Train to Kunming (2/4/07 - 2/6/07)
(This entry was begun while riding the train. I finished it this evening and didn't bother with making tenses match...hope you can look past this incongruity...)
I’m sitting in the dark right now save the light from this computer, having just started it up only to have the lights turned out for the night. Last night, when we got on the train in Wuchang, it was around 11:30pm and I don’t believe they turned the lights out until we’d begun our journey thirty minutes later. Tonight, since we’ve been on the train for 23 hours now, I suppose they figure 10pm is a more reasonable lights-out time. Mike had been asleep for about three hours when I woke him at nine o’clock. Just before the lights turned out, he was sitting by the window reading his book and drinking his screwdriver from a Dole orange juice bottle. As I said before, we’ve been on the train for 23 hours and yet, I feel like the journey flew by. I think I like being forced into sedentary activity…that’s an oxymoron, is it not?
We’ve had fun so far…at least I have. I knew he wasn’t keen on the thirty-hour train to Kunming but he’s been a very good sport about it. So let me tell you a little about the past 23 hours as my left eardrum tries to decide whether or not to pop. We’ve been going through tunnels all day now. Last night, Mike swears he could tell the difference – something about the echo of the train – and he thinks we went through a lot last night. All I know is that I sleep like a babe in moving vehicles, especially at night, and so I don’t know anything about tunnels or echoes, but today, we’ve passed through as many tunnels as I think I’ve ever driven through in my lifetime and maybe that number should be multiplied by thirteen. So my eardrums don’t know which way is up or what pressure is base line and have been mid-pop for at least the last five hours.
Aside from the tunnels, the countryside that we’ve passed through has been mostly non-descript. But, as you might remember from my entry about the train ride from Shanghai to Xi’an, I love train rides more than any other form of travel and enjoy staring out at the changing landscape no matter the subtly in that change. This trip has been much less sedentary compared to my first in a hard sleeper car. The first big difference is that I came laden with supplies. We each had a liter of water and I brought all kinds of edible snacks: Oreos, apples, carrot sticks, meat sticks (Muslim beef the package said), two kinds of cheese, crackers, kimche-flavored potato chips, cool cucumber-flavored potato chips, instant noodle bowls, almonds, Snickers, two kinds of tea, instant coffee, Chinese donuts, pomegranate juice, orange juice, two kinds of vodka (vanilla and plain) and Mike added to the mix with Builder Bars, bananas and then, at one of our longer stops, I bought some chicken legs and some sticky rice balls with what I think to be figs in the center. I also purchased a skewer of chicken feet and a pig hoof. Neither of us could eat either one and I felt bad about having bought something that many others would have consumed, but I was curious and fascinated. I tried eating these items – that’s not actually true, I couldn’t bring myself to even try the pig hoof – but they were too surreal. Mike joked about my “American excesses” but in actuality, I think he hit the nail on the head. I mean, had I ever actually been starving, I would not have dared purchase food and then throw it away. This behavior has stuck with me even after the trip is through and even now that I have the ability to pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t know why I bought something I was almost certain I wouldn’t eat for sheer entertainment value and I hope that it’s the last time I do so.
I am dumfounded by something that I suppose I should expect of Chinese society. I want to know why more Chinese don’t suffer from ADD…and I’ll tell you why. This morning, around 8am a television set that had remained dormant until that time suddenly flashed on. And, this set remained on until lights out this evening. For the most part, the programs were informational about Beijing and the Olympics, or they were mini-talk shows with adorable twenty-something hostesses, the topics of their show seeming inane enough from the footage that went along with their chatter, but occasionally, a particular show would come on that was staged in a train station. The characters of the show seemed to be stationmasters who had to deal with the everyday shenanigans of travelers. There was a laugh track attached to this particular show that still boggles the mind. Every second a different laugh was forced on the audience. Also, often, there was loud music in the background of the show – much less subtle than Hollywood’s use of music to illicit emotion from the audience.
Anyway, the television blared on for the entire day. Sometimes, a music track would start from the same speaker system where the trainmaster or mistress would make announcements about impending arrivals and departures. At one point, the television was going, as was some music, as was the woman telling us we were about to arrive at our next destination. My head swam with all of the noise and I looked around to see that not one of my fellow passengers was even slightly perturbed by all of the input. In fact, many of them were scrolling their cell phones and/or listening to MP3 players to maybe drown out the ambience of the train. My bunk was on the top of the three-high bunks and so my ear was right next to the soundtrack of the television, not to mention the television itself. Whenever I adjusted my head to look down at the goings-on of the bunk area around me, I saw one or two or three people staring listlessly up at me and only realized after a second or two that they weren’t staring at me but instead were entranced by the actions of the uniformed stationmasters on the screen not ten inches from my head.
I had all of my belongings on the narrow bunk with me, not to mention the food and drinks. Mike slept with his huge pack the first night and only after someone had departed and left a large space in the luggage rack the next day did he remove the pack from his sleeping area. Once, I woke to see Mike’s backside smashed against the tiny metal rail at the edge of his bunk - the rail that is supposed to keep one from rolling off the bunk altogether and onto the floor twelve feet below. This rail is only for show, if you ask me and no one should trust it to keep them from falling to the ground below. I woke Mike and told him not to rely so heavily on the rail. About four hours later, he was right in the same position and this time he didn’t respond to my nudges and cautions.
Speaking of cautions, one I kept hearing was about the toilets. I kept being told that they would “back up” before the trip was even halfway through. Now, I’m not sure how much you know about trains, but usually the toilet has direct plumbing to the tracks flying along below you. So, “backing up” isn’t usually a concern. What IS a concern is the lack of running water. Let’s just say it’s a darn good thing that the windows are all the way open in there. For the most part, the toilet experience was satisfactory, made more so by the various Wet Wipes and moist towelettes Mike had brought along for just such occasions. But, I did have an unfortunate experience where running water used by the previous occupant would have been highly appreciated by my gag reflex. My eyes water now, just thinking about it.
At each of our stops, passengers were given much more time to depart the train than when I rode to Xi’an. And yet, the departing passengers acted as though they had five seconds and as if there were a prize for the first person from each car as soon as the doors were opened. Of course, the only prize was one less second standing in the smoke-filled hallway, but apparently that’s prize enough to push women and children aside and wave luggage and lit cigarettes blindly in order to clear a path. And it was the same when we boarded the train. First of all, Wuchang’s train station is going through a massive renovation and Mike and I had to walk what seemed a mile to get to the waiting train. We arrived at the station with a little less than thirty minutes to spare and yet, once we were let through the gates, it was a mad dash. I don’t know when Mike made mention of that most ridiculous of shows, “The Amazing Race” but I felt as if there should have been a camera at our heels as we made our way to the train to Kunming. We walked along an open-air corridor parallel to the train tracks for a few minutes, with people flying past us on both sides and managing to repeatedly knock us about in our over-loaded states. Then, we walked up some stairs and over some tracks. The floor was a thin, light, cheap metal and bounced with the running of passengers scurrying to get SOMEWHERE that Mike and I didn’t know about. Only later did I realize that these marathon runners were without seats and had to race to the train for first come-first sit seats in the bed-less cars.
We went down some stairs and then down some more stairs to go under the tracks this time. As we reached the flight of stairs to the track where our train awaited, we hit a bottleneck and the pushing and shoving began. People careened into our packs and heaved us forward, as if they could whisk away the pesky person-shaped vapor in front of them and make a path up and to the train. Only they found that we weren’t person-shaped vapor but actual people and so they tsk-tsked and sighed and mumbled and groaned as if THIS behavior would somehow get us out of the way. Something moves deep down inside of me during cow-herding of this kind and I always have to fight the urge to lie down on the ground and act like an opossum. Fight I did and Mike and I managed to get up the stairs, maybe even with the help of the surging occurring behind us. We found our car, handed in our tickets, were given metal “keys” and quickly found our bunks.
Something about messy toilets, no showers, non-perishable food and having to boil your drinking water (in this case it was boiled for us and came out of a questionable vat with a dirty looking spigot in a closet on the other side of the toilet) makes me think of summer camp. Of course, at summer camp, boys and girls didn’t bunk together and there weren’t babies or old men in the bunks next to mine. Also, there weren’t loudspeakers with women shouting out Chinese destinations, but you know, the GENERAL feel was there.
Experiences like these always make me feel grownup even if the behavior reminds me of being a child. These are the kinds of contradictions I live for and maybe this is the reason why I made Mike take a thirty-hr train ride. In any event, we survived and arrived. He didn’t lose the metal “keys” that I entrusted him with even though the fell out of his pockets numerous times. We didn’t get belligerent; we only brought enough alcohol along to render us sleepy, and therefore we took some lengthy naps during the middle of the 5th. We also didn’t starve. In fact, the food I brought lasted us two thirds of the trip.
The train ended its own journey in Kunming on the 6th of February, 30 hours after it’s departure from Wuchang train station in Wuhan, Hubei Province. We managed to get off with all of our belongings and took an easy cab ride to the Camellia hotel. I’m not sure about Mike, but I’d do it all over again, only this time, I’d bring less food and more Absolut.
