Getting to Chengdu

When we went from Nanning to Guilin, we booked same-day and got the nicest sleeper beds we could. From Guilin to Chengdu, though, the route was more popular and we got the tickets too late. If we wanted to arrive any time in the next few weeks, it was the hard seat for us - for twenty-five hours.

The seats aren't particularly hard in hard class, just straight backed and tightly arranged. The train was mostly full, and I was denied when I tried to upgrade (bribe?) to a sleeper car. There were a few empty seats, and though Auberon and I hadn't been seated together we still saw one another.

Among the passengers of the hard seat carriages there is a certain camaraderie. (You, dear reader, are getting these posts on a time delay. After Chengdu I took another hard seat train ride and experienced the same sort of thing.) People talk and play games, children run and make noise, and food is constantly passed around. There were some other foreigners, possibly Italian, but they just greeted us as they passed through our car. Thus we were as usual a novelty, and once the ice was broken people were happy to talk to us.

The clacking of Chinese chess pieces drew us to the other end of the car where we joined in a few games and were soundly beaten. I made a single good move, received polite praise, and then lost. Later, the fruit seller came by and stopped to watch, eventually taking over much of the game for me. "A test for the foreigner," he said, putting me in a tricky end-game position and walking off.

As night fell I switched seats with somebody who had a window seat in the next carriage so that he could sit by his girlfriend. The other carriage was a bit smokier (the smoking section on these trains is between carriages and under the air circulation vents, defeating the purpose entirely) and a little warm for my taste. I folded myself up in the space between table and wall and had a few hours of surprisingly deep sleep. Auberon, however, reported that his air conditioning in the other carriage was on full blast all night. He described a Donner Party scene of taking down curtains to clothe small children and distributing the contents of his backpack as emergency blankets.

As day began, I went back into the other car and had an extremely pleasant chat with a woman from Beijing. She had a dignified air and a general soothing presence, which I noticed immediately as she calmed down a woman whose boyfriend had missed the train. She was very patient with me and my halting Chinese, which gave me the confidence and stamina to have a long conversation about Chinese and American geography, culture, entertainment, and politics - in simple words of course. She would make an excellent teacher.

After several more hours we arrived and said our goodbyes to the train companions. A quick taxi to the hotel, a small break to collect ourselves, and we were ready to go out and explore.