Travelling To Tangshan And Onwards

Yesterday we left our house at 5PM. Got a taxi to the train station and passed through the requisite baggage X-ray machines. We got onto the train at 5-30, having walked down the side of the queue and pushed in quite magnificently and legitimately. As we only had were standing tickets, and had gotten onto the train quite early, we managed to get our luggage up onto the racks quickly and sad down in other peoples seats. They arrived and we got up again. One woman sitting near us put her bag down on her seat and spent most of the journey hanging off her seat into the aisle. Miao said she must be protecting something precious such as some eggs.

There was another man, who like us had standing tickets, who I felt was quite rude as he never moved when people walked up and down the aisles. which meant the people around him had to move to let people past. I felt he also invaded people’s personal space too much, and didn’t act like the other passengers.

I spent the first part of the journey sat on the floor of the aisle, reading Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion” and shifting myself whenever anyone needed past. Others had little folding stools and were playing cards together with other passengers. I purchased a can of beer pretty early on, to feel time passing more quickly. Miao and her mother quite vehemently persuaded me not to have another. The boring tiresome nature of travelling at night, especially an 8hr train journey without a seat can be quite exhausting.

At various times, people around us stood up and offered us seats. As the train went on, and stopped at various places, we got seats on a more permanent basis, which was a relief. Among the people around us there was a Fertilizer specialist who worked as a salesman in Beijing. There was also a young couple who perhaps got a little too close to each other in this quite restrained society. The most interesting person was an sculptor who was going to Beijing to publish a book. He had a booklet of photographs of various small and large pieces of work he’d done, some paper cuttings of his art being featured in local exhibitions and a few old photos of him looking young, handsome, and with a full head of hair.

We arrived TangShan at 3AM, and got off. The weather was very misty and quite cold. The first thing we did was to buy tickets home, which were twice as expensive as we were expecting, but thankfully it’s on the sleeper train, so we’ll have beds. Next task was to wait until 7:00AM which is when the bus service became available to the little village that Miao’s maternal grand-parents live in. We crashed in the Train ticket office for a little while, then toilets were searched for, and we found a California Beef Noodles restaurant. We got a large bowl of “you guessed it” beef noodles, and the other two visited the facilities. We all slept for an hour in the restaurant as it was warm, and we had seats at a table. We then went off in search of the Bus depot, bought tickets. At the depot there were a few shops, one of which sold use of a small bed, which while people were waiting, their children could have a sleep on. While we were waiting for our bus to be ready at 7:15 AM, a woman’s child, who was sitting behind me, kept poking me in the back of my head and ears for no reason whatsoever.

Finally we got on our very decrepit looking bus, which seemed to have many people on already, even though Miao’s mother had been walking around asking people to let her onto the bus. Our 2 cases were placed by the conductress where there was space, in front of other peoples knees and went to sit at the back, after having asked the two girls to move so that we could look after the cases ourselves. As the bus went along the passenger doors kept swinging open and closed, and I was worried that our cases would fall out.

Along the way there people kept getting on and off seemingly randomly, according to the conductresses whim. We encountered a lot of heavy-works traffic and were stopped for a long time. To me the only reason for the jam was the selfishness of Chinese drivers trying to get in front of others as the road got narrower. We saw lots of farmers vehicles go past, like big lorries of feces, others of thick metal cables, others of plant matter waste. We went past many fields of sweet corn (mandarin = yu [you] mi [me]), and factories and peoples homes being built.

When we were dropped off, we were met by Miao’s maternal grandfather (ye ye [yea yea]) who had used his rather old bike to cycle to the road. Miao greeted him and then said that he was fat (just a Chinese honesty and care for health). We walked a fair while from the main road to arrive at their house. Again there was lots of sweetcorn, which obviously had been recently harvested. There were lots of sheathes lying on the road and stacks and stacks of sweetcorn on roofs and hanging up. Just before we arrived at the house we were met on the road by Miao’s maternal grandmother.

Related posts:

1. Beijing to Dubai and Onwards to London and Home
2. Train journey to Shanghai
3. Yesterday's Train Trip
4. Beijing Train
5. Miao's Return