sort out a way back to Chengdu. We had left the last leg of our trip
open, half for flexibility and half because we hadn't found any
especially cheap way home. We scoured Ctrip for flights from Xi'an to
Chengdu or, even better, from Luoyang to Chengdu. However,
unfortunately (sadly! terribly! woefully!) there was nothing at an
even remotely decent price. We debated flying to Chongqing (for still
more than we wanted to pay), spending the day there, and then taking a
short train home the next day, but that plan was nixed as too
complicated. And this is how the two of us found ourselves
desperately questioning a woman in the Luoyang train station on one
day's notice to find us a pair of beds for the overnight train back to
Chengdu. But our luck (and our trip so far had been lucky!) wasn't
destined to hold. No sleepers. None the night we wanted to leave and
none the night after. Nor were there any a day early, that very
night. What they did have, though, was hard seats. It's not as bad
as it sounds - hard seats still have cushions - they're just the
lowest class seat. And at least it's a level up from standing. None
of this would have even been an issue, but the train ride was over 17
hours and scheduled to leave Luoyang at 12:45 in the middle of the
night. But what options did we have? We snatched up the hard seats.
The Luoyang train station was a palace after the train station in
Xi'an, but filling the hours between dinner and a quarter to one in
the morning with everything already closed was a little tricky. We
were already off to a difficult start. We blinked away sleep sitting
in the crowded train station waiting hall, trying to make sure we
didn't doze off and miss the departure. That would have been
terrible. None of the signs were in English, so we were a little
nervous, but the train numbers were clear enough, and our train was
eventually announced and we went out to wait on the platform only a
few minutes behind schedule. There we stood, anxiously milling about
with 30 other people trying to guess the right place to stand for the
car number on our ticket. Once the train arrived everyone ran for the
car (it was like a cartoon, the whole crowd rushing in unison first
one way then the next - apparently we were all on car 7) and we shoved
our way onto the train. It was packed! It took us a good 20 minutes
to work our way down the car to our seats, waiting for those in front
of us, squeezing by people and the bags filling the aisles. Once
there (should we have known it would be like this?) we found a young
couple in our seats. No, wait, they explained. They had seats 42 and
43. Ours were 40 and 41, the two behind them, occupied by a pair of
grizzly old guys. We waved our tickets at them, but they pulled out a
pair of tickets of their own. Real tickets. For our seats. Our
grasp on the situation had never been strong, but now it looked like
things were slipping away from us. Ann wasn't happy, and I felt more
than a little responsible for our predicament. I had been the vocal
train advocate, and here we were, faced with sleeping in the aisle (as
several people we had already stepped past had been doing). What a
relief when a friendly passenger stepped in to sort through the
confusion. He examined our tickets and handed them back to us. Then
he took a look at the other pair's tickets and started talking to
them. I understood what he was saying: theirs were for the day
before, and it's likely enough that with the train just after midnight
they had thought that they were on the right train. They were pretty
hesitant to move, but our benefactor wouldn't let up until they had
given us the seats. Sadly, their luggage was still on the floor
under our new homestead. We pushed and rotated the bags in the
overhead to make room for our big backpack, but our two smaller bags
would spend the night in our laps. We slept, tried to sleep, cramped
and folded around our bags. The lights on our China train didn't dim,
the whole night through. We were surprised how wakeful everyone was!
The train was noisy with the shouts of passengers hanging out,
chatting away until well after 2 am. Someone had a radio playing much
too cheery music. As the night wore on the talk quieted down, but the
lights stayed on. We were pretty miserable, shifting positions to try
to stay comfortable, sleeping fitfully, regretting our bad decision.
The next morning things on the train started pretty early, even as
many of the passengers dozed away. Food carts started coming through
the aisles at 7 in the morning. I have no idea how they managed to
make it down those aisles with all the people asleep in them.
Actually, people were sleeping anywhere there was an open space. Bags
doubled as beds, pillows, the works. I even saw a guy curled up in
the metal sink! The space at the ends of the car was being slept in,
and between the cars (next to the bathrooms) was the de-facto smoking
area. I always had a hard time sorting out whether or not any of the
eight or ten men standing about smoking was also waiting to use the
bathroom. The food coming up the aisle smelled good, but it was too
dubious to tempt either of us. Instead we had a bit of our own
instant coffee (unlimited hot water at the tap at the back of the
car!) and some buns we'd packed in anticipation of the long journey.
Later an old Jacky Chan movie came up on the television and we watched
a bit. The guys that Mike and I had evicted from their seats were
able to shift to new seats as people got off the train and one of them
ended up across from us. He turned out to be quite friendly and
started chatting with us (he spoke no English at all). He pulled out
his snack bag and offered us each apples and held out his knife.
After I (Mike) bungled peeling the first one (Ann's apple) to general
consensus ("terrible!") from the crowd watching us, we got an
impromptu demonstration of our host's apple peeling skill. The rules
are: don't take off too much apple, don't touch the flesh with your
fingers (he did the whole thing moving his fingers down the
diminishing patch of skin until he held the bare apple by just the two
bits at the top and bottom), and come as close as you can to peeling
the skin in one single, beautiful coil. It was remarkable.
Ann and Mike
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