Monday, September 7, 2009

Six- Hour Train Ride on Hard Seats

We have just arrived in Datong, in the Shanxi province. S and I had a great time in Beijing. P and Senorita V were amazing people to spend time with. We got the inside scoop on what it is like to live in Beijing and ate a lot of amazing food! Before we left, P helped us reserve our tickets for our 6-hour train to Datong. S and I wanted to
go cheap and we wanted an experience. We got the cheapest tickets we could get. Most trains in Beijing seem to have a letter before it, signaling possibly some kind of rating system. We were booked on an unlettered train and we booked to hard seats which, according to the guide book, " have a bit of a cushion but can be hard on your sanity." We said, what the hell? This morning, we had to take a cab to the train station and the 15-minute cab ride was the same cost as our train ticket- 4 bucks. Our gate was the only one where the employees were not checking your tickets. I guess no one wanted to try to sneak onto our train. We were packed in a crowded line for about 45 minutes before we could get on and, when we got on, there was a lot of pushing and shoving from others around us.
As we boarded, we got many stares as we were definitely the only non-Chinese on the entire train (there were probably 500 people on the whole train). The car smelled like cigarettes and before we could sit, we needed to push cigarette butts and ash off the seats. No one really talked to us for most of the ride but the older couple across from us kept staring as we read our travel books and wrote in our notebooks. Throughout the whole trip, we could hear a constant sound of people getting ready to spit on the floor of the car. During the 5th hour of the trip, I was writing out some Chinese characters and the woman started slapping my left hand and pointing to my right, as others here have done when they see we are lefties.
The last hour of the trip, after the married couple left, a bunch of 20-30 year old dudes sat beside us and were really amused by our guidebook. They wanted to look through our phrasebook and were getting a huge kick out of it. We tried to ask them in Chinese how much longer until our stop and the youngest of the men responded in English. We spoke with him for a little while and, as we did, everyone within
earshot was listening even though they did not understand. As we got out at our stop and left the train station, there were many more stares. Apparently, Datong does not get a lot of Western visitors.
We are staying two days here and are planning on taking two day trips out of the city: one to the Hanging Monastery and the other to the Yungang Caves. After that, we will take an overnight train to Pingyao.

Datong

No comments: