So there we were in the slightly warmer waiting room. I went to the bathroom and when I returned, even though it was half an hour till our train was due to go, everyone had been let out onto the platform and the only people left were Liam and two ticket attendants. I got my stuff and they stamped our tickets and then out we were, standing in the freeze waiting for our train to turn up! It was only the dozen or so people from the small waiting room but when the train arrived and we tried to get on they directed us to a carriage further down. By the time we got there they'd let everybody else out and so the queue for our carriage was massive. We went along to the next one down, where the woman looked at our tickets, then dubiously back at us, and finally allowed us on, though she directed us back down the train. I think we were in the wrong place but she didn't want to go through the hassle of explaining this to two foreigners. Sometimes I do love to play the stupid Westerner card.
The train was packed full but we found a little alcove by one of the compartment doors, where we could wait until everyone had settled and then see what the craic was. We had a no-seat ticket. But the train was already on its way and loads of people were still standing so we guessed that it was like all Chinese trains - completely overcrowded. I left Liam with the bags and scouted out the next compartment, but it was all the same. Also there were no places for us to set up camp. The trains we'd taken in Xinjiang at least had had bits by the stairs to house those without seats, but this train did not. We settled down on top of our bags and exhaustedly tried to sleep. It was all in vain though as the train was stupidly cold, and every time someone opened the door to the compartment I started to shiver uncontrollably. We had a lovely passenger in a red coat who was standing next to the door and closing it every time someone came through and rudely and inconsiderately left it swinging open, but he found himself a seat and so every time it was left open I had to get up to close it. No chance of settling down there! I gave up and woke myself up. A group of migrant workers got on, and at first they really annoyed me. At one point about seven of them were just standing above us and looking down at us like animals in a zoo. However when I was picking at a hangnail one offered me his nail clippers. I was exhausted and so forgot to open them before I tried to use them; they all laughed at me but it was good-natured. Then they let me file and clean my nails but didn't talk to me even when I thanked them in Chinese. Next I got out my book and started to write my diary and they started to discuss between themselves whether it was Russian or not, at which point I interrupted and told them it was in fact English. They looked at me in total amazement and then chatted with me for a bit. One guy was utterly convinced I was Russian and I could do nothing to convince him otherwise. They got me to read out a passage from their newspaper and they seemed impressed so it was all good. Then a kid came over and told them that they shouldn't stare and talk to Westerners because we don't like it. True, this is sometimes the case, but actually I think when Chinese people talk to us it is excellent free practice and I was really quite enjoying myself! The men didn't speak to me after that, just stared in a bizarrely paternal way. I saw a seat next to a woman in a white coat who had been giving me evils for ages; she liked me even less when I asked if someone was sitting there and she had to say no. I tried to wake Liam up but he was refusing to open his eyes so I went and took the seat. Then nobody was in the seat opposite for ages so I got Liam and we both had seats! A man came over not long after Liam had sat down and kicked Liam out of his seat, but his alcove place had already been usurped by the migrant workers, so he stood next to me. The man behind him took pity and kindly gave him his seat, so we spent the next three hours snoozing and occasionally dozing off.
We reached Baotou at 7am. Just before, they had opened all the curtains and we found out why it was so cold - the windows were laced with snow and frost, and outside the compartment in the smoking bit the windows had a covering of a sheet of ice - on the INSIDE! This shoked us at the time but after weeks of Northern Chinese train travel we soon got pretty used to it - it's a fairly standard situation. A girl who I will call Sophie came and spoke to me in pretty good English and was weirdly enough studying at Xinjiang Agriculture University (pretty near our uni in Urumqi). She was really nice actually, and I may contact her now I'm back in Urumqi. She gave me the best present ever: a flask full of hot water to warm my hands! No offence to all of you that have bought me diamond rings and fancy electronic devices and so on... but right then I would have sold my kidney for an ounce of warmth! Heaven. She let me keep it as well!
Baotou was equally cold. We were delighted to be in a brand new province though (an autonomous region actually)! Immediately on arrival, we went straight to the ticket office to get tickets on to the capital of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot (Huhehaote). For no certain reason, a staff member asked where we were going while we were in the middle of a queue, and when we told her Hohhot, she directed us straight to the front of the queue, where we bought hard seats to Hohhot for just 23 kuai. Next we got in a taxi and asked for the bus station. "Which one?" asks the driver. Whichever one can get us to Genghis Khan's Mausoleum - the reason we were in Baotou! "Oh, you can't get a bus today," he says. "None of them are running on the expressway because the weather is so bad." He took us to the station anyway, where we were immediately met with a desperate mob of taxi drivers. We wanted to go to the mausoleum; me especially badly, given my new-found obsession with anything Mongolian, but the prices we were being offered to get us there were extortionate. We had some choices: go to a nearby town and try to get a bus from there, though they also would probably not be running; get a taxi to the mausoleum but be left there to find our own way back (the least logical idea ever - the mausoleum is in the middle of the grasslands, ie. nowhere, and we wouldn't be able to get back for love nor money!); or get a taxi there and back for 1000 kuai. We eventually got a man down to 800, and another girl came in the taxi. It was ridiculous. We'd already missed Yan'an and we needed more success than this! So off we went. It was quarter to nine and we had tickets to Hohhot for that afternoon, so time was of the essence. By the time we left, the weather had worked itself up into a proper snowstorm. I had never seen snow like it. The driver asked if we had ever seen this much snow before, and before we could answer the girl rudely said "they don't understand." Charming individual.
On the way I fell asleep, and woke up when we were stopped by the police. They had a chat with us about the usual: what country we're from, studying, travelling, etc; played with our passports a bit and then let us on our way. It seemed utterly pointless. I fell back asleep and this time when I woke up the girl was gone and we could see the buildings of the mausoleum on the horizon. We got out and the driver told us we had to be really quick so he could get us back in time for our train. So speed tourism it was.
The mausoleum turned out to be a museum built in the shape of the Mongolian script of the word Emperor (hehan) dedicated to Genghis Khan and the Yuan Dynasty of China, established by Genghis Khan's nephew Kublai Khan, and a grassland with huge larger-than-life models of the Genghis Khan war machine. There was a huge relief map on the floor depicting the Mongol Empire but as it had snowed we couldn't see anything. By now the snow had stopped and the sky was the clearest blue. We reached the end gate and there seemed to be more buildings down a looooong driveway. There was a guard standing at the gate who said that these buildings were new-ish and and were built on the site of the original mausoleum, and that we'd have to walk all the way down and pay more. We were worried about time and decided not to, though I wish desperately that we had now, as it turned out we had plenty of time. But often mausoleums are pretty empty and it is the actual building that is important, and that we saw. In fact the exact site of Genghis Khan's burial ground is unknown: he was buried by his attendants, who were then all killed by soldiers to prevent the sacred secret from coming out, and in turn those soldiers were assassinated. So nobody knows where he is buried.
We hurried back and soon we were speeding back to Baotou, along highways that were very definitely open and not covered in any snow at all! The driver took us to the station for our 19.55 train, but it was only half four so we went somewhere to eat. We came across a little restaurant and had the most foul kungpao chicken and pass over the oil meat I've ever put in my mouth. The meat was pork where I'm used to eating beef (eating in Xinjiang, a Moslem region, pork is fairly rare) and the chicken was pale and chewy and had no spice! The flavours were weird and it made me a bit nauseous. We went over to a supermarket which is now officially my favourite Chinese supermarket of all time. A random old female shop assistant came over, patted me on the shoulder and very kindly said "waiguoren" (foreigner). Normally I get a bit annoyed at being thus labelled all the time, but her maternal tone of voice really flummoxed me! I didn't know how to respond, so I just smiled and walked on a bit. Then I heard her and a girl customer in the shop discussing how pretty I was! Next, I found tubes of what appeared to be Cadbury's chocolate eclairs. I guessed they'd be fake seeing as you can't get Cadbury's over here, but bought some to try and they taste authentic and were cheap too! Finally at the till, a guy asked if we spoke Chinese and we replied yes, to which our cashier in all seriousness said "Of course they do, they're Chinese experts, aren't you." Then I think he undercharged us. (I only realised this later or I would have given them their money, seeing as they were so nice to me!) Lovely shop : )
Baotou train station was far more comfortable than Yinchuan's, and we waited out the few hours easily. There was a really cute little toddler with a topknot who we wanted to babynap. She was running around having fun with her big sister but she kept not being able to locate her mother. At one point she ran up to us calling me 'mom' until she noticed that we were not, in fact, her mother but two white laowai. She stopped in total astonishment, then ran away.
We boarded our train and got to our seats quickly. In our group of six seats, were two migrant workers and a little toddler girl and her mother, and a man that Liam quickly claimed as his future husband. The girl was adorable and so clearly meant to be my daughter. First she ate 3 mini oranges, then two chicken feet (oh yum) and then started on this huge bready thing. She was really chatty and precociously intelligent and asked the group at large whose food was whose on the table. A man gave her another bread style thing and so she happily had two on the go at once. She discussed our foreignness with her mom and was truly delighted when Liam and I stuck our tongues out at each other. I read the China guidebook and she said that when she was a big girl she was going to read big books like me too. We decided she was really clever. When Liam was messing around pulling faces nobody noticed. Then I said, I bet the girl does, because she knows... well, she just KNOWS. Liam repeated, yeah, she KNOWS. and then the little girl repeated she KNOWS in a really cute voice. Creepily accurate impression for one so young. When Liam went off to smoke she jumped up and came up to me and asked me something, which I didn't understand. Everybody around me laughed and waited for my reaction. I said sorry, I don't understand, and she seemed perfectly delighted with that. Then she asked the migrant man opposite me whether she could get past. He caught her up and asked her what's her name in standard Chinese ("ni jiao shenme mingzi?") but with a fairly strong accent. She told him she couldn't understand his Chinese! (fair play to her really). Her mom had to translate. She told him Bai Mengxia but in turn he couldn't understand her. I liked to see this lack of understanding played out in front of me, though I found it a little strange because I, a foreigner, could understand them both. Then she kept asking him his name in the northern Chinese way "ni jiao sha ya?" over and over again, but he pretended not to understand. She found a little friend and they played a walking up and down the carriage game. That was our entertainment for the trip. So cute! You can tell I wanted to keep this girl!
We arrived at Hohhot and as at Baotou instantly bought our tickets to the next destination, Datong. We offered our student cards for a discount and had to wait ages before we were told we couldn't use them. Tickets 33 kuai each to Datong. It was snowing in Hohhot but we didn't have good directions to a guesthouse Liam had found on the internet so we asked a taxi driver. He was really unhelpful but we eventually found out from him where the road we wanted was. We walked along and found the place the guesthouse, number 78, was supposed to be, between 76 and 80. It clearly exists only in a parallel universe, because it just wasn't there. We walked back to a bingguan (hotel) we'd seen and got a standard room with double bed for two nights, and almost immediately (quarter to twelve) set our alarms for 7am and turned in. Liam and I have become quite adept at sharing a bed now which is useful because it means we can get any pretty much any accommodation.
A Mongolian army horseman... scary stuff.
Hehan (Khan/Emperor). Kudos to the architects for making a museum in this shape!
The Mongolians luuurrve Genghis Khan! This is the memorial shrine to him at the mausoleum, complete with hada and monetary offerings.
The mausoleum building.
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