Sitting and Waiting
I am currently in Guangxi province in the far south of China, about 100 kms from the city of
Nanning. I arrived here yesterday evening after a train journey of almost 16 hours from Wuhan. The train journey was quite uneventful, travelling with my wife and son. We started from Wuhan at 2am, we had sleeping tickets so getting on the train and finding our reserved sleeping berths is easy. The attendant for our carriage said something about people in our spaces as he checked our tickets as we boarded, and sure enough people were soundly sleeping in our allocated spaces. After waking them up, we were able to take up our reserved places and were soon sleeping. Around 6.30 am I was woken by my wife, our son was already awake, and did I want some breakfast, not at that time, sleep was a better option for me.
About an hour later the train was too noisy to sleep any longer, so along with some coffee, I ate my breakfast of steamed buns and boiled eggs. Most Chinese people will eat a type of rice porridge for their breakfast, this is not to my liking, although I do like the options of various steamed bread and buns. Once I had finished eating my son wanted to play, he is only two years old so discovering new things all the time.
Later during the morning when my wife was sleeping, my son and I took regular walks along part of the train all part of his learning and discovering new things. He prefers travelling by bus over the train as there is more for him to see out of the windows of a bus, as the road is busier than beside the railway.
The train was listed as being full, and when we got on at Wuhan, it certainly seemed to be that way. It had started its route in Beijing before getting to Wuhan and as it continued on its way to its final destination of Nanning some people got off the train, usually to be replaced by others. About 4 or 5 hours from our destination the train made its routine stop at Guilin, this is a major city in the north of Guangxi province as well as being an important tourist destination so lots of travellers left the train at this point.
The sleeping carriages on Chinese trains, have spaces for 66 people in each, as we wound our way further south, the carriage had less and less passengers, our stop of Litang was the last stop before Nanning, there were lass than ten people in our carriage as we prepared to reach our destination, my wife's brother called her, asking what we time we would arrive as he was at the station to meet us. The train journey was a long one, lots of sitting and waiting, playing games on your phone etc.
This morning after a good nights sleep we hoped to begin the process of reapplying for my visa, the reason we had taken this journey, we arrived at the first police station with all my documents, hopefully this time everything will be in order and the process will go through easily. The first hurdle was getting a letter of registration to prove I am registered with the local police here in Litang. On arriving at the police station and finding the correct office, we were told to come back tomorrow, as the person that deals with this was not available today. so now I have another day of frustration of sitting and waiting and doing nothing.
Hopefully all will go well tomorrow.
