Above:The Baha'i House of Worship of Asia. Below:Life and times of your fellow World Citizen, Kolya

Part V-- Vacation to a Different China

Most of the trains have improved since the late 80s when Paul Theroux wrote his excellent Travelogue on China called, Riding the Iron Rooster. For one thing, if you take a soft sleeper carriage you might just be blessed with a western style sit-down toilet on one end of the carriage (and an Asian squat toilet on the other end). And also there are now Trains from Beijing to Guangzhou, in the south, that only take 23 hours to make the journey (stopping no more than a few times along the way).
It was quite an endeavor getting the train tickets so that I could get down to Hong Kong in the first place, however! I decided to take the train down because it would be cheaper and let me see a little more of China than one can see from a plane. For me it was just the worry of whether I’d be able to get the tickets for when I wanted, but I'm afraid that for my poor friend, Hilary, in Beijing, who got me the Beijing-Guangzhou ticket it was much more troublesome, as she was the one that had to go back and forth from the ticket office at the train station which is something like an hour from her house! It would have been much easier, of course, if I could have gotten the complete trip from Baotou to Hong Kong here in Baotou but, alas, things are not that easy yet in China. It also doesn’t seem to be possible to get return tickets yet. I could have gone through the school but I’d already found another friend here in Baotou who had someone through whom she’d always gotten her own train tickets. I had heard that there was a train which went directly from Beijing to Hong Kong. But for some reason my friend’s ticket guy said I had to get the ticket for that train in Beijing. So I asked Hilary if she could do this and she agreed, bless her. But at first she had to wait until a certain amount of days before I wanted to leave and then the ticket wasn’t sold at the place near her house, so she had to go to the train station but they did not sell it either because it leaves from the other train station! However the ticket clerks at the first train station did not even seem to know that this direct train existed, but some other people there thought they knew the train and told her to go to the other train station (luckily Hilary is conversational in Chinese). At least I think this is how it all happened! Unfortunately, after all that, when she got there she found that she couldn’t get me the ticket after all, because she needed my passport to do so!!! (since the train crosses the border from the “Mainland” to Kowloon/Hong Kong).
This whole process was also complicated by the fact that it was the lead up time to the Spring Festival when (it seems like) half of China is on the move to visit relatives. So, not able to get the direct ticket I decided to try and get the two tickets here in Baotou. But then word came back from the ticket guy that apparently all the Beijing-Guangzhou tickets available from Baotou were already sold out before he could get one and so I had to go back to Hilary for it! Happily she was able to get it, but not without some more difficulties! I ended up leaving a day earlier than I had originally planned, but that ended up being a good thing as I was happy for having an extra day in Hong Kong (HK). As soon as my Beijing departure time was set I got the Baotou-Beijing ticket which luckily was easy to acquire. I wasn’t able to get the tickets until a couple days ahead of my departure date and so I spent a good week or two worrying if I’d be able to get down to HK as soon as I wanted. It would have been much less hassle to fly but it would have also been about $84.57 (€95.71) more expensive (one way). And that amount of money goes much further here. And as I mentioned before I would have seen less of China.
So, finally, tickets secured, I set off from Baotou in the afternoon of February 5th on an overnight train to Beijing, in a “hard-sleeper” carriage. Maria, the young lady from the school who takes care of all my needs (she’s been the “international secretary”—or whatever her official title is—since December ) came and saw me off at the train (and helped me get to the right train). I managed to keep my luggage down to one medium sized backpack and a plastic bag of food for the trip (having been warned that food on the train is overly expensive and has much to be desired in the taste category).
Hard sleeper carriages have compartments that are open to the hallway and have six bunks per compartment. I was in a middle bunk. I figure that, all in all, the bottom bunk is probably the best deal (then the middle, then top). Happily, the carriage wasn’t very smoky, perhaps only a little. The bunk is indeed quite hard and narrow and I did not get the best sleep. But I got up in good time.
Unfortunately, I got a big scare because when I got down I suddenly noticed that my wallet wasn’t in my pocket and so one of my first thoughts was that I’d been pick-pocketed in my sleep. I couldn’t find it on the bed and the carriage was still dark so I couldn’t see the floor clearly. My adrenalin started pumping and I had that horrible physical/emotional feeling that one gets when something awful happens. (Most of the money for my trip was not in it but some of it was and also my driver’s license (which can still come in handy some day). The conductor had come by to give back the tickets of those getting off in Beijing and get back from us the place cards . And I found that the place ticket wasn’t in my pocket either but someone noticed that it was on the floor. I next told some people and the conductor, through help from my phrase book and miming, that my wallet was gone or lost or something to that effect. And it wasn’t until after I’d done that that it struck me to check the dark floor more carefully where I had also found my place ticket which had been in the same pocket as my wallet, and lo, there in the darkness was my wallet (with nothing missing) it had obviously simply fallen out of my pocket. What a relief! But how embarrassing!
I was worried about getting off at the right station but I managed to do so. I wasn’t able to find the place where Hilary wanted us to meet but I had my cell phone [Siemens brand. It did not come with the English instruction booklet but Siemens China were nice enough to send me the Booklet (for free) in English when I asked them to by email.] with me and so it was easy to find each other. When she got to the train station she showed me to the waiting room for people with soft sleeper tickets (which is much more comfortable than the regular waiting rooms). I had a soft sleeper ticket because that was the only ticket she had been able to get for me. But in the end I think I was very happy to have a soft sleeper cabin (with 4 beds, wider and softer than the hard sleeper, and with more head room—enough to sit up in on the top bunk, which is what I had). She gave me the ticket and I gave her the money for it. Fortunately, she did not have to go right to work and so she was able to stay and chat for an hour or so. We had not seen each other since we were in Chicago last and so it was nice to chat since we’d only kept in touch by email. She’s been spending the year in China before getting married to her fiancée who is also from the USA but who like her is spending a year to work in a foreign country. He has the good fortune of being able to work at the Bahá'í Hanging Gardens and World Center in Haifa. Although Israel is fairly war torn country at the moment, Haifa is known as the City of Peace and the Bahá'í World Center, with its world renowned gardens, is the Oasis from which the peace springs. It is in this city where the unimaginable (in the rest of the region) is a daily reality namely Jews, Muslims and people of other backgrounds have in Haifa always worked together and been respectful to each other or at least those who have worked for or with the BWC have been.
After a nice talk it was soon time to board the train. I found the carriage and the cabin easily enough. Although, after I’d put up my bag a fellow traveler asked if I might switch places with his wife so that he and his wife and daughter could be in the same cabin. I agreed after I figured out what it was he wanted from me. My new cabin was in the same carriage and it was still a top bunk which is fine in soft sleeper—as long as there’s no smokers, although officially, I believe, one is not supposed to smoke in the cabins but people don’t always follow the rules. But it was fine because I don’t think my cabin-mates ever smoked inside the cabin.
I soon was resettled in my new bunk. When I next went back down to where the other cabin was the man with whom I’d switched bunks invited me in to their cabin and we tried having a bit of a conversation, although first I went back to get my phrase book, with which I was able to communicate a little more (he did not speak any English). It was somewhere around this point that I realized I should check if he was also getting off at Guangzhou lest someone should want his bunk in the middle of the night, but fortunately he was also getting off at Guangzhou. I slept a fair amount better that night than the last on the hard sleeper. The bunk below me was being shared by a father and his two small sons, although the older one might have theoretically or practically been sleeping in a different cabin. They all got out somewhere late at night or very early in the morning. The train, it seemed, only made a couple other stops during the whole trip, though.
The transition from the land in northern China and southern China was very dramatic, since I went to sleep in the north but got up (around dawn) in the south. The trip took 23 hours. We arrived in Guangzhou around 09:00. Getting out of the train I went with the flow and followed the crowd towards the exit. My friend in Baotou, Brian had told me how to find the ticket window for the train to Shenzhen, and I think that did help me find my connection to Shenzhen. A rail employee helped me get the ticket from the lady in the ticket booth and ushered me in the right direction. I was again amidst a crowd. We waited in front of the waiting room for a few minutes, then we were sent to the waiting room where we sat down for another five minutes or so, and then we were all sent back out to the train. It was a bit of a push and shove getting into the train but I found my seat alright. I think it was the express train since it got to Shenzhen in about 2 hours. Upon exiting the station in Shenzhen I had to find the border crossing. At first I followed the crowd and then had someone show me the general direction, but it was mostly through prayer and providence that I directly found my way to the border crossing which is seemingly in the middle of a shopping mall or vise versa. The line took perhaps an hour to get through. Once I got closer to the check point I wasn’t sure whether I needed to fill in the little exit form but seeing another foreigner go and get one I followed his example and filled it out as the line got closer to the check point. One had to then fill out an entry form at the HK side checkpoint. Then when I got to Lo Wu station (on the Kowloon/HK side) directly beyond the boarder checkpoints, I changed some money got my ticket and was soon on the train to downtown Kowloon.
I had marked a number of hostel/cheap hotel type places in my Lonely Planet China guide and so I headed to the one I was going to check out first. I changed from the KCR to the MTR (using Berlin terminology that’s like changing from the S-Bahn to the U-Bahn or in Chicago terminology from the L to the subway—in HK the subway is called the metro). I got off at the right place and went up to the street. I was walking past the entrance to the place I was looking for but the owner of “Lucky’s Guest house” came out and offered me a room in the price range I was looking for (HK$200 /night [About as cheap as it gets in HK for a single room with bath: US$25.64 / €29.44]for a single room with a bath). I noticed the place I was looking for is in the same building as Lucky’s but the room he showed me was fine so I saw no reason to seek any further since the other place wasn’t, as far as I know, any cheaper than his place.
In the next couple days I took care of my email in a fairly nearby internet den called, “Cyber Clan”. My primary mission was to find a cinema that was showing The Lord of the Rings. I had the English name of only one cinema from the fan web site “The One Ring.net”. So I decided to try and find that one first. I had some initial difficulty as the street on the website did not seem to match the name of the street it’s actually on but I did manage to find it eventually by asking for directions at a couple different shops. I bought a ticket for the next showing and waited out the time until it started at an arcade across the street, playing driving games. Since I like it so much, and the big screen experience is like no other for epic films like this (when they have large landscape-, battle- or space scenes), and since this is now one of my favorite films, I went and saw it again the next day (and was tempted to see it a third time)!
Every night for dinner I tried out one of the cheap but very good Indian restaurants in the “Chungking Mansions” which is like a Little India with a little bit of Little Africa thrown in. My two favorites were the Khyber Pass for its Malai Kofta and the Delhi Club because it has a larger selection of vegetarian dishes and good Masala Tea. If you only drink water then you can get an exquisite and very filling meal for as little as HK$30 to HK$35 (US$4.49 / €5.12). One needs to be wary of the hawkers, however, if you don’t like being crowded by people thrusting pamphlets in your face. On my first visit, as I stepped into the official entrance to the building complex, I was quickly surrounded by a flock of hawkers who became even more avid when they learned I was looking for a place to eat. Each of them was thrusting cards advertising their restaurant in my face and assuring me that their restaurant was better than any of the others. I ended up going with the young fellow from the Khyber Pass, who is from Calcutta. But I assured the others that I intended to try a different restaurant every night. Which is just about what I did. However, on one of the next occasions where I did not enter the building through a back way to find a restaurant on my own I decided to turn the tables on them by asking them a question about India and going to the restaurant of the winner, should there be one. It worked and most of the hawkers quickly lost interest in me although one of them was determined to try and figure out the answer to my question of “what building in India has become one of the most famous after the Taj Mahal?” When they still did not know I added, “it’s in New Delhi and was built in 1986 and is now getting more annual visitors than the Taj Mahal.” But they still did not know so I gave them the answer (The Bahá'í House of Worship, also known as the Lotus Temple) before going off to find one of the restaurants on my own.
After about three days in HK (or Kowloon actually) I took the metro to the Jetfoil port on HK Island and took a jetfoil to Macao. It was very rocky getting on, but as soon as the boat picked up speed, rising a fair amount out of the water, it became a very smooth ride. Most of the jetfoils take about 1hour to make the trip, a distance of 65km. I spent my time in Macao with friends on the two southerly islands (which are connected to the mainland by bridges) and took a (free) course on Teaching Children’s Classes (education in virtues). It was very enjoyable and I made many new friends. However, I became sick for a couple days with what the Chinese call a “stomach cold” or “cold in the stomach”. I received some medication from a nice and good African doctor, who judging by his sweater, studied at least for some time in Colorado! And thanks to the medication and some healing prayers I was back to normal after just two days!
I also went to a great Indian restaurant in Taipa (the first island going south from Macao over the bridge) with a few of the others. It was a buffet and everything I chose to eat was exquisitely delicious, as usual for an Indian restaurant! I had the familiar feeling, all to soon, that my stomach just wasn’t big enough! My taste buds were more than willing for more but there was just no more room for it! I had almost two cups of good Masala Tea because Guiti did not like hers much. They gave me a major buzz, especially since I so rarely have any caffeine. Although I ended up being on such a buzz that I had to wonder if there’d been some unusual ingredients in the tea or if my being sick and not eating for a couple days might have released some chemicals from my fat cells which could still be stored there from past days when I was a hippy, before I gave up all alcohol and other drugs in 1998. (I did not have any hallucinations or anything, it was just a major caffeine-high feeling with a feeling of euphoria.) Or maybe it was nothing more than a major caffeine buzz, after all. I wasn’t able to get to sleep until late which will be a reminder not to have two cups of strong tea at dinner time when I need to go to bed earlyish (i.e. 22:00)!
At the beginning of the following week most of us went back over to HK, Kowloon and the New Territories, where we stayed at a YMCA and had great fun for a week, socializing, and making more new friends. The only down side was that the YMCA food wasn’t all that good. One of my new Friends, Martin Kerr, who is originally from the UK, kept us all very entertained much of the time with his very beautiful singing and guitar accompaniment (About a year later I bought his first CD [self produced but very high quality] in a jiffy, plus many extras for my friends in Baotou and Hohhot). In fact he wasn’t the only friend to be able to entertain us with wonderful music. On the last night we also had a talent show, during which I read my recently penned poem, “The Path of High Integrity”, which I had pulled out of my email files for the occasion. Of course, we all enjoyed everyone’s varied performances. After the week was over I headed back down to downtown Kowloon for one day, staying the night at Lucky’s again, to buy a few last things (like Old Spice deodorant and Harry Potter books) before I headed back up to Baotou. And also for one last succulent Indian dinner!
An interesting thing happened over that last dinner at the Khyber Pass (I ordered one of my favorite dishes: Malai Kofta). I was ushered to a table next to a young fellow, roughly my age, perhaps a couple years younger. He had already finished his meal but we got to talking and it turned out he’s German, so then we continued talking in both English and German. His name is Johannes, if I remember correctly, and his father works in the Mainland for the German company, Bosch. I had made plans to meet with a friend who I’d met over ICQ and so I invited him to come along. We met Michelle in the Metro near my guest house and then we took the bus to the ferry and took the ferry across the harbor to HK Island, which is a much more picturesque approach than taking the metro! We went to a place with a bunch of bars most of which seemed to have foreign themes and are perhaps foreign owned too? There were also many foreigners there. We noticed some Germans outside of the German bar and I had to wonder, why, when you’re visiting a foreign country would you have any inclination to go to a bar or restaurant from your home country? Don’t they have more than enough of their home country in their home country? They’ll have the rest of their days to drink German beer in German bars, why not do something more adventurous while in HK? Anyway, we moved on to another area where it wasn’t so crowded after we met up with a friend of Michelle’s. The bar we were in was pretty nice. And a friend of theirs worked there. I ordered a virgin cocktail of some sort and we all talked for a while. Johannes and Michelle’s friend smoked but we did not. Then Johannes and I were taken to a club, complete with tough looking bouncers in tuxes. We saw a couple (or was it just one?) Caucasian male models leave with their entourage, who are apparently quite well known in HK. And then, after getting some sort of clearance [I don’t remember, and I guess I never really knew, how it worked but it seemed to involve Michelle talking with someone on the inside over her cell phone. (A recent study shows that 98% of young HK residents own cell phones!)] we went in and down the stairs to the club which was crowded and blaring loud techno-dance music. I did not stay long though. The guest house rules required me to be back by 1am and I had to get going the next morning anyway, back to Guangzhou, so I soon left them all there and went back to Lucky’s, catching the last or close to the last Metro, I think. I had meant to give Johannes my email address but I think I might have forgotten to do so. Oh well.
I went back up to Guangzhou the same way I came but mostly since I had heard that it was hard finding train tickets, due to all the people going home after the Spring Festival, I decided to pay a little extra and fly back to Baotou (via a short stop in Wuhan). However, the path from the train station to where I could get access to a taxi was painfully far and arduous under my backpack and two plastic bags, one in each hand (it was also very crowded). Happily, once I got to a taxi, thanks to my phrase book, it wasn’t a problem letting the driver know where I wanted to go. I managed to call my school before I went to the gate in order to let them know that I would be arriving that very evening so that they could pick me up from the airport. I did not use my cell phone though, because I had left it in Macao!
Upon arrival at the HK ferry terminal, coming back from Macao, I realized to my chagrin that I had left my winter coat with my cell phone in it hanging on a bedpost, a bit out of sight, at the hostel in Macao! On leaving the hostel I was fully loaded with my backpack, Tibetan jacket-thing, and two plastic bags, it was also very warm and so when I stopped to think if I had everything I thought, “yes, of course, what else could there possibly be?” (I had not actually worn my coat since my arrival in HK). Now, the thing is, at that very moment I had a flash of intuition that told me to take one last look around the room. But unfortunately I did not because the other part of me was sure I had everything (“Bathroom stuff? Check. Dirty clothes? Check. Towel? Check. Other bag? Check. Tibetan jacket-thing? Check…”). Hopefully that’ll be the last time I ignore my intuition!… Although sometimes it’s hard to recognize which thoughts are intuitive… Well, anyway, it was a good lesson in the importance of listening to your intuition! And as an extra safety measure I’ll be absolutely sure in the future to always take a last look around a room I’ve been living in before I leave it, even when I'm “sure” that I’ve already got everything! Luckily my friends who live in Macao were able to track the coat and phone down and sent them back to me.