Night Moves

I think we ended up walking some 30,000 + steps the day of the Great Wall. It must be some sort of Fitbit max, as shortly there after, it quit working and I never fussed with it again.

Feeling like a satisfied child on Christmas morning, content with the wonderful gift that was our experience with the Great Wall, we pondered what to do with our remaingin time in Beijing. It’s pretty hard to top such an experience you dream about from childhood, but knowing there was more to explore, we decided to visit the Summer Palace.

Feeling slightly sore and ignoring the pushy tourists surrounding us, we slowly worked our way through the Summer Palace, lazily enjoying the beautiful grounds, gardens, and lake. The palace is especially beautiful in the summer time (surprise, surprise), which is when Chinese royalty spent their warm leisure months roaming around, not unlike us.

The sunset was beautiful, but took the warmth away with it, as a full-blown fall was upon us, and the crisp air was certainly chilly enough to carry all the way to the bone. The weather is actually one of the things I found difficult to bare while in China. Unfortunately, it was significantly colder than we had planned for, both mentally and physically. Our grand scheme had us chasing summer through Asia, bouncing from sunny island to sunny island, soaking up rays and ignoring Mother Nature’s yearly evolution from hot sunny days to dry, bitter cold. However, China had a different plan, and it can be difficult to work things out nicely with China. So, we spent our time wearing all our layers, and for some reason still chilled.

Making our way back to our hostel, we grabbed our packs that the kind hostel managers, “Cherry” and “Peach,” had been watching like hawks all day long, and ventured to the train station for our first adventure on the night train. (Side note, we will later learn of a Cantonese woman living in Hong Kong, who’s chosen American name, similarly to ‘Cherry’ and ‘Peach’ choosing their fruity American names, was ‘Bacteria,’ as she enjoyed how it sounded so).

Oh, the night train. Up until this point, we had taken quite a few night buses in Japan. It’s generally our preferred form of travel if we have an option of a similar route in the daytime since it packs a powerful one-two punch of time and money savings. We’ve become quite accustomed to odd bedtime traditions, and are able to get a decent nights sleep regardless of the off conditions.

Typically we prepare our little day pack with the overnight essentials and grab a few snacks and water to fill the Baggu. Depending on what time we depart or arrive, we’ll purchase a to-go style dinner or an easy, pre-packaged breakfast. There are plenty of vendors and at least one or two establishments selling food and treats at every sort of station, so we’re never too far from a calorie packed, mass produced, prepackaged selection, or a very non FDA approved vendor cart who has never seen a pair of gloves, never took the Target Food Safety Manager training @ the Apple Valley Super Target and learned the tragedy that is ‘Poo Poo Hands,’ and certainly finds it appropriate to blow a snot rocket prior to taking your money and starting the propane flame to sauté your meal. We have options!

We’ve made night travel prep a science: ear plugs? Check! Bandana/headband turned eye mask? Check! “Sar, don’t forget your socks!” “Thanks babe!!” As I grab my beloved travel neck pillow (the 3rd or 4th I’ve purchased in my life but the first I haven’t lost), Will asks: “do you really like that thing? I just don’t get it.” Within a matter of seconds, we’re ready to get tucked into our seats and slumber our way across a country.

This evening in Beijing, however, was a little different as we were preparing for a “hard sleeper.” Since trains have many cars, we had a few options when it came to our night traveling accomodations.

Hard seats are the cheapest option, and are exactly as they sounds: a hard, first-come, first-served seat, no fancy reclining function, zero comfort or padding to protect your behind, and upright sitting for 10, 11, maybe 12 hours. No, thank you. This is a popular choice of local travelers. Many of who may not be able to afford any other option.

Next on the menu is a soft seat. Slightly fancier than the hard seat, with minor reclining function, a bit of padding, but still upright sleeping and no assigned seating.

Hard sleepers are where the magic starts: a train car is filled with mini suites with three beds stacked on the right wall and three beds stacked on the left wall. There are maybe a dozen little suites like this all lined in a row per train car. The beds are stacked tight enough that only the bottom bed allows for any sort of upright sitting. In the hall outside the little suites there are a handful of small seats, room for about 20 people. It’s close quarters, and you either totally ignore or become quick friends with your new roommates.

The beds are well titled: hard. But there is a little cushion on top of the metal and white sheets line the beds. A fuzzy blanket is included, and being horizontal at night is a treat. These tend to be the preferred choice of backpackers, as they are still inexpensive, but provide a semi-comfortable experience and can be reserved, so you know exactly what to expect.

Soft sleepers are similar to their harder little brother, but only have 4 beds per suite (2 by 2) and have a nice, pillowy mattress that engulfs you in it’s cushiony greatness as you glide to your destination. Pillowy costs more money, and as you’ll learn through reading about our night travels, there is only so much you can do to actually enjoy it. Although we never traveled by soft sleeper, I don’t think the extra room and price would have purchased a better experience. In the end, no matter how used to it you become, it’s still noisy and bumpy, and the intense fear you’ll sleep through your stop keeps you waking hourly to triple check you’re not accidentally half way to Tibet. So, we purchased our decent condition train tickets and awaited the train.

There were people everywhere. Masses and masses of people. It was like the Winter Classic at The Big House- there were at least 100,000 aggressive and likely drunk people waiting for their trains (that’s a huge exaggeration. Hopefully you see my point that it was very busy). We wandered around looking for our platform and adjacent waiting room, asking numerous train-station employed looking people what the symbols on our tickets meant- top, middle, or bottom bed – and found our way. The room was huge, and every seat was filled with either people or their gigantic bags. When I say gigantic bags, I don’t mean like the diva that flies first class with more luggage than there are buttons in the cockpit. These bags were sewn together sacks and sheets that create a bag-like form. Majority of the Chinese men and woman were practically smaller than their luggage. Who knows what all these sacks were filled with, but the massive amounts of them made me wonder if everyone on this train happened to be moving and brought all their belongings with them.

Some of the sacks were filled with food. We would see giant bags of produce traveling in a hard seat serving as a pillow to the slumped over passenger in the next seat. Or, we would smell a crate of traveling seafood. Luckily in the latter example, the ‘fresh’ fish would travel in the bottom of the bus or a different car of the train, keeping most of the smell at bay. Still, a fishy fragrance would linger up, and an unfortunate whiff would make my stomach turn and wake me from my sleep.

We had read that the train station was filled with quite the cast of characters, and were advised to carefully watch our pockets and belongings. We were also informed that we needed to arrive at the station two hours prior to departing, so had an ample amount of time to fill being cautious. We snuck off to a much quitter platform waiting room to watch a movie on the MacBook and waited for our train to arrive.

We moseyed back to our platform about 45 minutes before departure, in no hurry to get there and unconcerned about our trip. We were still awe-struck by the masses of people traveling with their massive bags when we became even more awestruck by the current state of our platform.

We immediately assumed something was wrong. There must have been a fire, or terrorist, or pack of wolves threatening all the passengers into a frenzied panic, pushing them towards the entry gate to the train. The entire mass of people ebbed and flowed in a chaotic blob. People were tripping over bags, ramming their way through the mob, stumbling to stay upright. It was pure chaos.

We quickly scanned the room to see what the issue was, and for a moment felt concerned something must have been terribly wrong.

Nope.

It was just 45 minutes before the train left. The LOGICAL thing to do in China is to push and shove until you can get where you want. In this case, it was onto the train that hadn’t arrived yet. Remember the time Will ‘squeezed’ that aggressive little old lady that was shoving her way around the Forbidden City? This was a much more concentrated, much more aggressive, and much worse version of that.

The next 45 minutes was pure insanity. How no one died boarding the train is so beyond my ability to comprehend the logical that I am still in awe by it. It was nothing short of a mosh pit at Warped Tour.

I can KIND of understand the ridiculous anxiety with this situation, simply because the seats are first come, first served. With bags that size, the ability to snatch a few seats the fastest meant a significantly better ride. And, unsold sleepers were up for grabs. Upon reaching your car, it was common to find a Chinese man sound asleep in your previously clean and made bed. A little tap-tap-tap and ticket showing was enough to move the unlucky squatter. Will ended up moving a woman out of his spot, while her friend looked on, slightly smug that she didn’t have to move.

So, how do you manage if you find yourself in the middle of a mosh pit? Well, you mosh. We shoved, pushed, and practically punched our way through the crowd, just like the rest of the party, and made our way to the front. The pressure from the crowd behind us pushed us forward in a lazy march. We barely needed to move our feet as we were basically lifted and carried forward. It was a bit scary to funnel through the turnstyle with such force and aggression behind us, which immediately got scarier as we had to decend then climb back up a flight of stairs, but we eventually made it to our car, unscathed, and climbed into our bunks. We had finally figured out we were the top and middle beds (unfortunately for the aforementioned woman Will kicked out of his bed), and settled in for the night.

It was surprisingly OK, and we got to our destination well before the sun came up. We hopped of the train into the freezing morning dew, and stumbled around a bit to get our bearings and figure out where we were going. As with most overnight travel, we were ever so warmly greeted by a slue of taxi drivers, screaming at our sleepy faces to get in their taxi. We knew we needed the city bus, so we attempted to figure out where the nearest bus stop was. We stumbled upon a nice Dutch woman, Virginia, who was also looking for the bus, and together forged through sea of taxicab drivers and made our way to what we hoped was our bus stop.

Still surrounded by the dark night sky and uncomfortably cold, we waited for our ride at the bus stop, hoping we found the right one, and were very ready for the warmth of the sun to take the chill out of our bones.

From Beijing to Datong, with Love,

Sara + Will