The Train to Pingyao

Our fantastic day at the Great Wall was followed by a less successful day of searching for a grocery store. Once we finally found one though, we had a great time perusing the aisles for odd foods (prepackaged chicken feet, for example). We'll get photos later. We did manage to leave the store with some important money saving items, namely peanut butter and jelly. We also picked up some snacks for our upcoming overnight train ride out of Beijing to Pingyao.

We tried to get a couple spots on the sleeper car for the 13 hour ride, but they were sold out. Instead, we got seats on the only thing that was left: the "hard" seats. We should have known... I should mention that we had to have our hostel do the booking, since doing so in Chinese is completely beyond us. We rode the subway out to the Beijing West Train station and walked the 1.5 kilometer there. The train station was unlike anything I've ever seen. It was seriously the size of an airport, with streams of people crossing raised walkways over the highway into it. And this was only the WEST train station. There were people waiting around outside all over.... for what we had no idea. We arrived an hour ahead of time, and entered into the waiting room for our train, only to find that 1000 other passengers had already beaten us there. We crammed ourselves into the surging line (OK, so Chinese don't LINE up... they just push forward and cut ahead of anyone they can) and eventually fought our way to our train car (bypassing all the fairly comfy looking sleeper cars). Watch the video for a little clip of that. Our seats were waiting for us, but weren't what we were expecting. They were straight-backed, backward facing seats grouped in sixes -- three facing three, so we had to lace our knees together. Not only that, but the aisle also filled up with people who had tickets and no seats -- they stood the entire 13 hours. People were smoking and shoving their stuff anywhere they could; people even filled up the bathroom with their belongings. Speaking of bathrooms, they were so filthy (especially by the end of the trip) that we dehydrated ourselves so we wouldn't need to go in there the whole trip -- and we didn't! The air was pretty foul with various smells, including cigarette smoke, so Sarah wore a bandanna over her mouth and nose the whole night; an extremely good idea. Sarah's journal entry that night began: "We boarded a train to Pingyao with about 1,000 Chinese people pushing and carrying luggage and bags of food and holding children's hands and peering around... and peering at us. And so began what could prove to be the most physically harrowing night of my life thus far!"

All this being said, it definitely could have been worse. We actually managed to catch a little sleep; Sarah hunched over on my lap and me trying to keep my head up. One nice thing is that the train provides hot water for ramen, which everyone on board knew about except for us. They all had their ramen cups ready! This was like a Guatemalan chicken bus ride on steroids, and a memory that will stick with us for quite a while.

We're in Pingyao now, and will do a little exploring of this beautifully preserved Ming and Qing dynasty town in the morning.

Much love to you all!

-Matt!