POSSIBLY MORE ETHNOGRAPHIC DETAIL THAN YOU EVER WANTED ABOUT TAKING THE TRAIN IN CHINA

My passion for China is both intellectual and visceral: I love the challenge of comprehending the country’s history and trying to understanding how its people have dealt with the tragedy and tumult of the past century and the extraordinary changes of the last few decades, but I also adore the chaos of being here: the noise, the crowds, the smells, the tastes. Frequently those very same things drive me insane but my frustrations can be neutralized in a moment by a conversation with a friendly stranger or a glimpse into a tiny shop where mom and pop are bent over steaming bowls of food while a grandparent chases a well-padded toddler.

It feels comfortingly human to see life lived so publicly and I think it appeals to me especially because it is so different from the neutered suburb where I grew up, a place that always rang false to me with all its groomed lawns and drapes drawn against the outside. I’ve always found it creepy to walk streets empty of people.

Even among my China friends I have an unique affection for train travel; it can be tiring, crowded, and profoundly unhygienic yes, but it also allows me to be in the midst of all this human chaos and to chat with and observe regular folks while seeing the country rush by. It was in this spirit that I steeled myself to enjoy/endure a 20-hour trip from Guangzhou to Beijing last week in what is unflatteringly termed a “hard seat." I usually travel by hard bed, a bunk with a firm mattress a few inches thick in a compartment with five others, but due to the October 1^st holiday there were no beds whatsoever to be had on any Beijing-bound trains for days and so I told myself it was time I experienced this most challenging form of train travel.

My $37 ticket bought me a seat which was not, to my enormous relief, hard plastic, but a very firm cushioned seat fixed at a near right angle, forcing its occupant to sit ramrod straight. My carriage sat 120 people in rows of ten that faced each other with a small half table in between. When we boarded in Guangzhou there were a few people without seats who had bought “standing tickets”. A few of them took over seats when they were vacated but the unluckier ones crouched on stools in the entrances or draped themselves over their luggage.

My seatmates were as follows:

A 20 year-old southerner working as a carpenter in Beijing, boyishly handsome with the fluffy Chinese-bieber hair so favored by young men. He spent most of the first few hours of our journey reading a book called something like “Mysteries of Paranormal Phenomenon”, snacking on individually wrapped pickled chicken claws, and playing with his Spongebob Squarepants-charm adorned cell phone.

A 40s-ish small-scale buyer for Beijing retailers wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt that read ONE ON ONE Right Here Right Now IN YOUR FACE. He sat next to me in the aisle seat and was the first to attempt conversation, asking me first if I was Russian and clearly pleased to learn I was in fact American, as “Americans have a lot of money.” The fact that this American was traveling via hard seat and not, say, a chartered helicopter, didn’t seem to alter his perception.

An attractive woman in her late 50s who lived in Beijing with her 30-year daughter but had been visiting her hometown in the south over the holiday. She wore a string of peach-colored pearls against a rhinestone-studded red sweater and red jacket and by some dark magic maintained perfectly coiffed hair and make-up throughout the journey. She also rapidly emerged as the alpha of our row, dominating conversation and commanding the respect of the men who all called her “ayi” (aunty).

A flamboyant 32 year-old dance teacher and occasional DJ who lived with his wife and young son in a district outside Beijing. He held only a standing ticket but managed to take over a seat in our aisle, encouraged by the woman above with whom he discovered he shared a hometown (their distinctive regional accent tipped him off). The dance teacher had spiky hair tinted red and wore two large rhinestone studs in each ear and a hot pink polo shirt. He also had perhaps the most irritating cell phone ringtone I have every heard: a shrill chirping of a dozen or so birds set to maximum volume. His phone rang frequently well into the night, earning bitter glances from our last aisle-mate, a man in his late 40s who spent the entire trip reading and never spoke a word to anyone.

We departed at 6:05pm and everyone got acquainted rapidly, chatting too with the four other passengers across the aisle. The most popular topic was of course food: which region has the best cuisine, how expensive pork and vegetables have been getting, how to prepare certain dishes, and so on. The “aunty” in my row had a great deal to say on the subject, telling us she always learns the local dishes when she travels and describing in great detail a pumpkin, sweet potato, ginger, and crab dish she made that afternoon for her relatives.

Compared with the mouth-watering talk, the reality of food on the train was deeply disappointing. I, like many of my fellow passengers, ate a large bowl of packaged ramen (a health-less food I adore but rarely indulge in) that I brought with me for dinner – boiling water flows freely from a tap at one end of every carriage, which is also what many people drink – then snacked on sunflower seeds and fruit. There were boxed lunches of rice and greasy meat and vegetables available at dinnertime and in the morning and afternoon but they were almost inedible. Trolleys passed through the aisle every half hour or so offering chips, crackers, sausages, or plastic-wrapped produce in a consistent state of not-quite-ripeness: apples, bananas, dragonfruit, cucumbers, lychee. The dance teacher considered buying something several times but thought the price, 5 kuai or about 80 cents, too steep.

The talk was liveliest when all were bemoaning the price of real estate as well as during a fascinating (though perhaps only to me) conversation about whether brands that call themselves imported can be trusted. After "aunty" buried her nose in a book on Confucian ideals the dance teacher chatted up the carpenter and they shared anecdotes about cats.

In the hard sleeper carriage the lights are turned off at 10pm sharp but in our carriage they only dimmed at 11:30 and never went off completely. Around 11 "aunty" closed her book and announced we should find something to do with ourselves to pass the time. With the fragrant smell of baijiu wafting over from a nearby row she jokingly suggested that the dance teacher, who had been moaning that he wanted a drink, go and join them. “I bet he’d be falling over after one drink!” teased the businessman next to me. We all laughed and Aunty, who said that an “old wife” like her couldn’t possibly keep pace with the young men where drinking is concerned, suggested cards. Thus began one of dozens of rounds of the game “Dizhu” (Landlord), a game quite similar to “Asshole” in its rules of play, but with less flattering connotations to those in property management. The game and its associated trash-talking and merriment attracted the attention of our neighbors in the same way Chinese Checkers played on the sidewalks of Beijing always draws a crowd. Those who weren’t yet sleeping or attempting to do so stood on the sidelines or peeked over their chairs. At a break in play around midnight I excused myself to brush my teeth, passing rows of people sprawled in grotesque positions, bodily boundaries everywhere compromised by the arms and legs of the comatose.

When I returned to my seat I began the business of trying to sleep, employing the following positions over the course of the night:

Slumped over, head resting on book

Head against wall on pillow

Feet tucked under (with variations)

Legs up against chest cushioned by pillow against table, head back

Legs up, feet resting on the interstice next to the seat of the man across from me

I woke countless times throughout the night but probably got as much or more sleep than many: my seatmates were wrapping up a final round of Landlord when I woke briefly at 3:30 and were wide awake at 9:00 when I surrendered to the morning. By this point I was still feeling positive about the trip: a little stiff and looking forward to a shower but generally lively and amused by my companions. This all changed when we arrived in Shanghai at 9:30. I had planned to hop off the train when we stopped at the station to get some decent food from a vendor and stretch my legs but before I could debark there was a rush of people boarding the train, pushing rudely and searching anxiously for empty seats. I returned to mine, not wanting to lose it, while the aisles filled up with an extra 40-50 seat-less passengers and their luggage, all of whom remained there for the next five and a half hours. It was worst when the food carts came through and the standing passengers had to squeeze both themselves and their luggage into the spaces between those of us sitting. I got up only once more before we arrived in Beijing, squeezing through bodies that even filled the aisle adjacent to the toilet and the bend between the train carriages.

I was hating the world and ruing my romantic notions about life in China for those last few hours trapped in my seat surrounded by agitated standers but my seatmates seemed to take it in stride, starting another round of “Landlord” and talking happily about their plans to sleep away the rest of the day. Approaching the outskirts of Beijing the air quality declined noticeably until we were traveling through a thick chalky grey haze (I later verified my suspicions that the air pollution index was about 100 points over the “hazardous” benchmark of 300). The movie that had inexplicably been playing over the intercom for the last hour or so (replete with the sounds of sword fights and loud arguments) gave way to the aggressively patriotic tune “Ai Wo Zhonghua” (I love my China) and as we rolled into the station, nearly everyone already on their feet ready to rush off the train, a man near me started to sing along in falsetto, seemingly unconsciously. It was such an ironic, maddening, and even comedic scene that I couldn’t help but be amused. I pushed my way into the human tide overflowing onto the platform, breathed in the slightly malodorous air, and surrendered myself once again to the chaos of the capital.

P.S. Here are some pictures from the south...

Pedestrian shopping street, Guangzhou:

Couples posing for wedding pictures (usually taken a few months before the wedding) on Shamian Island, Guangzhou:

Fabric market, Guangzhou:


Campus of Sun Yatsen University, Guangzhou:

Man fishing in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong:


Bruce Lee statue, Hong Kong:

Students playing freakishly large harmonicas, Hong Kong:

Porcelain Guan Yin, Hong Kong Art Museum:

Teen dance recital, Hong Kong:

Cat sleeping behind persimmons, Guangzhou:

The 2,000 year-old tomb of the Nanyue Emperor, Guangzhou:

Jade burial suit of the Nanyue Emperor:

Jaw and cranium fragments!

One of the dozens of jade disks buried with the emperor:

Ancient ginger grater:

Sample of the "multi-colored stone medicine" favored by Han Dynasty elites and including sulfur, arsenic, and turquoise (one possible cause of the early demise of the Nanyue Emperor):

River view, Guangzhou:

Delicious fruit bounty, Guangzhou:

Seriously, fall is the best time for fruit eating in this region: in the north pomegranates, peaches, red dates, and persimmons, in the south figs, mangos, pomelos, starfruit, mangosteen. A heavenly bounty.