China 2: Getting around by train and bus

China: a really great, interesting place to travel and vast enough to challenge even the most ambitious.

All in all, we travelled about 4000 kilometres within China by train and bus and had one internal flight of 1200km. We enjoy land travel as it keeps us orientated and allows a sense of continuity and connectedness with the land... yes, it takes a loooong time and is a little less comfortable than flying... but there were compensations provided by the numerous incidents, cameos and (mis)adventures on our train and bus trips!

Train stations in China are run almost like airports - designated departure waiting rooms, departure gates and access to platforms strictly controlled, platform officials allocated to every carriage. Stops at stations are short, punctual, and it all works very efficiently. Range of service is wide – from excellent 300kph express trains all the way down to the 6-berth hard sleeper accommodations with way too many people packed into very small spaces and that brought our western sensibilities face to face with local practices!

However, the first trick is to buy tickets. Sold at the station of departure only on presentation of passports (locals also need to present ID documents). So...

Hangzhou railway station: we want train tickets to our next stop, Suzhou. A giant hall, reverberating with noise, absolutely jam-packed with people getting tickets to any of a huge number of destinations. About 30 counters, each with a queue of 40 passengers, each counter sells tickets only to specific destinations.

The huge electronic information boards are very useful if you read Mandarin Chinese. There was not a word of English, neither on the information boards nor that we could find amongst the thousand or so people there! The iPad had been loaded with an English-Chinese translator... we do eventually find the right queue and finally get our tickets, then find our designated waiting room - one of 8 such vast chambers, allowing us a few hours to watch this different world go by and try to learn something about the people and practices in our host country.

Our first two train trips: Hangzhou to Suzhou and later to Beijing - amazingly comfortable, clean trains travelling at 300kph. These express trains are first class travel and the quietness of almost zero track sounds accompanied by incredible speeds is fantastic. Scenes of intensively farmed lands and excellent infrastructure sped by.

Then came the train to Datong from Beijing. Bit of a shocker, this one –and caught us by surprise. So impressed by the previous trains, our expectations were high....

But. Being assigned (without option) to a 6-berth hard-sleeper compartment should have warned us; we had been advised to always try for the 4-berth soft sleepers. And anyway this was a day-time trip for heavens' sake, departing at 9:00 am... A sleeper compartment?? However, the tickets had been booked locally for us way before the time, so we thought carriage 10; seat numbers 16-18 sounded okay for the four of us notwithstanding that two of us appeared destined for seat 16.

In fact the carriage is open-plan: a narrow passage along one side, with sleeping “compartments" open to the passage; each "compartment" wall supports 3 bunks on each side, tiny tables between the two vertical rows and tinier tables in the passage, flanked by minuscule flap-down seats. About 60 to 80 people per standard carriage at capacity.

The carriage, when the four of us got on, was at capacity, it seemed. There were people sleeping, sitting, standing around; we had no idea where the train had come from, but they had already been on it for 24 hours, and this was evidenced by the state of the bedding. On finding ‘seats’ 16-18 we realised that each number applies to a vertical threesome of bunks. A Chinese character adjacent to the seat number allocates you to the lower, middle or upper bunk. We ended up with 16 lower and 16 mid, 17 lower and 18 lower in the adjacent compartment.

Imagine the worst bedlinen in the worst crumpled mess, and it is not yours... But then, horror, it IS yours! Our beds were all occupied and it is uncertain who was more shocked: the foreigners seeing the state of their ‘seats’ or the locals seeing their settlements disrupted – and by whom.

So people found that they had to leave "their" accommodation and the foreigners acclimatised themselves (in Rolf's case, by rolling up and removing all the bedding and pillows; the exposed mattress cover with its dirt of ages, old Pokemon cards, flattened cigarette stubs, etc. being altogether preferable to the warm 24 hour-soiled linen of others).

Books came out, eyelids drooped, Irene on 16 mid (sarong draped gracefully over her piles of bedding from both bunks) tried to remember not to lift her head more than knee height or she would knock herself out on the top bunk; we listened to the sounds of other peoples' coughing and eating and radios and hoicking (and imagined where the rich product from those lungs and throats might end up).

Limited discussion here of the toilets (memories of a Vietnam train, but then at least we had a Pringles container....).Turns out hoicking and discarding of fish and other food remains happens in and near enough to the toilet and the solitary washbasin, and also more generally on the floor in the vicinity. (The windows do not open – and we suspect this is to protect people outside the train?).

As mild horror gave way to wry acceptance, the flat Beijing industrial lands gave way to harsh dry craggy mountains; through many tunnels to flatter land again; we had a glimpse of the Great Wall: delighted to see it in its natural state hundreds of kilometres from the tourist site north-east of Beijing. Then came industrial areas with coalfields and belching smoke stacks and polluted atmosphere. So the trip ended and was chalked up as an adventure - and with a wonderful accompanying sense of being part of the land of China as it developed and changed along the way.

The overnight train to Pingyao, two nights on, was better.... 4-berth soft sleeper, compartment door unlocked for our arrival - pristine.

Then came our last train trip, a 10hour overnighter to Xi'An, 6-berth hard sleeper again. Fore-armed by our previous experience, we were steeled for the worst, and so it was not quite as bad.

But the three snoring men in very close proximity in their bunks opposite Irene, Rolf, Sonja (top to bottom) were less than endearing, Delwin’s feet were used as steps to reach the top bunk on his side, and we were pleased to reach Xi'An intact, not refreshed but with increased knowledge of how some of the world turns and temporarily with less enthusiasm for Chinese trains.

PS No, just because Irene is wearing the same clothes in each pic does not mean they are taken on the same train trip... these were the travel clothes, ok!? Backpacks are small... and heavy...

A local airline carried us from Xi’An to Lijiang, and provided good perspective of the dramatic change from flat lands to mountainous terrain, but we missed the sense of slowly discovering the land which is best gained from bus travel.

The next three journeys in SW China were by bus: generally more comfortable than the trains (we did stay away from the notorious sleeper buses) they do however offer a bewildering range of comfort from luxury air-conditioned coaches with reclining seats all the way to cramped hard seats designed specifically for very small people and to give every passenger backache within minutes and no space for luggage except on your (already compressed) lap or piled between seats.

However, the price of relatively more physical comfort was a lot of fear and trepidation, on several occasions, whilst making our way along narrow passes with perilous drops unprotected by barriers of any sort.

Spectacular scenery, with worrying views of where you will be in a few minutes.

Bus travel also provides passengers with first-hand, and often intimate, knowledge of local traffic conditions and driving habits. We read somewhere that the vehicle population in China increased from 10 million to 70 million in less than 10 years. This means inter alia that the driving experience of most drivers sharing the road is measured in months rather than years! Lane discipline – including for oncoming traffic lanes – is not particularly understood.

Road construction (except for the recent wave of superhighways) did not provide shoulders and with the intensive land use, farm vehicles use the arterial roads for access to fields and simply stop when they wish to load / unload or simply stop! – instant traffic jam and two way traffic reduced to the single remaining lane.

In towns / villages this is exacerbated by street hawkers setting up their stalls ‘within’ the lanes – the sidewalk having been taken up by the shopkeepers extending their space to the edge of the road. Yes, this photo was taken from inside our almost-moving bus; we had to wait while street-stalls gave us a little more street in which to proceed.

Going nowhere slowly is great for people-watching, and in fact for listening: we heard the squeals of piglets being transported past us in a lady's back carriers!

Some of the vehicles that occupy the lanes are bullock carts or people-drawn carts resulting in the speed of the vehicle traffic being reduced to the pace of the burdened bullock / farmer (and similarly burdened wife), until he turns off the road.

Therefore notwithstanding that departure times of buses are meticulously adhered to, arrival times are generally less precise – by an hour or two or more! We learned to let that go and enjoyed watching the world passing by.