36 Hours in Cattle Class

[written on 1 july 2009]

we're alive and kicking though in need of rest after hectic travel over the past few days.

on sunday night, we left xian which is in the shaanxi province (where the famous terracotta warriors are) for the westernmost and largest province in china, namely xinjiang. we are now in the capital city of xinjiang which is urumqi (incidentally this is a mongolian word and i will have to save the historical background for another time!).

we made the mistake of booking train tix only the day before our departure, not knowing that trains from xian to urumqi contain 20 large carriages and carry up to 3000 people... train tix also book out very early. consequently, all the soft sleeper and hard sleeper train carriages were sold out! even the soft seater carriages were sold out. the queues at the train station to purchase tix are ridiculously long and packed out plus pickpockets and black market ticket vendors are rife so once we got to the counter, we had to make the quick decision go with the only option available - the HARD SEATER tickets. they were absurdly cheap at 135 yuan which is $AUD25 but the moment the tix were purchased, fear gripped my hard. i'd already been on the hard sleepers in india and in china from haikou to guangzhou and already i got so tense with watching my stuff, having to chain our bags to the beds and sleeping while strangers are sleeping above, below and across from me. sometimes people talk to you, sometimes you get rough people and you try to speak in the same language back but there is always mistrust. it's pretty hard work. so being in a HARD SEATER for the longest train journey of my life so far - 36 WHOPPING HOURS - really scared me. i couldn't even really enjoy my visit to the Xian terracotta warriors later that same day because i kept thinking of what would be ahead of me the following night!

the next morning i was still thinking about it. i was trying very hard not to whinge to poor Kenneth anymore because he already said "Sorry" to me when he saw how my face fell when he agreed to purchase the tix from the woman behind the counter. i had to muster Godly strength to shop for food for the journey at the supermarket and continue preparing spiritually, emotionally, mentally.

so the time drew near. we arrived at Xian train station to catch our 9:30pm train. true enough, the station was disgustingly packed, masses upon masses of people waiting for various trains.
at boarding time, we had to walk past all the sleeper carriages and the restaurant carriage (which us 'lower class' hard seaters don't have access to). i refused to look on with envy at those carriages and kept walking and walking.... our carriage was the second last carriage. i got on... the seats actually had backs which was better than i'd expected. i'd expected a plastic bench so it is great when you have low expectations and they are pleasantly surpassed! i was a bit grouchy that first night on the train... it is squashed, it was so hot - there is no air conditioning and sometimes the little fans get switched off (i never managed to find out why...), you are not allowed to open windows (again we could not get an answer as to why), people smoke (arrrgh!), one really annoying guy kept pushing his bum into me because he wanted me to move over so he can sit as he only had a standing ticket (yes, some people have to STAND for 36 hours .... !!!), people were rough and the whole night, you cannot sleep because people constantly keep getting on and off at the village/provincial train stations and the luggage keeps getting shoved up above you or taken down. you are constantly on edge that a piece of luggage will fall on your head. the officials working on the train bellow in loud voices if they find luggage blocking the aisle, people argue, people are rough, one time when i managed to doze off i was startled when i felt rough hands sliding up and down both my arms! i opened my eyes to find a man leaning over me mumbling something... i really wanted to scream but my voice got frozen in my throat. he the shoved a piece of paper under my nose and i kept telling him i can't read chinese. i desperately looked at the guy next ti me who could speak some english and he told that guy to go away. i was quite shaken for some time. kenneth and i couldn't even get seats next to each other - we were separated by an aisle. later, after checking with the guy next to me.... i found out that that guy was asking for money and the paper said that a curse would come upon me if money is not handed over. another really annoying thing is that the officials come around and sweep and mop under your seat, making you lift up your legs every couple of hours. even if you have your eyes closed they bellow at you to wake up.... i really felt like a head of cattle.

now... here is the good bit as it wasn't all bad. the other 8 people sitting in our row and across from Kenneth and myself respectively were nice people and in the end, won our trust. they were not rough like the others on the train and they kept telling me to watch my stuff. when an officer would yell something at me, the guy i sat next to would speak on my behalf and tell him to stop yelling am me b/c i am a foreigner. these people were so kind to kenneth and myself. the guy i sat next to was only 20 years old and he is from a small village near xian. out of the little he had, he was quick to offer me a bottle of lemon tea within an hour of departure. throughout the entire train journey, he and his friend shared all their food with me and he even popped out to buy a fruit i have never seen or tasted (which is his favourite fruit in xinjiang) so i can try it. our whole row ended up "partying" and sharing food with each other, chatting and singing songs which really helped kill the time.

after the first night of terror (i was sooooooooo happy when daylight arrived at 5:30am), i was in more cheerful spirits and the second day and second night were not so scary. i think i became more accustomed to lack of personal space and there were also less standers in the carriage. i got used to passive smoking too. it was a miracle but both kenneth and i survived and i now appreciate what the poor people have to go through in order to travel. it is a world away from the soft sleeper carriage that even i found luxurious (we took this type of ticket from beijing to xian and that was only 9 hours). there were even toddlers in our carriage...and they were happily playing away the whole time. some others carrying babies had to stand the whole 36 hours... naturally there were times when they sank to a sitting position on the carriage floor until they were yelled at to get up. some people were sitting in front of the toilet and up on the sink area. it was nuts.

we FINALLY arrived in Urumqi... dazed after not sleeping for 2 days and swollen (i have now learnt that the body retains water when you are not moving for 36 hours... the numbness turns to pain after a while but the good thing is that you go to the toilet less and thus save yourself numerous messy visits to the train loo) but safe nevertheless.

i realise now that the jeep ride we hitched in Mongolia which spanned 10 hours over pot holed road was worse as it was bone jarring and my head kept hitting the roof. it was quite hellish having to sit with one bun propped up and having to prop my other bun up with a water bottle to make it kinda even. it felt safer because there weren't tonnes of people around like the train but it was more uncomfortable.

would i ever ride a hard seater again? um ... unlikely ...!

now that we're in urumqi, it is a bizarre but fascinating city. there is growing tension here between the han chinese and the muslim ugyhurs which comprise 40% of the population of xinjiang province. another strange thing about this city is that it runs on 2 time zones. families simply pick which one they prefer, namely 'beijing time' which follows the rest of china like the government has decreed or 'urumqi time' which is 2 hours behind! to balance out these 2 time zones, shops tend to open at 10am beijing time (which is 8am urumqi time), take a 2-3 hour lunch break and then close in the evening at 6pm beijing time. so if you are ever in urumqi and need to make an appoitment to meet someone, make sure you specify if you're speaking in terms of beijing time or urumqi time! the locals all do this.