Ticked Off on the Train: May 18

Date: Sunday, May 18
Time: 7:40 PM Beijing
Location: Hard Bed 001, Middle Tier, Car 12, Somwhere between Beijing and Xian

If for the next 24 hours all persons within 10 miles of me could stop issuing forth any and all bodily fluids, that would be great. Thanks.

Spitting, whether indoors or out, is not a Chinese custom to which I find myself getting used to any time in the near future, and it's everywhere...including under my bed. Riding the train out of Beijing is not like riding the Eurostar or the Ave, or the Italian train whose name escapes me.

We'd been warned that smoking was extremely prevalent in China. Apparently businessmen bond when they share the same brand of cigarettes. I still the the stuff reeks beyond measure and I put up with it only from strangers I'm afraid of, or the people I care about. Smoking's been banned in public in Beijing until the Olympics are over, but this ban doesn't extend to things like restaurants and trains. That smoking is allowed in the close quarters of the train pains me. Literally. My eyes are stinging. So aside from the spit on the ground, the place smells of smoke and human sweat. However, there are worse things it could smell of, and I know because I've already smelled those today, and I'm grateful the train doesn't smell like that.

I read for hours last night--I couldn't sleep 'til I finished Dragon's Keep. It's not an amazing book, but it's a page turner and it was a first time read for me. I didn't get my morning off to a good start at all. I woke up to a bad dream, and while I remember details, the dream as a whole and how those details fit in with each other are kind of fuzzy. Totally moving the dream sequence to the end of this post so that anyone who doesn't really care about my sleeping brain doesn't have to read them. Okay, moving on.

Fun start to the day, right? I also woke up with an odd pain in the corner of my eye. It's still there, but the eye looks fine and there's no vision problem with it. I'd repacked my bag before bed, so there was nothing to do in the morning but eat, hastily check my email, and with a few minutes to spare, try calling Mike again. I got through. It was so great to hear his voice. I've missed talking to him, just sitting and chatting about nothing...or everything. I really want a hug right now.

Dr. Chandler laid out our options for us in the lobby when I pried myself away from the phone. We could take the train all the way to Chengdu (Plan A--we never do Plan A). Or maybe Plan A was a plane to Chengdu. I can't remember. Yesterday's train was canceled because of a landslide. Then Saturday night (there had been a Saturday night train, but we couldn't get enough tickets) there was a a big after shock. Well, good thing for us there was no train Saturday morning and no space Saturday night. While, I repeat, Chengdu is pretty much fine, the last 3 hours of the 31 hour train ride go through mountainous landslide area. Plan A really isn't an option.

We could go to Xian, which would be 15 hours, and sight see for a few days and take the train to Chengdu then. Or we could take a 10 hour train to Lu Xin, sight see, and eventually end up at Xian or Chengdu as the situation prgoressed. Or we could take the train to Xian tonight, arrive 3:30 in the morning, stay a few days, and fly to Chengdu. This seemed most likely as we get to bypass the landslide area by flying over it instead of riding through it. This sounded like the winner.

14 of us opted to take taxis, and Dr. Chandler rode wtih the two that wanted to take the bus, and we were shortly thereafter all at the correct station. Our train was listed this time...and it said LATE. The waiting room for our terminal was packed and we just stood there for a bit with all our bags in a huddle.

After a few words with railway personnel, the huddle of awkward Americans was shuffled off to a nicer terminal. There were far fewer people, though the place was still busy, and we could wait out our time here in better comfort. It might have been the family waiting room--there were a lot kids, and a lot of pregnant women. It was close to 1 in the afternoon when we found out our new departure time was 5 PM. On the bright side, it meant that we'd be arriving at 8:30 in the morning rather than 3:30.

The hours passed, mostly playing with Chinese babies, chatting, and feeling right at home with our McDonalds, ever a comfort food no matter how far from home you may be. I haven't really touched on this subject in my journal 'til today, but Chinese bathrooms smell awful. In large part, I blame the sewage systems, which don't handle paper. Used toilet paper goes in a basket. You can smell a public toilet before you see the sign for it. The train station bathroom made me want to vomit. it smelled of piss, dung, and blood. My second time in I found a western style one but it was covered in piss and the door didn't lock--one of my male classmates found the hard way that a lot of times people don't bother locking them anyway. Some people don't even bother shutting the stahl doors.

I won brownie points on the train for discovering a western toilet on the train when we thought there weren't any. The train toilets were admittedly cleaner than the ones at the station, for which I am exceedingly grateful.

When it came time to board, they let us board straight from where we were and got on before the others in our original terminal did. Yay for special treatment.

Passengers who had come from further up the rail line were already on. There's bottom tier, middle tier, and top tier beds built into the walls. I'm in Row 1, with a Chinese man in each bed above and below mine, and Jessica straight across from me and situated the same way.

I really wasn't enjoying the ride. The smoke and smell were making me cranky. There's a luggage rack along the wall, but I've got my suitcase at the foot of the bed, held in place by the ladder. I've got my backpack and purse up by me. I attempted to eat in the dining car, but I couldn't figure out how to tell the waitress to give me a minute and ordered a chicken thing and hoped for the best. It wasn't bad, but I didn't eat most of it. The waitress I think thought I was struggling with the chopsticks and brought me a spoon after another waitress had kind of glanced at me, laughing. I used the chopsticks. I wasn't having trouble with them--I just only thought about a third of what was on the plate was really meant to go in my mouth and I was picking carefully which those pieces were.

Passing through the train I saw my classmates generally enjoying themselves and chatting with other passengers and realized my dislike of the journey was probably me being cranky. A pity. I'm not a fan of traveling--I'm a fan of getting somewhere and actually being there. Buses, the train, walking--not my cup of tea. I hope my classmates aren't getting a bad first impression of me, or it could be a rough six weeks. Wehn we've settled into Chengdu, I should be better. I think the other part of the problem is the constant sense of people. I'll like to have some time to myself. The other 5 girls in my room were all asleep before 9 last night--a shame since there'd been a plan to go to a kareoke bar--but I was glad they were, because it finally gave me time by myself to be alone, pack, and read (minus a game of mao, which was fun).

With the four Chinese guys asleep and Jess elsewhere having fun, I'm winding down out of my cranky mood. I'm still hungry though and I think I'll sleep soon, but I've a couple of other points I wanted to note.

The differences in modesty astound me. A bare ankle or foot is rude/seductive, and apaprently somehow the equivalent to walking down the street in a g-string, but it's okay to leave the stall door wide open while in use? A bare shoulder is scandalous, but skirts can be as short as you'd like? Dang it. The upstairs neighbors woke up and are chatting. I never ended up getting my yarn yet. I really wanted it for the ride. I'm hoping to upload these last few entries in Xian.

Crap. The attendant just put my bag on the floor right on the half dry spit puddle because it won't fit under the lowest bunk (someone else's stuff is there). I really hope they don't wake up and spit without looking, but it's a slim hope--at the end of the bed are spit covered sandals on the floor.

Missing all the ones I love,

Erin

Location: Hard Bed 001, Middle Tier, Car 12, somewhere between Beijing and Xian
Time: 9:40 PM Beijing
Date: Sunday, May 18

The Dream Sequence I cut out of the main part of the overly long journal entry:

Generally speaking, it included a teacher chasing me to China to explain why she thought I was a loser and informing me she'd plublished it in The Penn. Another section of the dream had Mike in some sort of slightly run-down house, alone, and studying art or philosophy or the occult or something for a long while--one of the sorts of things that only Mike would study. He was very much not himself in the dream, something odd that, awake, you can't put your finger on. He offered to take me to the room where he worked and said something about a burning, a poster, an artist, fire, and himself. Things are really fuzzy there and I can only remember that all of them were somehow involved in what he said. And it was a round room we were going to--kind of tower-ish. I think I carried him into the room--apparently dream physics are cool like that. I can't remember if he was in the poster and burning, he was burning the poster, or the artist was in it...He muttered something about ghosts and I saw in the brass mirror on the floor (very Disney's Haunted Mansion-esque) ghosts appear in the mirror as he was mumbling. So I was pretty weirded out by the dream, mostly because it's so rare that I have/remember them, and doubly by the fact that a teacher was attacking my character and my academic life plan quite vindictively. Maybe the artist/philosophy/ghost/burning/house thing was actually the part that's least strange? Or maybe not since that's just the part that's least coherrent.