The train to Xi'an
At around 7:40am, a woman started speaking in harsh Chinese over a scratchy intercom. Train attendees filed out of a side waiting room and along the entryway to the platform. The horde in the waiting room swelled up and out of their seats and planted themselves in front of one turnstile. I stood where I was and saw people leaping over chairs to get to the main turnstile. Then, a woman with a bullhorn came out and pointed to the turnstile right next to mine and people started leaping over chairs again. If I had been in any shape to make a run for it, I would have been one of the first on the train. As it was, I thought, whatever, I have a bunk, I’ll wait my turn. I hoisted my pack, placed a smaller bag on each shoulder and cursed myself for not preparing a little traveling food bag.
In fact, I had gone shopping with Monica and her Colombian at 5:30am when the rich boys’ refrigerator turned up empty of everything, especially potable water. I had bought all kinds of goodies and they were resting on the boys’ coffee table when I left because the Colombian had refused to let me pay for everything and also because he had eaten some of the potato chips so I thought he didn’t understand why I bought the food in the first place. One thing I forgot to mention – the Colombian made his fortune selling latex bags full of breast-tissue simulating gel to Colombian women wanting to have bigger breasts. The bags are made in China – at a reduced price for him, of course, allowing him to make much more money. When asked how he felt about fake breasts, he said, personally, he found them disgusting, but if women in Colombia were willing to pay so much money for them, he might as well be on the receiving end. This night, by the way, was one of those nights where I’m so proud that I’m learning the lesson of restraint. I don’t even know where to start with the Colombian, but I managed to hold my tongue for Monica’s sake, as well as my own. Why waste time on someone whose point of view is so mired in cynicism? As I’m learning every day, you can’t save or change the world and you certainly can’t ask the world to think like you.
I was standing in line with all of my stuff, hoping someone wasn’t trying to steal my underwear or toiletries from out of the front of my pack. Two men in front of me turned to stare and I closed my eyes and pressed in as the crowd moved forward. Then, one of the men tapped me and asked me where I was going. I told him. He gave me a big grin and slapped my arm (gently, of course) and asked if I was going alone. Again, yes, and he nodded approvingly as if impressed. He asked my nationality and then nudged people to his left and right to tell them the foreigner with all the luggage on top of her was going to Xi’an and was from America! He wished me well and then lithely snaked his way through three waiting passengers and moved on ahead to his own car. I got through the turnstile and made my way downstairs. I had plenty of time. I found myself at car number 4 and walked to car number 17. The bags were killing my shoulders and I was sweating buckets. Good, I thought, getting rid of the toxins from the night before. I found car 17, and with shaking legs made it up the steep, narrow grated stairs to enter the car. What I saw before me I will never forget.
I had purchased a ticket on a hard sleeper. A hard sleeper car is divided up into 11 berths with 6 bunks in each berth. Nothing is contained. The berths are all open and the bunks face out into the very narrow walkway along the left side of the car. On this side, are large windows with teeny tiny fold-down seats for maybe twenty people. The noise was overwhelming and there were people everywhere. And everyone stared. Not in surprise or shock, but more in a mild interest rising out of a general long-trip malaise: “Hm, this is new.” I knocked past people left and right and they commented on all of the crap I had with me, I’m sure. When I made it to my berth, there were six women and children huddled on the two lowest bunks already munching on boiled peanuts, cold chicken, milk boxes and steamed dumplings. It looked like this family had been camped out for weeks. I felt like they’d been waiting days for me to hurry up and get on the damn train to Xi’an.
Not being able to read my train ticket, I asked which bunk I was in and one woman pointed to the sky. I looked up to the tall ceiling to see a narrow bunk high up, with a thin, hollow aluminum rail to hold the passenger in from falling to the diners below. I dropped my pack in a heap on the ground and hoisted the two smaller bags up to the top bunk. Then, where to put that damn rucksack? It didn’t fit anywhere and finally two nice men moved three bags to make room for it up in the luggage rack right in front of my bunk. It took all three of us to lift it up and into it’s home for the next 20 hours. I had the greatest urge to open a window and throw the thing out onto the tracks and be done with it. Why do humans collect so much STUFF?!?! I don’t even know what’s in that bag as I’ve been living out of the smaller one since I got to Xi’an. The bigger one just sits in the locker waiting to be schlepped to Wuhan.
Once my luggage was taken care of I felt too ill and tired and shy to try and talk with my neighbors so I climbed wearily to the top bunk, and passed out, shoes and all, with a fluorescent light in my eyes and an air conditioning duct pounding cold air onto my abdomen. I awoke hazily when the train lurched to a start and then fell back asleep. At 11:30am, I woke up again and went to the restroom. I was feeling better, but still lusted for rest. After using the little moving restroom, I stood by the door to watch the Chinese countryside pass quickly before my eyes. It was a dream. A beautiful dream. One of my very favorite reasons for taking the train anywhere is being able to sit and watch the country change right in front of your eyes. I’ve watched mountains turn to oceans and cities turn to fields with farmers in so many countries and I don’t want China to be an exception. As it was, I couldn’t see out either window from my top bunk, though sleeping wasn’t helping me see the world move much either.
We were passing fruit orchards and under the trees, old men and women could be seen with the whitest, littlest goats ever. Every 100 yards or so, another flock would be prancing about with a wise-looking herder sitting under a tree or in the shade of a roadside hut. At one point, I saw a man sitting with five or six goats all around him and it looked like he was talking to them. It was sweet and it filled my heart with warmth. I stretched and climbed back up the small steps to my top bunk on the world, more and more like a pro. I read for a bit, dozed for a bit, read for a bit, and dozed for a bit. The constant chatter below me was wonderful. It fed my dreams. Sometimes, I lay there listening to the women and the two little girls and not knowing what they were saying, made up my own conversations. Then, the younger girl started to cry. I looked down to see one of the young mothers lying on the middle bunk opposite mine. The little girl was nestled into her and was weeping. The mother had tissue and would wipe away tears and strands of hair every once and a while. I took it that the little girl was crying because she had got her feelings hurt. The mother and the woman below me were gently laughing at the little girl’s prolonged tears. This only made it worse and fresh sobs appeared. I enjoyed being allowed to see this intimacy. I realized it is my first time to see the love and interactions of family in China. I miss it. And it felt good. I fell asleep again. When I woke up the next time, two little heads were poking up and around the bottom of my bunk. When I’d make eye contact with one, she’d disappear to be replaced by the other. We played this game for a short while. I fell asleep again.
The next time I woke, my stomach was growling and it was 5pm. The smell of food didn’t arouse hunger though, and I knew that what I wanted most was water. I got down off of the bunk and went in search of a meal car. I went to car 18 and a blanket blocked off half the car. Not wanting to search further and not knowing enough Chinese to ask why the blanket was there, I turned around. Walking through my own car had become easy. I felt like I knew my neighbors but entering other cars rendered me shy again. Looking back, I think it was because the scene was so intimate. It was like accidentally walking through some really narrow back yards at mealtime or bedtime. I made it half way through car 16 when I turned back again. I was on my way up to my bunk when a kind be-wrinkled woman patted the bottom bunk she was sitting on and said, “a moment, a moment”. I sat down beside her, thanked her, and we struck up a basic conversation. She asked where I was from, How old I was, told me the top bunk was too hard and that I could sit with her at any time, asked if I was traveling alone, was surprised to find that I was (I think the age question came after this one…). Then, I asked where she was going, and she said somewhere that wasn’t Xi’an. This should have been my first clue to things to come, but I was overwhelmed and thirsty at the time.
While we spoke, the little girl who had been crying woke from a nap with her mother and dropped a hand down in front of my face. I tickled it, and she giggled and removed the hand. I couldn’t tell if the old woman was with the younger women with the girls. Sometimes she seemed to know them well, and sometimes the tone of their conversation with each other made me think they were strangers. I suppose the friendliness is customary, but still, it was hard to tell.
The two mothers came down from the middle bunks and were soon followed by the girls. The older girl appeared older once I saw her body connected to her head. She was maybe 12 or 13. The little girl was 6 or 7. The mothers were friendly enough, but also seemed a little uncomfortable. The language barrier makes all interactions awkward. Dead silence is hard enough when you can try and think of things to say, but when you don’t know the other person’s language it can be excruciating. To take the pressure off of the one mother who seemed to want to make me feel at home, I started to stare out the window. From my seat on the low bunk, I realized that they had it no better than me. The window was too high and all I could see was the whir of passing three branches. The sun was beginning to set, though, and I fell into my own reverie watching the orange light on the green leaves.
The mother found something we could talk about. She asked if I had any food. She noticed I hadn’t eaten since we’d been on the train. I told her I wasn’t hungry, partly because I wasn’t and partly because I didn’t want them to go out of their way to feed me. She said in Chinese to the old woman that, most likely, I didn’t like Chinese food. I felt I might have insulted her. But, I didn’t know what to do. I guess I need to learn to accept offers graciously – I just didn’t want them to pay for my lack of planning. I asked if I could buy water at the next stop and although she didn’t understand she got the gist and said maybe. When we did stop next, I went to the open door to find that there were no vendors alongside the train because it was a quite small town we were stopping at. That’s when the mother showed me the hot water basin. I filled my water bottle with hot water and though I couldn’t drink it, it was a nice warmer for my air-conditioner-numbed body. I climbed back up to the top bunk, not wanting to impose on the little family scene below me anymore and figured the best way to stave off hunger and thirst is sleep. So I slept.
Through the night, strange sounds would keep me half awake. At one point, I think the younger girl was playing with a squeaky toy but it was making the most repetitive, blaring, NOT fun sounds. Right at the point when I was going to look down to see what she was doing, the sound stopped. Also, I heard more talking and it was incorporated into my dreams. At midnight I awoke to the darkness of the car. The lights were off. I slept some more.
When I purchased the ticket, I asked the woman the approximate arrival into Xi’an and she told me 5:22am. At 4am I awoke and started thinking about getting ready but the lights were still off. At 4:45am, the lights came on and a woman pulled on my comforter and said, “Kuai dao le”. I thought long and hard about this but couldn’t remember what it meant or even if I’d ever learned what it meant. No one was preparing to leave the train and the lights went back off so I laid there in the dark trying to remember “Kuai dao le”. Then the train stopped. No lights went on. No one below me moved an inch. People were still snoring. I sat up. I looked to try and see outside. Nothing. I felt that I should be doing something, but what? Then, I heard it. Someone asked if we were at Xi’an. When I heard, “Dui” – correct – I went into panic mode. My adrenaline kicked in. I put my shoes on and started throwing my bags from the top bunk down to the ground of the walkway. A man looked up at me as if I were crazy and I said, “Xi’an, right?” and he said “Dui”. My body was shaking. The adrenaline was too much and I was still asleep. I started yanking on my pack and it was stuck. The man was trying to help me and we managed to get it down but it came crashing and people were groaning for us to be quiet. He helped me get the pack on my back, my body shaking like a leaf in a tornado, and then I grabbed the other two bags and ran along the narrow passage, bumping feet as I ran.
I came to the door just as the whistle sounded for the train to start again. An old woman was standing at the top of the stairs, her body also shaking, and she looked like she wasn’t going to budge. I hollered, “Wo ye, Wo ye” – Me too! Me too! And three girls and a guard started carrying the woman against her will off of the train. They set her on her feet again and I came crashing down the stairs behind them. The whistle blew again, the doors pulled shut and the train started moving. I was in Xi’an.
I set all of my belongings down on the stairs in front of me and sat myself down. I took deep breaths and calmed the shaking. I put all of my luggage on again and walked to the exit. I could see the city wall looming up on the other side of the train station and there were lights everywhere. Xi’an at 5:22am in the morning was very beautiful, and already, very hot.
