Posts Tagged ‘train travel’

After a very quick trip (around 48 hours) to the south of China I am back in Xi’an. Nothing major to post up, but just wanted to let everyone know that I am back and should be blogging regularly again soon.

I went down south to renew my visa. I flew down on Thursday afternoon to Guangzhou, took a bus to the Futian border crossing in Shenzhen, and then took another bus from Lok Ma Chau to Tin Shui Wai in Hong Kong where I stayed with Jack, actually not sleeping at all the whole night.

I left off at 9:30 AM and took a bus to Sheng Shui, the MTR train to Lo Wu (Luo Hu) and then the express train up to Guangzhou where I met up with Ruhi and caught an overnight train to Xi’an. I slept a solid 12 – 14 hours during the trip and we just arrived this afternoon.

Since spouting out names of locations don’t mean much if you aren’t familiar with them, I made a few maps to demonstrate the route …

All in all it was a pretty good trip.  Mainly because I didn’t get any illnesses or get snowed in anywhere.  But also because it all went according to plan.  Yay for plans! (Mark likes plans)

Tomorrow morning Ruhi and I are meeting Yue Xiao Yu to go shopping for a bicycle.  I am going to see about doing some video-ing of our excursion too so you can enjoy that. After that I am meeting my tutor, Ada, for an hour of Chinese learnin’ and then I believe Ruhi and I are meeting some new friends in the evening.  A jam-packed day to be sure.  Yay for Sundays!  (Mark likes Sundays)

Before I blog, I wanted to share something that I saw today.  You may recall that I mentioned that the winter smog from the coal burning and polution gets pretty bad here in Xi’an.  But we also get a bit of fog from time to time.  And when you combine the two things together, like we had today, it turns in to a pea soup the likes of which I never saw in my 14 years in the Bay Area.

Here are a few comparative shots from the morning and the afternoon so that you can get an idea of what it looked like from our living room window:

And just so you don’t think it looks like this all the time, here is a picture from just a month or so ago:

See?  Blue skies!

Anyway, back to the blog …

Three main things happened today in the World of Mark.  Well, okay … more than three things.  But three things that I’m going to blog about.

First, was figuring out what to do about our visa renewal.

We spent most of the early hours of the day (i.e. before lunch) going to the visa office and trying to get an extension on our tourist visas.  As we are in the process of closing down Ruhi’s company (after which we will probably start up a new one in 2010) we are technically in China as tourists.  As a result, I either have to leave the country every 30 days (60 for Ruhi) or get an extension.

As you will recall, last month I left the country and went to Hong Kong, only to end up spending a week in Anhui with the flu.  This time we decided to get a 30 day extension instead.

That is, until we found out that the cost of a 30 day extension for U.S. Citizens is 940 RMB ($140 USD), which is also the price of a full one-year multiple entry visa.  But only for 30 days!  Well, for less than 940 RMB we can just take the train down to Guangdong and hop across the border, so why spend all that extra money?

So, on Friday Ruhi will be traveling to Beijing for some meetings.  To save some money I will be going directly to Guangdong from Xi’an.  Sorry to Wu Di, Jenn, Chris, et al. for not being able to make it over to the capital this time around.  But Ruhi will be there in my stead for 2 days.

On Wednesday I’m going to catch a train down to Guangzhou and then hop across the border.  Ruhi will have already been staying in Guangzhou for a couple days and on Friday afternoon we will catch a train back up and get home on Saturday morning.  This time around I opted for the faster train, as the slower one is obviously not an option.  Who wants to go all the way to Anhui anyway?

Here is a map of Ruhi’s journey.  As I said, my route is just a straight back and forth from Xi’an to Guangzhou.

The second thing that happened today was a revamping of our home.

Yue A-yi was here to clean today so we took the opportunity to swap our bedroom and the second room around.  After several hours we have set up the place so that we’re both working in our “spare” room with all the natural light, and our sleeping room is the darker, more comfortable one that gets much warmer.  Plus we moved some furniture around in the main room.  I love optomizing my living space.  According to Ruhi I get a twinkle in my eye when I am in that mode.

And the third thing is (hopefully) a change to my training routine.

I called Yuan Ming earlier in the day and asked him for Coach Zhang’s phone number.  He didn’t have it, so I had to relay the message through him.  I told him that (1) I would not be able to make it today and that (2) I wanted to switch my workouts from the afternoon at 3:00 to the morning at 9:00.  He said he would talk to Coach Zhang for me.

In the evening I gave him a call but it turned out that Coach Zhang wasn’t there today.  Tomorrow morning they also don’t have training because there is a meeting, so I will just go in the afternoon as usual.  Then, assuming Coach Zhang is there, I can ask him about switching to the morning session.

Why switch to mornings?  Well, for one, it will make me more productive with my work.  I will have a bigger chunk of time to get things done during the afternoon and evening.  Also, I think it is better, physically, to exercise during the earlier hours of the day as it sets up your body’s metabolism and function better for the rest of your waking hours.

Plus, I just feel better when I train in the morning vs. the afternoon.

So, that is what happened today.  Tomorrow it is back to the wushu grind stone.  Today they had strength training, so tomorrow, I”m not really sure what is happening.  I’m hoping it is wushu, but it might be running too.  I’ll just play it by ear and make sure I am prepared for any contingency.

Until tomorrow …. here is a bonus picture that I swiped from Wu Di’s camera in Binzhou.  Enjoy!

NOTE: I got a few photos off my film camera so I’m posting them up with this entry, even though they are from the entire 10 day trip.

I had jokingly said to Ruhi that with my luck I would probably get to Hefei (合肥) just to find myself delayed overnight by the weather again.  Ironically it almost came true.

My plan was to take a morning train from Fuyang to Hefei (3 hours), get my plane ticket at the e-Long office, and then catch my 5:20 flight at the airport, arriving in Xi’an around 7:00, and hopefully home in time to get some dinner and enjoy a bit of rest at home.

And it started out okay too.  I woke up around 7:00, cleaned up, packed my things (yay for being a light packer!), and then got a quick bite at the hotel’s free breakfast buffet (nothing to write home about) before checking out and catching a cab to the train station.

It looked like there had been a fresh coat of snow on the ground from the night before.  But the snow wasn’t falling very heavy, even though it was overcast.  And the snow was pretty minimal so I didn’t think too much of it.

At the train station I waited a few minutes before they let us on.  (I don’t really understand the huge rushing of people to get on the train, considering that all the seats are pre-assigned.  It isn’t like someone will swipe your seat, right?  Maybe it is for the overhead packing space …)

I know why they call them hard seats (硬座) now.  They are no gift to the lower back, that is for sure.  I spent a fair amount of time playing my Nintendo DS and thanked my lucky stars that I brought it along with me for some entertainment.  Thank you Mario Brothers!

I noticed as we were traveling that the snow level outside was getting  a bit deeper.  ”How come the farther south we travel, the thicker the snow?” I asked Ruhi rhetorically through SMS.  By the time we arrived in Hefei around 1:00 PM it was snowing pretty steadily.

I grabbed a taxi and gave them the address (intersection) of the ticket office where e-Long has their pick-ups.  It actually took me a lot of walking around to find the place.  If you didn’t know where it was, you wouldn’t know where it was.  And that was the case for me.  It was purely by accident when I got there and they handed me my ticket.  I had actually asked the person at the counter what their address was (bad labeling on the buildings) and the lady next to her handed me my ticket.

Getting a taxi from there to the airport took another 30 minutes, but I still managed to arrived about an hour before the scheduled check-in time for my flight.  The guy told me to come back at 3:50.  So I had a sandwich and drink at the airport restaurant.

3:50 rolls around and the ticket counter has plenty of customers but nothing is happening.  4:00 .. 4:20 … By 4:30 we’ve been told that the flight hasn’t left the city of origin on its way to Hefei due to weather conditions.  Once they know if there is going to be a plane or not, we will know if we are flying out or not.

I got on the phone and ASKED Ruhi to  help me book a hotel in Hefei for the night. Just in case.

But as soon as I hung up the phone with her there was a flurry of activity and it turned out the plane was cleared to come to Hefei.  I stood in line and got my boarding pass.  Seat 20A on Tianjin Airlines.  My first time to fly with them.

Now, getting your boarding pass just means you have a seat assignment.  But until the plane actually shows up, who knows if you will actually get to where you are going.  We sat in the gate area for a long time waiting.

5:30 … 6:00 … 7:00 … 8:00 … 9:00 … And the same announcement over the intercom.  ”Your flight has been delayed due to weather conditions.  Thank you for your patience”.

And all the while other flights were dropping like flies.  ”Flight MU3948 to Beijing has been cancelled .. Flight CZ2349 to Tianjin has been cancelled … ” It was like waiting for the worst lottery ever …

At 9:45 we were suddenly told that we could board the plane.  We could board?  I didn’t even know it had arrived!

We scrambled to the bus which took us out to the tarmac and on to the plane.  It turned out there were only about 30 passengers on the flight, which means everyone had some nice room to relax.  I spent the time studying my Chinese flash cards and playing my Nintendo DS.  Oh .. and a bit of sudoku during take-off and landing …

Now, this whole time I hadn’t told Ruhi that I had gotten on the plane.  Part of me, I admit, was scared that as soon as I said “I”m coming!” they would announce that the plane had a case of the measels, or it had colided with Santa Claus, or that gnomes had hijacked the airport and we were all going to be auctioned off as slaves in an underworld blackmarket operation.

The other part of me wanted to surprise her.  She was expecting me to possibly not be showing up at all that night. Especially considering how late it was.  Before we got on the plane I said that I was turning my phone off to conserve battery and that I would call her back when I got more information.

Then, after we landed in Xi’an, I called her again and told her that the airline was going to put us up in a hotel for the night and asked her to cancel the other reservation she had made for me.  (That could have been a signal right there, since airlines in China don’t really do that unless you are flying international and missing a conneciton, especially not Tianjin Airline on a 2 hour domestic route.)

I walked pretty much straight from the airplane, through the airport, and in to a taxi which drove me the 150 RMB (about $22) trip home (!!!!).  That might be cheap in the U.S. for 45 minutes in a cab, but here it feels pretty pricey.  As I was entering our building and going up the elevator I tried to call her but didn’t get through.  But she called me back and as I got off the elevator I said “Oh, hold on … I need to use the restroom.  I’ll call you back.”

Then I came in the front door and said “Excuse me.  I’m looking for a restroom?”

She was pretty surprised. ;-P

And I was pretty tired.  Still a tickle in my throat, but for the most part none too worse for wear.  What was originally supposed to be a 2 day trip to Hong Kong ended up including a week in Anhui, a brush with the swine flu and the storm of the century.

The best part of the trip was that I pack well so I was prepared for what happened.  I had warm enough clothes, I had the ability to get food and lodging, and I even had flu medicine in my emergency travel kit (never leave home without it!).

Of course, the worst part of the trip was missing a week of wushu, being stuck in the middle of no-where (no offense Fuyang fans), and being the sickest I’ve been in a few years.  But these things happen and it isn’t anything that you can control.  Sometimes you just have to take things as they come and make the best of the situation.

Especially living in China.  Where you never know what is going to happen.

Hong Kong will always have a special place in my heart.

Not for the friendships I made there, which were quite wonderful and heartfelt.

Nor for the experience it provided me with social networking and alivenotdead.com.

Not even for being the place where I picked up my limited Cantonese, learned how to jog, began to appreciate traditional kung fu, or discovered an affinity for herbal tinctures and naturopathic medicine.

Hong Kong has a special place in my heart for one major reason: The HEAT.

Before living in Hong Kong, I had never been around so much heat and humidity for longer than a summer at a time, maybe 5 months, max while in Shanghai.  But in Hong Kong?  Even the winters are warm and the summers are downright ridiculous.

It wasn’t until my second year in Hong Kong that I began to acclimate to the heat (even given my increased natural insulation), and when I visited Beijing the summer after leaving Hong Kong I was amazed at how much less “muggy” and “hot” northern China felt to me than in previous years.

However, all that seems to have changed, and my exposure to the winters of Eastern Idaho and the initial cold fronts (albeit rather tame ones) in Xi’an have made my body forget exactly what it means to be truly, uncomfortably hot and sweaty.

So, when I came to Hong Kong to get my visa renewed, I was struck at just how hot and muggy it still was, in November, of all months.  Beijing had already received a light snow a week or two before, but here in Hong Kong people were walking around with flip flops and shorts.

The plan, however was pretty simple.  Stay 2 days in Hong Kong, grab the last suitcase of things from Jack’s place, and take a train back to Xi’an, arriving in time to get to Friday’s wushu class with the Shaanxi Wushu Team.

And as much as I enjoyed my time in Hong Kong, seeing good friends, including the boys at alivenotdead, I wasn’t terribly sad to be heading back up north.  If for no other reason than to be heading to cooler climes and lower temperatures.

Now this starts to fall in to the “be careful what you wish for” category of stories, because it went from hot to freezing (Not to mention feverish), literally over night.

From Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, I grabbed a train that would take me the 34 hours up to Xi’an.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but this particular train took the Looooooong way up and we actually would go through Anhui province, which is closer to the ocean than it is to Xi’an.  Here is a map of the train route, to give you an idea …

Not exactly a direct route.  It looks more like the number 7 had a stroke.  Which would actually be accurate if it had gone through the same climate shift that I experienced during my travel.

As we left Shenzhen on the train I was lamenting that there was no a/c on the train and the staff had all of the windows on the train open.  But pretty soon it started to cool off.  In the morning I woke up and it was downright chilly on the train.  I could even see my breath when going to the dining car.  And not a small wisp of steam either.  I looked like a chain smoker with an invisible cigarette.

At around 10:00 or so we stopped at a station.  Wasn’t sure where it was.  The stations in China have very poor sinage, (unless you are standing across the street from the main entrance, which is kind of silly since most people entering a station from the front door probably know where they are) but my random guess was Wuhan (since I inaccurately assumed that we were taking a more direct route).

I went to eat lunch in the dining car around 11:30 and the man who was sitting at my table said that we were in Anhui province in a town called Fuyang, and that we were stuck here because of the snow.

The snow?  What snow?  Wasn’t I just sweating to death the day before?  And what were we doing in northern Anhui?  That was practically Shandong Province!

It turns out that one of the biggest snow storms of the last 60 years happened during the night while I was sleeping and our train was stuck at the station until the tracks ahead of us could be cleared out.  Over the next 10 hours I would learn that, not only were we stuck, but our train, being a slower one, had a lower priority so we would have to wait until around 300 other trains had moved first.  (I was told that number by one of the people on the train, but I have a feeling it might have been an exageration.  Still … even 10% of that is 30 trains …)

By the time evening came around I realized that we would be stuck for quite a while. One of my cabin-mates (a nice young man from Qinghai) decided to disembark and try our luck in the city.  Actually, for him it was a matter of necessity.  He belongs to an ethnic minority in China that makes it so that can’t eat the food on the train.  He had brought enough food for the trip, but not if you factor in a day or two of waiting around in Anhui.

We got out of the station, and froze our way in to a taxi.  He accompanied me to a hotel that Ruhi had been kind enough to reserve for me online.  For some reason, though, he didn’t join me in staying there.  Perhaps he just wanted to make sure I was safe? In any case, I checked in to the hotel, marveled that my room had a bathtub and soaked for about 30 minutes in a porcelain bucket of piping hot water.

All was going well so far.  I would check with the front desk on ways to go to Xi’an the next day and after a day or two in Fuyang I could be on my way back to Xi’an, hardly missing a beat.

That is, until I got a visit from one incredibly nasty case of the flu …

To Be Continued …

After the last events (duilian: sparring sets) of the 11th All China Games in Binzhou, Shandong, China, Ruhi and I, along with Marla, Jenn and Wu Di, headed back to the hotel, but not before stopping to take a few photos outside the sports arena.

We were going to the hotel to take care of a little file transferring.  Wu Di had asked for the footage of her events and the various photographs I took during the competition.  Wang Xi also asked me to give Wu Di his changquan form so that he could take a look.

After that everyone was on the hungry side.  First we went down the street to our favorite restaurant with the large chef, but he was just closing up (it really was a very good restaurant).  So, we climbed in a couple cabs who took us to BoHai Road No. 6 (bohai liu lu) which had a bunch of Muslim restaurants.  We walked around until we found a good one.  It just so happened to have Zhang Ji Dong eating there with a bunch of coaches and judges (he was just certified as a judge).

But we sat at our own table and then Wu Di called over some friends to visit us.  Gao Song, coach for the Hong Kong Team (originally from the Liaoning Wushu Team) and Yang Yu Hong, super nice guy from the Shanghai Wushu Team.

We ate a bunch of food and had a nice time, but unfortunately Ruhi and I had to leave early because we were waking up at 5:00 AM and it was already almost midnight.  We said our farewells and headed back to our hotel to pack and prepare for our very long day of travel on the 15th.

5:00 AM came along a bit too soon, but we managed to pack up our things, check out of our hotel and get on to our long-distance (2.5 hour) bus to Jinan by 5:35.  The bus took off as scheduled around 5:50 and we slept uncomfortably in our seats until arriving in Jinan and taking a taxi to the train station.

When we got there I realized that one of the train tickets had fallen out of my pouch.  We were planning on upgrading to the soft-sleeper, but instead upgraded one ticket and purchased another for the berth next to it.  But something pretty amazing happened later on while we were on the train.

A few hours after departing from Jinan a conductor came up to our compartment and said that someone had turned in our ticket and that we could get a refund for the price of the original ticket.  To be honest, we were floored.  It isn’t often that someone in China comes up to you and offers to give you money.  We were so surprised we took a picture to make sure we didn’t dream it.

We shared the compartment with a nice man from Urumuqi and his business associate.  He invited us to come visit him out in Xinjiang, which we just might do someday.  It really is a beautiful place.  He showed us pictures and it actually looked a lot like Eastern Idaho.  I showed him some photos of Eastern Idaho and he agreed.

Our train made its way through Shandong, across Henan, through Zhengzhou, and then over to Shaanxi, where we rolled in to Xi’an around 12:30 AM on the 16th.  We did manage to sleep for a few hours on the train, but it was hardly a good night’s rest.  After a taxi ride from the train station to Xi Gao Xin (Xi’an High Tech Zone, where we live) it didn’t take very long to crash in to bed.

And here we are in Xi’an.  I’m about a week behind on these blogs, but I’ll get you back up to date with the next one as it will be a recap of my first week in Xi’an.  Stay tuned for my adventures getting the luggage we shipped from Shenzhen, hitting the Muslim Quarter for some Shahaub Dumplings, and our outing with last year’s Chinese National Taiji Champion!