Adventures in Guangzhou!

So Wednesday morning I headed out to try and buy myself a train ticket. I wrote down the few phrases I didn't know (tones and all) and wished myself luck. Walking up to the first place, I prepared for the challenge. I said my piece, waited for a look of recognition, got it (!), but then quickly became dumbfounded when they started firing questions back at me that I didn't understand. As I gave them a blank stare, they shooed me away. Strike 1. I walked up the street to the other ticket place and once again wished myself luck. I had a bit more success here as I got not only a look of recognition but also a schedule thrust in my face. Unfortunately I also received a number of questions I didn't understand and thus had to walk away empty-handed. Strike 2.

I tried not to be discouraged but I was running out of both time and options. Not to fear though, Meggie Lu to the rescue! My friend Meggie, having grown up in Taiwan, is completely fluent and a short bus ride away so I employed her help to get me a ticket. Wednesday evening I headed over and she helped me become mobile. I also figured out what they were asking me at the first two places- Wuhan is actually a city that is a combination of three major areas right across from each other on the Yangtze River: Wuchang, Hangkou, and Hanyang. They wanted to know which station in Wuhan I wanted! I called Tyler on the spot so figure out which one but unfortunately he was in class. Meggie and I guessed Wuchang for no good reason and it turns out that was exactly what I wanted! To quote Tyler, "You have chosen...wisely." The only bad part was that they had no hard sleepers left, only soft sleepers (which run about a hundred yuan more expensive). Oy. I bit the bullet though and decided I would roll up the country V.I.P.-style.

Thursday night after basketball and dinner, I packed up and headed over to the train station. While I left from the run-down Guangzhou Central Station during the National Day Holiday, this time I took off from Guangzhou East Station. What a world of difference! It's much newer, much nicer, much cleaner, much more organized, and much easier to navigate. I will admit though, it probably helped that I wasn't traveling on a day that 1.3 billion people were also going on trains. It wasn't nearly as hectic, hot, or stressful as the last time and it was nice to know how the system worked ahead of time.

I didn't know what to expect for the soft sleeper but I must say, I was disappointed. The only major differences are that there are only 4 beds per compartment (as opposed to 6) and that there's a door to the compartment separating it from the rest of the car. It was nice to not worry about my stuff getting stolen (it was inside with me as opposed to on the overhang across the way) but I still didn't sleep very well because the main lights never went off! In a hard sleeper, the lights to the whole car shut off around 10:30pm or 11:00pm but they never shut off on the way up. I'm guessing that maybe there was a switch somewhere where we could control it, but none of the other 3 guys made any effort to turn them off so I have no idea. My compartment-mates were also not nearly as friendly as the hard-sleeper crowd. One guy even made and received cell phone calls all night!

For the most part, the trip was entirely uneventful. I had a few random thoughts though: First, I was reading my Sandy Koufax biography and discovered a new meaning of getting immersed in a book. Tearing through the pages, I became entranced by the story and by Leavy's writing. Sidenote- I really respect Koufax and feel like I can relate to him quite a bit; It's not the Jewish thing as much as the fact that he worked very hard to earn people's respect and was fiercely competitive. Anyhow, reading about baseball in New York and Los Angeles during the fifties and sixties truly made me forget where I was. Consequently, I was shocked and completely caught off guard when a p.a. announcement in Chinese shattered this false sense of reality. I was almost disappointed to come back down to earth.

Second, the train made about 3 stops in the middle of the night. I woke up each time as we came to a jostling hault. The last time it happened I checked my clock and saw that it was a few minutes past 3:30am. Who plans on arriving somewhere in the middle of the night?? It seems a bit odd to make plans with someone and say, "No problem, I'll just meet you there at 4am." I guess the stops were just too minor to warrant their own line (or dropoff at a decent hour).