Tom: Train to Hefei (May 08)

Train to Hefei (May 08) · May 9, 08:55 PM

It’s bright now — almost 6AM. I’m on a train to Hefei. Maybe I slept for two hours total in these cramped conditions. At Jiujiang there were no tickets for Shangai – where I wanted to go and meet a good friend of a friend from UF. There were, on the other hand, tickets for Hefei, where a friend I met last week invited me to visit. I bought the only kind of ticket available, an unreserved hard seat. This means I won’t have a seat to sit in until the train clears out. For the first two hours — from 2AM to 4AM — I curled up in part of the space between cars along with two girls eager to talk, and many other. The good spots, the places not blocking exits, where full of sleeping people and luggage in one pile. The area we claimed blocked an exit, so when the train stopped we all had to squeeze over to block another exit. It seemed that no matter which side we switched to, the doors at the next stop would always open on that side. Now that I have a “seat”, I think I’m even less comfortable; these padded bench seats have vertical backs which do not go high enough for me to lean my head against.

Outside the train station this morning three of the fellows I met on Lushan ran into me, to their happy delight. Otherwise, I sat down to wait for my train, which would leave at 02:33 — a couple hours away, I thought. Time passed, and I figured out that times were all printed in 24 format.PM. At this unhappy realization, I checked my luggage — a process which took about ten minutes due to the language barrier — and walked North into Jiujiang after a cheap hot lunch in one of the large marts outside the station. In a park by one of the towns two large lakes, couples were paired off in lawns, picnic areas, and woods, chatting quietly with about as much privacy as you can get in a public space.

Some hours later, after getting help to find an internet café (“wang ba”), I started up a conversation with an English-speaking student out for a jog. We hung out for the rest of the day and a portion of the evening. He to me to a favorite local place for plate stacked with pan-friend dumplings and more dumplings in a soup. We walked north to the Yangzi river, and then turned East, walking down past several unremarkable tourist sights to the base of a very long bridge lit up with a thin, color-changing line. We were back at the train station by eleven.

In the station I found myself talking with three other guys. At least two were students, and one of those was studying to become a medical doctor. Those two were gone by one. The third was not leaving until the next day when he could withdraw money from a bank. He spoke no English, so we lumbered through a conversation with much repetition and dictionary-referencing. He invited me to look him up in Guangzhou where we could got to a disco and I could meet his English-speaking sister.

... Now the train attendants have just swept the floor clear, using pushbrooms to drive a large wave of trash to the end of the car. Hawkers are now coming through, selling hot water for noodle meals, hot meals, blinky trinkets, fireproof gloves and assorted undergarments, and other services which I am unable to discern the nature of — I can’t read their business cards or understand their pitches …

And it’s been a week now since Gulang Yu where I last met a native English-speaker. This May holiday has been a Chinese experience. Now I very much look forward to getting back into the backpacker’s circuit and heading north to Beijing in the budget comfort of HI hostels and the like.

* * *

Great stuff Tom!
— JFu May 9, 10:14 PM #
Your positive feedback encourages me to write!
— Tom May 11, 10:26 AM #
Don’t worry- your exploits are being perused.
— malfridi May 11, 02:17 PM #

http://tom.spacing-guild.net/2006/05/11/hefei-may-09

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