brappy!

on the train, originally uploaded by brappy!.

I left Sunday night on my way to Xi'an. It was quite the trip.

A few days previously, I had booked myself a train ticket on the nicest train and a lower berth, for 767 RMB. I arrived about an hour and a half early at the unbelievably massive Beijing West Railway station, a new structure that is already falling apart (Bangkok airport, anyone?). After getting my bags x-rayed and passing through a metal detector, I entered a massive waiting hall full of people busily passing into the station. For 8 o'clock on a Sunday evening, it was quite busy.

I waited for the train in a crowded waiting room with Rielly, my BFA roommate, and we shared a few beers as we waited (it's often cheaper than water). After a while, my train was called, and he came down with me. The train was nice, relatively new, and my "Deluxe Soft Sleeper" compartment came with an overstuffed chair, a table, two berths and a small airplane-style bathroom. I got settled in and a few minutes later, my roommate, a businessman from Xi'an arrived.

The train left on time and I heard an announcement that dinner was ready to be served. In the dining car, there were quite a few German and Dutch tourists and a few locals. The only dish anyone seemed to be eating was pork and vegetables with a steamed bun. As the fuwuyuan sat across from me and asked "what do you want?", I pointed and said "that looks good."

A few minutes later, I had a not-terrible dinner (actually better than almost anything I ate in Beijing) and read Newsweek for a while. I sidled off to my compartment and relaxed on my bed. There was a tv, but of the 5 or 6 channels, none of them showed anything remotely interesting and they looked like they repeated endlessly anyway.

At this point, the train had stopped at a station called Baoding. I fell asleep. Later, I woke up at 3.45a as the train started moving again. The next morning, I awoke at 8 a.m., and found that we were passing through the city of Shijiazhuang, which is only about 180 miles from Beijing. In 11 hours, we'd gone very little distance!

Throughout the morning, the delay got longer and longer. The train was going to arrive at 1 p.m. I would have time to go see the stone warriors - my only reason for visiting Xi'an. Then, it would arrive at two. After another long delay, the train ran out of food. Around one o'clock, they announced that the train would be arriving at five. A Dutch package tourist next to me started crying. Like me, it was her group's only day in Xi'an.

After a while, the train stopped again. This time, workers started running around and brought on more food - and more beer (it gave me and the Europeans something to do). We finally arrived in Xi'an at 5 o'clock, victims of the worst flooding (supposedly) that China has had in ten years.

While in the taxi queue at the Xi'an train station, an old woman with no left arm and a stumpy right arm came up to me. I was pretty frazzled anyway, and when she took her stumpy bare arm and rubbed it against my arm quite forcefully and asked "muunnnnnnaaaaayy... muunnnnnaaaaayyyy...." it was all I could do to not scream and freak out completely.

On the upside, my hotel was nice. I had picked it because it was a bit silly-sounding. They had replicas of the famous tourist attractions around Xi'an somewhere in the hotel. If you didn't have time to go sightseeing, at least you could experience Xi'an's attractions. Originally, I thought that was kind of funny, and well, very Chinese. Later, I realized how useful it could be.

... TO BE CONTINUED in Part 2 - Exit from Xi'an, or The Airport That Wouldn't Let Go