When Roughing It Is No Longer a "Cool" Thing To Do....

"Excuse me, do you have any hard sleeper tickets going to Changsha tonight?"
"No tickets!"
"Um, no tickets at all? Soft seat?"
"No tickets!"
"hard seat? How about ZhuZhou? We can go to ZhuZhou."
"No tickets, tomorrow night 11:53 next train, 100 kuai a ticket, standing room only."
"Ok, we will take three of those." shit. This was the beginning of the longest and most stimulating travel experiences of my life.

Amy, Rick and I had taken the bus from the border of Vietnam to the city of Nanning, attempting to make our way back to Hunan from Vietnam without having to buy a plane ticket. The Vietnamese bus was surprisingly nice and customs were amazingly easy, minus all the bells and whistles that told you were entering back in the People's Republic of China. The Vietnam side merely had a one room building with a man to check your passport, after which you took a 2 minute walk down a small road at which point you had crossed the border. The China side however had a large mental hospital like stone structure that awkwardly stuck out of the grassy hillside with big brass letters letters welcoming you home. The very first thing awaiting you on the Chinese side of the border, before you even handed in your health form, or go through immigration was a large and fully stocked cigarette and alcohol shop. All the brands sported shiny red and gold labels and about every third person who crossed over onto the China side stopped at this shop to stock up before attempting to do anything else.

After eight hours on the bus, we arrived in Nanning, the capital of Gaunxi province. As we made our way to the train station we began to notice that it didn't look like there were any people actually getting on the trains. There were tents set up outside the run down train station and people sleeping everywhere. Children were sleep on top of their parents on benches and men squatted in huddles holding their head in their hands. We made our way into the station where the "lines" extended out from every window opening, but often in threes, four or whatever configuration would squeeze you to the front fastest. We joined what we thought to be the "foreigners line," which really had zero significance especially during peak Chinese New Year travel season. We had to put the foreigner blinders on for the moment, and forget about the hundreds of people trying to elbow and shove their way to the front all while starring at us. I got in line and prepared myself to bark and throw punches with the best of the grizzly country bumpkins who were planning to push aside someone who they figured was unarmed in the games of groveling and sneering. I managed to hold my own, left Rick and Amy and weaseled through(backpack and all) to the ticket window. I was bracing myself against the ticket counter in the fear that if I relaxed my stance I would go flying face first into the ticket lady's window with the burden of 100 Chinese men coming down on top of me. The conversation was short, conducted in a yell, and all while two other transactions were going on from either side and under my armpit. So we ended up with standing room tickets for a night train that would leave in about twenty eight hours.

We ended up in the same frustrating situtaion that 500 million Chinese people found themselves in that same week, as the entire country started work again on the same day and had essentially one way to return home, the train. So we were able to make ourselves busy in Nanning for twenty eight hours, with frequent trips to the McDonalds for a "clean" bathroom with toilet paper, failed attempts trying to waste time at the smokey internet bars, and the repeated pattern of roaming and napping.

We arrived back at the train station a good hour before our train was scheduled to leave. That didn't seem to matter much though, as we entered the waiting room and became one of the tired cranky masses of people carrying half their body weight in "luggage" in the form of buckets, sacs, baskets, crates and boxes. We stood at the very back of the waitinng room and couldn't even see across to the other side that was supposed to open up and flood onto the platform in a matter of minutes. People stood up with their tickets in hand and everyone began to push and fidget whenever one of the station workers got on their bull horn and tried to scream orders. We knew at this point that we weren't in a favorable position considering we didn't have seats and we were now standing in the back of the waiting area with hundreds of people ahead of us, a half an hour before boarding.

A woman in a station worker's uniform marched up to me and tapped me on the shoulder gesturing that we follow her to another area. At that time they were allowing families with small children, and elderly people to board but we hadn't realized that naive foreigners qualified for this upgrade as well. We had five minutes to go until the gates would be let open and the fastest most aggressive Chinese people would have a chance for an open seat. It turned out that our head-start of five minutes wasn't actually going to help three foreigners who had never experienced the brutal New Year's train race and, that it was merely a gesture made by the station workers before throwing us to the wolves.

We looked at our tickets and couldn't figure out our car number, in fact there was no car number it just merely said "jia yi." Our tickets were assigned for a car that didn't even have a number but was labeled the "add one" car, that had been attatched as the spill over car due to the enormous number of passengers. We ran around trying to figure out where in the order of 1-16 our "jia yi" car had been added onto the rest of the train. I finally found it but then realized that in all the running and frantic screaming with conductors we had lost Rick. Amy and I decided that I would get onto the train and try to fight for some amount of space, while she went to go retrieve Rick.

I made my way onto the car and the ripe smell of over heated bodies was suddenly right in my face. The temperature was a good twenty degrees warmer in the car than it was outside, the windows were completely fogged and people all around me were pushed up against one another, dripping. The floors were sticky and already covered with spit, as people were getting out their frustrations and marking their territory. At this point I had a ticket that merely said "wu zuo" or no seat, so I wasn't really heading in any particular direction, but just being pushed towards the center of the car. There were people already breaking out into screaming matches,oversized sacs being passed overhead, people climbing over seats, and luggage falling from racks onto those sitting, squatting, and standing below. I was trying to figure out where to go or if I even had a choice in the matter when I got pushed out of the aisle by a man attempting to run through the car with a bucket held up over his head screaming "boiling water." Turns out the bucket was merely filled newspapers, fruit and cigarettes. You can come to guarantee that for every person traveling on a train in China, they carry with them about five days supply of food, water, instant noodles, cigarettes and other junk that they couldn't possibly consume in the given amount of time. I tried to resume my position in the aisle as a man stood on the seat next to me, trying to open his luggage that was filled entirely with fruit, because I'm sure it's impossible to buy apples and pears in the town that he's heading to.

Since we were the first stop on the line starting in Nanning and ending up in Shanghai, not all the reserved seats were taken but this didn't mean that there weren't already masses of people with standing tickets trying to fight for those seats until they were occupied a few stops later. There wasn't anyone checking tickets as that would have been a mess too large for any train personel, not to mention a huge communication problem. This train was going clear across China from the border of Vietnam to the far east coast of Shanghai and one of the first things that I noticed when i stepped on the train was that no one spoke the same Chinese. People were now left up to their own devices to try and figure out how to lie, push, fight, or guilt their fellow passengers into getting a space to rest on the train.

I watched as peasants squatted on the seats trying to catch their breath and stake claim on one of the seats for their family of four. I thought about doing the same but there were absolutely no seats available in the entire car, and at this point the standing room was closing in on me too. I was shoved a little further forward and saw a man pretending to be asleep on the window, and sitting next to him was a large plastic sac taking up the entire seat. I ask him "you ren ma?" wondering does this seat have a person? He just grunted and in one motion shoved his sac on the floor and said "mei you," no people. The woman across from us who I was now rubbing knees with thought this was pretty amusing since the man was certain that his trick of sleeping on the window with a big sac next to him would really save him from being smothered by another desperate passenger. The man continued to sigh and squirm, trying to demonstrate his discontent with the new situation, and finally turned to me and exclaimed "this seat is actually my friends, this is not yours and your lucky I am letting you sit here, but I will sell it to you." I laughed and just ignored him playing the useful foreigner confusion card, it worked and he just mumbled something to himself and continued to try and sleep against the window.

The train was starting to pull away from the station and I had managed to grab one seat for the three of us and Rick and Amy were still no where to be found. The loudspeaker came on and they started to rattle off the list of stops and their estimated times of arrival. There was no way that I was going to be able to hear what time we got in to Zhuzhou but I was pretty certain it was about twelve hours from now. The lady across from me was a large woman who wouldn't stop squirming and sighing and I think she was particularly annoyed by the fact that my knees were now in her lap, considering I had a standing room ticket. I was trying to be polite and make the experience a little tense than it currently was so I asked her where she was getting off. "Zhuzhou," she growled back, "Really, me too" I said. "How long is it until we arrive in Zhuzhou, twelve, thirteen hours?" "Twenty four hours." She replied with the tiniest glimpse of a grin on her face. She knew that I had no idea what I had just gotten myself into.

Nearly an hour had passed and Rick and Amy still hadn't made their way to the "jia yi" car. I was dreading having to tell them the news that we wouldn't arrive until nearly midnight the next day. I was still sweating and didn't even make an effort to try and entertain myself with a book or music, because the idea of moving and disrupting the human jigsaw puzzle that surrounded me keep me sitting still and staring straight ahead. Finally, after an hour of waiting, I saw Rick at the back of the car with his arms overhead trying to swim through the mass of people all standing as tall as his armpit and filling up every inch of the door way and aisle. I stood on my seat and called out to him "Hey, over here" and was then able to get a good look and see that Amy was trailing right behind using Rick as the massive foreign aisle parter. Not only did I have the whole car's attention by jumping on my seat and yelling jibber jabber, but as Rick and Amy made their way down the aisle they were the victims of every scoff, cuss word, shove and patronizing stare.

"This is all I was able to get.....sorry," was the first thing that came out of my mouth when they looked around and realized that I had one seat to share amongst the three of us with people sleeping at our feet and sitting on top of the seat back. There was nothing we could do and luckily they were still under the impression that our trip was a mere twelve hours and not twenty four. We let the chaos we had just caused settle for a bit and tried to make friendly gestures to the people around us who's space we were now invading, including the cranky woman whom I was knocking knees with, the man next to me pretending to sleep, and the various people squatting in the aisle with their head in their hands. I knew at this point I had to tell them what we were in for, "the train ride to Zhuzhou is twenty four hours.....of this."

We all agreed that it was time to admit that sometimes roughing it is just not cool anymore and that if there was something we could do to upgrade our situation, we would do it. At this point Amy and I were sharing ten inches of seat with our backpacks in between our knees while Rick stood and luckily was able to brace himself with the overhead luggage rack, since his feet were lodged somewhere not exactly in line with his body. Everywhere we looked there were the faces of people who were completely miserable. They had all enjoyed the yearly tradition of returning to their home villages to see their parents, siblings, grandparents, friends and in many cases their own spouses and children whom they were only able to visit during the New Years holiday. This was the price the average Chinese peasant had to pay once a year in order to merely travel home to see their loved ones. For most Chinese people, flights are too few and extremely expensive and most roads aren't built to handle charter buses traveling to every small village, so at this time of year the vast majority of Chinese people are forced to endure the conditions of unbearable and unsafe trains.

I had to stand up every hour or so to try and rearrange my legs that had been shoved in all kinds of strange directions by the people occupying the floor below me, also not to mention the guy who was sitting on the top of my seat back and managed to slide down every now and then and rest his butt on my head. Rick was still standing some four hours later and didn't seem to be fading as much as I thought he would be. Standing on top of my backpack actually seemed to be the best idea because this way you were able to elevate yourself above everyone else and actually get some oxygen. From here I got a good view of the entire car and the three hundred plus people who occupied it. There were women sleeping in the aisle with their shirts open and babies half asleep and half nursing, while other families slept three to a seat with the father first, then the mother on his lap and a young child curled up in her arms. At that point all people could do was sleep, and it seemed that even with all the lights on at 3:00am due to the threat of theft, Chinese people had an amazing ability to adapt and sleep wherever they needed to. Some children hadn't experienced this arduous experience before and slept naked in their parents arms, while they squirmed from the oppressive heat.

Every generation was represented on this train from the new born babies who were being coveted by the guard of their young parents, college students returning to school, middle aged men possibly traveling alone back to their jobs and elderly who were forced to sit on the ground. At the back of the car near the bathroom was a crowd of young men who decided that the best way to avoid the heat and gain some personal space was to take off their shirts and sit on top of the seat backs. Amy commented that it was just their own version of MTV's Spring break China 2K7. They carried on for hours smoking, laughing and playing cards much to the annoyance of everyone else on the train. Smoking was one of the most unbearable things about the train. Not only was the train unsafe in countless other ways considering you had no way to get off or get to a bathroom if ever there were an emergency but nearly every man at some point decided to light up a cigarette and pollute the 2 inches of air space each person had to themselves. We finally asked the man across the aisle from us (who was about two feet away) to not smoke, and he simply waited until we turned our backs and enjoyed his one moment of pleasure.

Three hours in, we decided to try and leave this car and ask a conductor if we could upgrade our tickets to a hard sleeper. It was known to happen in China that if you waited long enough people would get off and you could pay a disproportionate price to upgrade your ticket to a sleeper car. The hard part was finding anyone official on the train amidst the piles of people we had to crawl over. Amy and I decided that we would go and leave Rick with our bags. I led the way as my white face tends to scare most Chinese people into moving aside if they have an inch to spare. When you try to make your way from one car to another on a China train you spend most of your time either waking people up so you don't step on them or being pushed through the crowd by people swearing at you hoping they can shove you through as quickly as possible. At some points I had to turn around to Amy and tell her "I really can't move anymore, there is no where to go!" Amy's response tends to usually be "just push!!" That's what you have to end of doing and hope that these poor people who have been standing for six hours aren't hurt in any way by your elbows digging in to their stomachs, or your feet crunching their toes. The worst point in trying to get through a crowded train in China is when you have to pass through a series of mothers holding babies and you don't have the heart to push through anymore but then someone comes from behind and does it for you.

Amy and I thought that if we made it to the dinning car there was sure to be a whole group of male conductors being waited on while they laughed and enjoyed their beers and cigarettes. We had about three more cars to go and then a female train worker with a beer, peanut and cigarette cart decided to try and make her way through the aisle. This site totally amazed me it was like trying to get a a toy car out of a balloon. The woman pushing the cart filled with unnecessary items, just yelled to people to help lift up her cart over the passengers asleep on the floor. Of course she had some customers who were willing to hold up any flow of traffic and purchase cartons of cigarettes and bottles of warm beer( which are forbidden on the train anyway.)

We managed to reach the dining car which was only about five cars ahead of us, a good forty five minutes later. The dining car was completely empty except for a dozen men in pristine uniforms enjoying their late night cocktail hour in between stations. They all turned around when we entered the food car, knowing full well that passengers were not allowed to occupy this area unless it was meal time and they were willing to purchase overpriced food. They stared and carried on with the usual comments upon seeing a foreigner on a train in the middle of China "wow, foreigner, where are they going?" With desperation and a little bit of authority in my voice I proceeded to ask them if we could upgrade our tickets. Before my question was even addressed they had to gawk and carrying on about how a foreigner could speak even the slightest bit of Chinese and rattle off all the standard questions, "How do you know how to speak Chinese? Where are you from? What are you doing in China? How much do you get paid a month? Why do you except such little pay?" After the Chinese inquisition was over we got back to the original question and the answer was, "No, not until we get to Guilin, that's at 8:30am." It was now 3am and we were crushed.

So, we put our names on a list and hoped that come 8:30am they would still remember us and we would have three hard bed to crash on for the entire next day. We gathered our strength as we were promptly kicked out of the dining car and managed to endure another forty five minute crawl back to our "jia-yi" car. This time on the way back the people in the aisle weren't so thrilled about seeing us return and waking up again with a foot in their lap or an elbow to their ribs. One old man wasn't too pleased when I accidently knicked his 3 foot bong that he was crouched over and enjoying as he leaned against the bathroom door. As I made it through to our car I was bombarded by a group of men who were particularly not pleased to see me and in their dialect started yelling "Wai guo nu ren, Tai Da Le!!" This group of men were trying to inform me that "Foreign women were just too big!" I turned around and told them "xie xie," thank you, and proceeded to push them out of the way as they marinated in the notion that their frustrations were received loud and clear.

We got back to Rick and told him that we had another five hours until we could possibly upgrade our tickets. The next five hours was a delirious period of rotating between the one seat we had, sitting on the floor, standing and leaning against each other. I was able to sleep for about forty five minutes with my head on my knees and actually missed seeing the sun come up. Amy and I got the most sleep, as we were small enough to try and share the seat or take up a little bit of space on the floor. Rick however, stood for nearly eight hours- he wasn't so sane by the time 8am rolled around and we were ready to venture to the front of the train to hopefully upgrade our tickets.

We finally did make it to the sleeper car with our new tickets in hand and were able to sleep off the entire next day. The sad thing was having to witness the masses of people who were left to sit on the floor for yet another twelve plus hours because they didn't have the money or authority to try and get a better ticket. The difference between the standing room car and the sleeper cars was like going from a third world country to an amtrack train on the New England line. The sleeper car was filled with families who were lounging on their beds with magazines and take out trays of freshly cooked food from the dining cars. There were children playing with hand held video games and men conducting business on their cellphones and blackberries. We all knew what we had seen in the hours past was wrong and unfair in so many ways and because we too had felt the same discomfort of the passenger's who were treated like animals it made it that much harder to take this one tiny hard bed bunk bed for granted. At the same time we were exhausted and without much hesitation passed out on our three bunks one on top of another for the remainder of the trip.

We arrived in Rick's town 14 hours later and bolted off the train, never before being so excited to see the industrial skyline of Zhuzhou city. As we made our way down the platform the station workers asked to see our tickets, just to make sure that these three foreigners we knew they had just gotten off the train in Zhuzhou, Hunan. We assured the woman that we really did want to get off in Zhuzhou and that it wasn't a mistake. As we walked away from the train I looked back to see the standing room car slowly pass by. The same people sat in the same positions, some of them alseep and some of them starring back at me. I wondered how many of them had another whole day to go until they arrived in their town. I walked away from the train and told myself I would never do that again, never over Chinese New Year. Then I thought of all those people packed into that car and wondered if I only had one chance a year to see my family maybe would I do it all over again?