Jacob Gill is a recent addition to the Skritter team who will be contributing to our blog and lending his language learning wisdom to the team. Jacob was recruited by our very own Ben Reitz during Ben’s summer spent teaching in mainland China. Jacob is a graduate student studying for his MA in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language from National Taiwan Normal University. Prior to graduate studies, he graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a degree in Communication and Chinese. He maintains his own blog over here: http://ilearnmandarin.blogspot.com/. We have been very impressed with Jacob, and look forward to sharing him with the Skritter community. So without further ado, Jacob Gill!
On any given day more than 10 million people are traveling by train (火车: huǒchē) across China. While car purchases are on the rise, and airports can be found in every major city, trains still remain the cheapest and most practical form of transportation for trekking across the Middle Kingdom. As a foreigner traveling China, I have found trains to be a great way to practice my Chinese and make new friends; mostly little kids who are put on by their parents to get a free English lesson from the foreign guy squished into the bunk above.
This summer I spent 25 days traveling China, visiting seven cities and traveling over 6000km, and I did the whole thing by train. Being the “rich” foreigner that I am, I usually traveled by hard-sleeper (卧铺: wòpù). Sure… the bunks are small and a bit cramped (especially when you are 6’3” like me), but ticket prices were very reasonable and I always had a place to catch some Zs.
It made my 26-hour train ride from Chóngqìng (重庆) to Kūnmíng (昆明) a breeze, and although I could have cut my travel time down to three hours by flying, I saved about 500kuài, which was more than enough to cover my hostel, food and endless amounts of Qīngdǎo (青岛) in Kūnmíng .
Before I set out to travel this summer, I was determined to use only trains… no matter what. I thought it would be the perfect way to really see China, and interact with its people. My stubbornness got the best of me, and before the end of my trip I found myself sitting on a hard-seat (硬座: yìngzuò) for a 36-hour train ride. The hard-seat, which is really a hard-bench, seats three people per side. There is a small table near the window that can act as a pillow, but that’s only if you’re lucky enough to sit in front of it…which I wasn’t. I was on my way to Xī’ān (西安) from Kūnmíng for a friend’s wedding, and after three desperate days of early morning trips to the train station, and calls (and visits) to travel agents searching for an empty sleeper, it was the only available option. Despite all the horror stories I had heard, I paid my $32USD and decided to find out what life in the hard-seat was all about.
Things started out okay. I found a place to put my luggage and was surprised to find that all the people in my row of seats were students heading to Xī’ān and beyond to start their next semester of college. It wasn’t long before a few parents spotted me on the train and sent their son over to “entertain” me by counting from one to one hundred in English, twice! I began to realize that traveling by train in China is the great equalizer. I wasn’t sitting with the poorest of the poor, I was just sitting with people, like me, who couldn’t get a sleeper. There are, simply put, just way too many people in China.
That, however, is the problem—there are simply too many people in China. After our first stop of many, the already stuffed train car was now filled to the brim, over crowded by at least 30% as people with standing tickets, which sell for the same price as a hard-seat, boarded the train. They rushed to find prime spots to squat for the long journey, mostly in the areas between two train cars, tucked behind doors where they would have enough space to at least sit down. When those spots were filled however, people began to siphon into the aisles and areas in front of the bathrooms. They tried their best not to get in the way, but they failed miserably, laying claim to any patch of ground that could accommodate their stuff.
As if things were not already chaotic enough, food and drink carts forced there way through the heaps of people, relocating them about every 30 minutes, selling over-priced bottles of water and bad food that got colder and colder every time they stopped to “ask” someone to get out of their way. The best train-peddler was a young girl explaining the usefulness of a toothbrush, and selling them at a great deal of, “buy one get one free”!
Late into the night I made my first trip to the bathroom. I gently tiptoed around the sleeping people and legs that stuck out from under benches, where people risked being stepped-on to catch a few precious winks. I walked straight into a cloud of smoke from those who couldn’t get to sleep and were masterfully ignoring the no smoking signs posted right above their heads. I waited for about ten minutes for someone to walk out of the bathroom and for the vacant sign to appear, but it never happened. Eventually someone caught the drift that I wasn’t trying to get my fix of second hand smoke and explained that there was probably someone sleeping in there. I could have disturbed their slumber, but than again, I wasn’t sure that they would actually leave, so I wandered to another train car to find an unoccupied restroom.
About 15 hours into our journey to Xī’ān, the train ran out of hot water. There was no panic, or even complaint. We refilled at our next stop, and it was tapped out quickly thereafter, when a line of people four train cars deep waited patiently to add water to their cup-o-noodle. It was a strange site, seeing people actually form a line in China, one of those rare moments that required documentation. But then again, the aisles were so crowded that they didn’t really have a choice.
Although train workers came by every few hours to collect empty food boxes and bottles, the trash bins were so full that train windows and the floor seemed to be the most viable options for many patrons. Some people who had taken the long journey as a chance to knock back a few beers and some báijiǔ(白酒) didn’t even bother to walk toward the bathrooms to smoke, lighting up right at their seats. No one reminded them that they shouldn’t be smoking there, just like the trash going out the window, they put the problem out of their minds. People in China have an amazing ability to deal with uncomfortable situations, or as they say in Chinese, chī kǔ (吃苦).
Despite hardly getting any sleep during my 36-hour journey, and being a pillow for the guy sitting next to me, the trip wasn’t all bad. Everyone that I met was incredibly kind and I learned a lot about China. People were surprisingly open about their displeasure with certain government policies, and more than willing to listen to the opinions of a lone foreign traveler. I made a lot of new friends during that trip and learned so much about where they were coming from and the places they were going.
Riding on the hard-seat, for me, was more than just a 36-hour language lesson. It was a lesson in humility and perseverance. Never once did I hear complaints from people being asked to move from the floor as a cart or fellow patron shuffled by. And more than once I witnessed passengers giving up their own hard-seat for a few hours so those who were standing could get some honest sleep. While traveling by hard-seat isn’t something that I would do often, I learned a lot about life during those 36 hours. I would recommend that everyone, at least once during their travels, spend some time experiencing life in the hard-seat.