, which the train was crossing over. There was running water everywhere, little ironic perhaps for such a supposedly arid country. I delved into my map to see what this huge stretch of great water might be called and when I found out I afforded myself a quiet and suppressed chuckle. It was the Yellow River.
The shear volume of torsos in Chinese train stations on arrival and departure can instil claustrophobia. Early on a cold morning in Xi'an train station a cold slit of light at the long end of a mass of crowded humanity illuminated the exit. I felt like I was coming up out of a coal mine at dawn.
Then I watched as a fight broke out. A large fat man was thrashing out at two policemen in a way which suggested he was someoine important and had been pulled up for something petty. He cokmpletely lost his temper and was lunging for the throat of one of the policemen before he was pulled away. They were reluctant, even afraid perhaps, to pursue him. I put my head down and heading as quickly as the crowded humnanity would allow me to for the exit.
Bodies continue to converge on you from all angles. How on earth did so many people travel on so few trains, you wonder. Where are they all going and what are they all doing. The story of China's momentum belongs to them. They carry it with them every day and night.
more to follow.....
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