We slept the innocent sleep of those who don't know what they're letting themselves in for. I woke up at some point, I believe 3am, to go to the bathroom (this is what happens if you chug water all day to help flush food poisoning toxins out of the system!) and then was woken up at 6.20am by the ticket woman. If you get a sleeper train, when you first get on you have to hand over your ticket, and they give you a card, sometimes plastic, sometimes metal, which corresponds to your bunk. Then when you're due to get off, they come back and switch the tickets back. This way they can check the right people are in the right bunks, and if you're are travelling through the night, you won't miss your stop because they'll wake you up. For once, something in China makes logical sense! After sleepily getting my ticket back I went to wash and clean my teeth. Every time I am on a sleeper train and go to clean my teeth I get astonished looks from the Chinese because I clean them for so long and so thoroughly. Then you spot the blackened stumps that they call teeth and understand their surprise. I changed out of my pyjamas back into day clothes under the duvet like I had the night before, and very elegantly too!
Taiyuan is the provincial capital of Shanxi. Taiyuan Station was pure and utter chaos. I refuse to accept that that was the normal condition of the station; something must have happened. I later found out that it was related to the disruptive snowstorms that were sweeping the south of the country - the after-effects were felt in every province, because it was approaching Spring Festival, which is the traditional time of year that everyone is displaced around the country visiting relatives. There were hundreds, possibly thousands (literally) of people outside the station, some queuing to get in, some just hanging around, and a massive queue was snaking across the courtyard. It was 7am and last night's snow hadn't all been cleared. Street-sweepers were on the job, but we wished they weren't immediately upon stepping onto the swept flagstones of the courtyard and realising that the snow-covered parts of ground were INFINITELY safer. People were slipping and sliding everywhere, and the pair of us both regularly nearly fell. By a few hours' time, the remaining snow had taken on that singularly Chinese consistency of sand. In Urumqi the precipitation is so oily with pollution that when it falls and people walk on it, it so closely ressembles that stage of baking when you rub butter into flour with your fingertips that it is quite shocking.
Police and railway staff and even military with guns were stationed to guide, control and keep the masses from rioting. Naturally the long, snaking queue I mentioned was the queue for the ticket hall. We joined it and got annoyed at being discussed as per usual, hearing "waiguoren" (foreigner) around us. At least waiguoren is better than laowai... waiguoren just calls a spade a spade: waiguo = foreign, ren = person/people; but laowai is kind of offensive. It literally means 'old foreign', but sometimes has a bit of a mocking tone about it. My personal favourite is waiguo pengyou = foreign friend. That makes me warm inside, especially when polite parents say to their kids, "oh let our foreign friend through, don't push". Rare, but on occasion does happen. Floors me every time.
The queue was moving at a glacial pace, and it occurred to me that if the trains were like this then maybe it would be better to get a long-distance bus. I wasn't aware of the problems with the snow at the time or I would never have suggested it. Liam refused to make a decision so it was left to me, and I made the stupid decision to leave the queue for the bus station. As we neared the bus station our taxi driver spoke to a man who said that the expressways were closed due to the weather conditions, which would only have added to the problems at the train station, and so no buses could run. We got out of the taxi anyway, and it felt like Baotou Take Two as people immediately flocked around us laowai like vultures round a kill. It was true that there were just simply no buses. We tried one taxi driver out for size and he quoted us 600kuai, which was such a shocking rip-off that we were speechless. Back to the station we decided to go. Easy in theory, but no free taxis heading our way or anywhere in the vicinity it seemed. After waiting a ridiculous amount of time at a crossroads we walked down to the bus stop nearby and got a bus to the station instead. The queue had literally doubled in length and no doubt if we'd stayed in it we'd've bought tickets by this point, but what was done was done. The queue was double thick so Liam joined one side and I joined the other. We soon (I mean like years later) realised our queue was in fact just the queue to join another queue, which you waited in just so you could join the queue inside the ticket office. The human body is not designed to cope with standing statically in that kind of temperature and environment, and mine had started to violently protest by the time we reached the head of queue 1. Then upon joining queue 2, something miraculous happened. Because we had originally been in two queues, but queue 2 was merged into just one, Liam and I were split up, so I asked a guard if I could go stand by Liam a bit further up. He said okay but then another guard pulled me out of the queue. For one worrying moment I thought I was being sent to the back for pushing in, but in fact the military must have just taken pity on us because they moved us past the whole line straight into the station for no apparent reason whatsoever. In retrospect, I imagine they may have been recommended to treat foreigners like this during the snow crisis so that they said good things about the Chinese handling of the situation and made them look good. But then again, maybe they were just nice people : ) The people in the queue were all smiling at us too; I'd have been fuming if I'd been waiting for hours and then some idiot laowai were let ahead of me just because they were white... We guiltily joined two separate queues again and I looked at the big digital board of trains available. A daunting number had crosses next to them, denoting no tickets remaining, but when we got to the front we effortlessly bought two tickets (to Pingyao) for later that day.
To waste time before our 16.10 train (after arriving at 7am we finally walked away with tickets at 10.30, and that was after having been ushered past the queue) we went to a very nearby wang bar (internet cafe) and wasted a few hours, then went to a restaurant to eat. The food was not particularly good and I couldn't really stomach it so I ate surprisingly little for me! I had finished my Oreos in the queue and I had had a hot roasted sweet potato (heaven heaven heaven) so I was probably already full. It was still far too early but we went to the station anyway, queued thankfully very briefly to get in, and eventually found seats in the station. We both read for the remaining hours and then boarded the train for Pingyao, a smaller place preserved in the traditional Ming and Qing Dynasty styles.
Wow, the word queue has completely lost all meaning I've typed it so many times.
Needless to say it was packed. At one point, to get more people on the train, the guard started hitting them with a stick, like cattle. Cue screaming, some crying, and general panic. Monstrous. And not the worst train we've ever got, either. We were standing in the doorway, along with tens of other people. Plus the attendant kept moving me away from the door so he could stoke the fire. Yep, the fire. They still use coal fires to heat the train and water for the passengers. Fortunately it was only two hours to Pingyao and we were thankfully not vomited on by a girl standing next to us, who looked so sickly we thought she was gonna blow.
Getting off at mini little Pingyao was a welcome relief, but it was shortlived. We were instantly surrounded on all sides by taxi drivers, but we fought our way through to the ticket office and got our tickets to Shijiazhuang for the following evening. Then we went to get a taxi but were followed up the road by a tenacious rickshaw driver who would just not leave us alone. The taxi driver we finally hailed said he couldn't take us to the address we wanted because he wasn't allowed inside the walls of the old city, and rickshaw man came and stuck his head in the taxi and actually took Liam's notebook right out of his hands. I thought Liam was going to rip his head off. Fortunately a private car pulled up and we got in with him. He drove us though the new city, which is damn ugly, up to the pedestrian- and bike-only bit where our International Youth Hostel was. He even walked us to the door.
The hostel was beautiful, set around an old courtyard. The name was Yamen Hostel. Yamen is the word for a governing office in feudal China, and the hostel got its name from the nearby old governor's house.
Our room was huge but nothing compared to the size of the bed! It was a kang, an old brick bed traditionally heated underneath. I have read about such beds and wondered how on earth they could be comfortable, but I had one of the best night's sleep ever on it. First though, we went out to get food. The streets were so quaint with little fairy lights strung up on all the traditional eaves and it was peaceful, though chilly, to walk through the streets until we found a promising restaurant. We decided on Pingyao Beef, which is famed throughout the country. It is cured and marinated until it is tender. It was indeed tender and served cold. Rather reminiscent of ham, but good all the same. We also had traditional Pingyao cold round flat noodles, which ware served with a heated spicy tomato and chilli sauce, and a pork dish. We had some extremely strange items for pudding too: dumplings with peanut sauce inside an orangey citrus 'condensed milk' (so they say) sauce, and some very plain and not very sweet bread-like things. They tasted a lot like, as Liam pointed out, Tesco quick-bake bread, but sweetened and somehow Chinese.
We were full and sleepy and so off to the kang. I showered and by the time I got to bed Liam was practically asleep. I ended the day by setting my phone alarm for 7am so we could fill our day with the sights of Pingyao and get breakfast, but realising it had virtually no charge, I plugged it into the wall overnight. And so ended our first day in Pingyao.
Liam does not have very much room. : (
Welcome to icky, grotty Taiyuan.
All the Xs just fill my heart with joy.
I pale into comparison next to the size of the giant bed. If I do say so myself. Which I do.
The pretty traditional courtyard of the Yamen Hostel.
And one of the streets, albeit blurry. Every street is pedestrianised (though some carts and private cars can go down them) and at night they're all lit up and tranquil.
Our exceedingly bizarre dessert. Sweet bread style thingies on the left, and the peanut sauce dumplings in 'condensed milk' on the right. Oh and behind them you can see the flat noodles that we didn't finish (they come rolled up) and the tomato sauce in the bowl.
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