Return to Wuhan
Yesterday afternoon I boarded a train and slowly made my way north out of Guangxi and eventually back to Wuhan. Usually when travelling by train in China for any journey longer than a couple of hours I choose a sleeper, for the extra space and comfort. Any journey longer than two hours is not to be recommended on Chinese trains, with the exception of the fast express trains. Occasionally I use the fast express trains, but generally I stick with the slower more economical option.
The sleeping compartments have two options, 1st and 2nd class, or soft sleeper and hard sleeper. Normally I choose to travel on the 2nd class, hard sleeper. I find it to be more sociable. On the hard sleeper the carriage or car is divided into 11 sections of 6 beds, the bunks are three high with the top bunk (the cheapest option) being over 2 metres from the floor.
The train yesterday had sold all the hard sleepers that were available, despite buying my ticket ten days in advance, there was one soft sleeper available when I bought my ticket so I had a little more comfort than I usually do. The soft sleepers have bigger beds, only two high, so four people to a compartment and a lockable door. They also have a western style WC.
The train arrived on time just before 3pm and after saying goodbye to my wife, had my ticket checked for the 4th time since arriving in the station and went aboard to find my reserved space. The door to my section of four berths was locked, after knocking on the door and getting no reply I asked the attendant to open the door for me, there were two people inside, both sleeping and neither wanting to move to unlock the door. I did not lock the door, but decided to take an afternoon nap.
Around two hours later I woke up as the train was stopping at Liuzhou, I used to work close to the city of Luzhou in Sichuan province and many people confuse the two. The other two people were awake and we had a brief discussion of the usual, where are you going, why are you going there and where do you come from. My wife had prepared some food for me so I ate that, drank some coffee and played some games on my phone to help pass the time.
On Chinese trains there is usually some music piped through the carriage, often traditional Chinese music, but on this train, part of the time I heard western music, with the lyrics sung in Chinese. I like some Chinese music, but these renditions were not likely to become my new favourites. On arriving at Guilin station the train filled up with lots of new arrivals, including a fourth person into the section I was in. About an hour later at around 9 pm, the couple that had been on the train when I got on reached their stop, I then tried to get some sleep as it was very quiet. Around ten or ten thirty, I woke up, the train had stopped and noisy kids were making their way along the carriage, I just knew they were destined for the spaces in the section that I was trying to sleep in.
It turned out they were two girls, obviously very excited to be on the train with their mother or grandmother. After about an hour they were quiet and I was able to return to sleeping. The train was due to arrive at Wuhan’s Wuchang station just before 7am, the two girls woke up and were very noisy from 5am. They seemed to have two volume controls, loud shouting or sleeping. I sat on one of the seats available along the corridor, trying to distance myself from the din, while I drank some coffee and ate some boiled eggs. I did notice these two girls were eating a Chinese snack food and instead of eating from the pack, it was transferred to their hands. They were then running around with greasy hands, their mother/grandmother too busy on her phone to control them. My bags were on the top bunk and out of their reach, so I was not worried about their greasy hands coming into contact with my bags.
There was an elderly lady in one of the lower berths, she was trying to ignore this mayhem and sleep, and these two girls kept falling on top of her. I must say the Chinese are generally very patient when dealing (or not) with other peoples out of control kids. About 30 minutes before arriving in Wuhan, the attendant returned peoples tickets that were getting off the train at that point, including mine, the elderly lady, clearly felt this was enough and together with her bags went to sit at the other end of the carriage. At this point, the door shut and it was not until arriving in the station that I realized they had locked it from the inside. I banged loudly on the door until it was opened, collected my bags and made my way off the train a few minutes later, not sure why some people feel the need to lock themselves away, the ironic thing was, during the night, when most people do lock the door it was wide open.
I then headed for the metro, about 8 stops with one change from line 4 to 2, before catching a bus, in the morning rush hour this took 2 hours. I do think rush hour is the wrong term for this busy period of the daily grind to and from work.
