China - a big loop via train (2/3)
This post is part 2 of the "china-2013-10" series:
This post covers about a week of travel via train from Bejing to Xi'an, to Chengdu, to Zhangjiajie (via Huaihua), to Shanghai, and then back to Beijing.
You can skip to other posts:
* Departure and Bejing(1/3)
* Beijing to Guilin, and back(3/3)
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We awoke at 5AM, as we had to catch a 7AM G651 fast train to Xi'an from Beijing. The subway ride went smoothly, as it was nearly empty much of the way. When we arrived at Beijing West station I guessed that it was the south side that we used last time, and I was correct. We arrived at 6:25am, and the place was already crowded and crazy. Once we were effectively waived through the ticket/ID booth, we saw a huge electronic sign listing all the upcoming departures, and which waiting hall to use for each. We went up an escalator, and found our waiting hall easily enough. A lady punched our tickets upon entering, and we saw 6 very long rows of seats, and hundreds of people milling about. There was also a restroom, with a huge 'No Smoking' sign, and sure enough, right beside it was a guy smoking. When they started boarding the train about 20 minutes before departure, there was the typical Chinese mad rush to the gate. The train itself was decent. Definitely not Korean or Japanese quality bullet train calibre but close. They had western style toilets with toilet paper. There were a total of 8 cars, 2 were 1st class (4 seats across), 1 dining car, and the remainder were 2nd class (3/2 across). The train departed on time. All the announcements were in English & Chinese. On the TV hanging from the ceiling they showed this bizarre mixture of clips from American movies from the past 50 years. When we pulled out of the station, it looked like there was thick fog everywhere, but as the morning progressed, it became apparent that it was the most horrific smog imaginable. Nearly the entire route went through very flat, dry, dusty, smoggy farmland. I don't why I was surprised, but it looked like most of the farm work was being done by hand, as I saw numerous people out there using farm tools, with few large tractors, and nothing resembling modern large scale farming equipment. For lunch I went to the dining car, and got David a noodle bowl, and my self a lunch tray which consisted of some kind of beef in sauce, rice, and some other vegetables. David enjoyed his, but I thought mine was too salty, and way overpriced (45Y !). The train pulled into Xian on time, and we caught the (brand new) subway to the center of the city. David was impressed, because there was the typical Chinese city hustle & bustle, with tall buildings, noise, and people everywhere. The walk to the hotel went fine, and we were checked into our room about an hour after getting off the train. The hotel was quite nice, especially considering that we paid about \$28 for 2 beds, AC, a western toilet (with toilet paper, a rarity in China), and internet access. After dropping off our bags, we headed back out, to walk to the train station in the center of the city to catch the 5-306 'tourist' bus to the Terracotta Warriors. Along the way we passed numerous tiny 'convenience' shops, and I found one selling 0.5L water for 2Y, so I bought 4 to hold us over for the rest of the day. The train station was huge, with a large square in front, and literally thousands of people everywhere. It took us a few minutes to figure out where to catch the bus, but eventually we found a sign, and the bus arrived shortly thereafter. We were literally the last people to get seats, and the only Westerners on the bus. While the traffic was nowhere near as bad as what we experienced around Beijing, it was still congested, and it took nearly 2 hours to get to the park. Unsurprisingly, the park was super crowded too, but there weren't any bad lines. David insisted on seeing the movie, which was horrible, in every way imaginable. It wasn't in English, the acting was comically bad, and very little made sense. Once the movie finished we finally went over to the 'pit 1' building, which was the largest of the dig sites. It was pretty much as i expected, which isn't to say that it was disappointing, but at the same time there wasn't much that was surprising either. David seemed to be fairly impressed, which I suppose, is what counts, since he was looking forward to seeing it so much. After tha twe went to the 2nd & 3rd pit buildings which were more of the same. By the time we were finished, it was about 5pm. The exit route was literally throw a super long street of gift shops, restaurants and other tourist trap crap. By the time we found the bus stop, there was a huge line with easily several hundred people. Thankfully, there were a steady stream of busses arriving, and we got on board after a few minutes in line. The ride back took just under 2 hours, and it was after 7pm by the time we were back in Xian. We were both thoroughly exhausted and starving. David got it into his head that he wanted fried chicken for dinner, when he saw a KFC near the train station. I immediately vetoed that idea. After wandering a bit further we came across a Chinese chain called Dico's, which was a copy of KFC in every way, although the prices were much lower. We ended up ordering 2 fried chicken sandwiches, with fries, and cold iced tea (they never asked what drink we wanted, probably because they didn't speak English). I thought the sandwich was decent, the fries were soggy, and the tea was brown sugar water. Afterwards, we walked back to the hotel, and relaxed for the remainder of the evening.
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We slept really well that night. When we were about to head out for breakfast we noticed that the hotel was offering a breakfast buffet. It was mostly Chinese foods, and initially David was a bit apprehensive, but I convinced him it was a good idea. The food was pretty decent, and the price was quite reasonable (about \$3/person). After breakfast we went for a short walk where i was looking for an ATM, since I had been spending cash faster than anticipated. The first ATM that I found didn't have any English. However, the second one was fine, and i got another 1200Y. Following that we went back to the hotel to relax for a bit before heading out for the day. As we were in the room, we suddenly heard a very loud explosion sound which seemed to be coming from just outside the 4th floor window. I ran over to the window to look, but initially I didn't see anything, although the sound had stopped. Then i looked down towards the street, and saw the remnants of hundreds of firecrackers, plus a tree limb that had caught fire. No clue what it was about, but everyone on the street acted as if all was perfectly normal. A bit after 10am, we checked out, and started our walk towards the train station to catch the K5 sleeper train to Chengdu. Along the way we stopped at a few shops to buy bottled water, bananas, and dry/instant noodle bowls to eat for dinner on the train that evening. Then we stopped in a tiny hole-in-the-wall place for lunch. We got 8 tasty pork steam buns, and a plate of lo mein. The woman running the shop was trying to be friendly with very limited English, and gave David a hand full of chestnuts to eat too. Next we finished walking to the station, which was a complete zoo. Thousands of people were everywhere. Some were sitting or laying on the pavement outside. Others were crammed into the huge, dark, stuffy waiting halls. The wait for our train grew progressively frustrating, as we ended up stuck standing & waiting, crammed into the dense crowd. To make matters worse,our train was 25 minutes late. Finally we boarded, and got settled in for the 16 hour trip. We didn't have a good idea what to expect, since this was the first Chinese 'hard sleeper' of the trip. The arrangement is that each berth has two rows of 3 bunks. I had the bottom, and David the top. The other 4 bunks were occupied by complete strangers. Thankfully, they were fairly quiet, and mostly kept to themselves. In the berth next to ours was a very friendly woman who spoke reasonable good English, and carried on a fairly lengthy conversation with David. It was fairly obvious that her primary interest was the color of his hair, as she mostly ignored me. Not that David minded at all, he loved the attention. Other than that the trip was uneventful. Before all the lights in the train car were shut off around 10pm, people pushing different food carts would wander through a few times each hour. Our dinners were ok, with the train provided potable hot water. The toilets were all Chinese (squat) style, with bring your own toilet paper. I ended up falling asleep shortly after 9pm.
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The lights on the train came on around 4am for our 5am arrival in Chengdu. Overall we slept well, all things considered. Once off the train, the first thing we needed to do was find the luggage storage area, since we were to return to the same station that evening for a different night train. Thankfully a "Left luggage" sign wasn't difficult to spot, and for 20Y, we left both of our bags for the day. Next up we needed to find breakfast. Once again the square in front of the station was a chaotic, crowded mass of thousands of people. We walked the perimeter of the square, which was lined with various shops & eateries. David was not at all in the mood for a Chinese breakfast, and was determined to find some kind of pastries. Eventually he found some sponge cake like things on a convenience store shelf. Initially, he claimed that they were tasty, but the more he ate, the less he liked. I got several pork dumplings, which were fairly tasty. Once we had finished eating, the sun was starting to rise, and we headed out for the day. Our goal was to visit the Chengdu Panda Preserve, which was about 10 miles outside the city. To get there we first needed to walk about 2 miles to a bus station, where we'd catch the 87 bus the rest of the way. Overall the walk went well. Initially, we were walking along a very crowded, bustling street, with non-stop honking horns, which irritated David considerably. We did get lost briefly when a street that we needed to follow turned into a narrow footpath, and then ended at a locked gate. However, we figured out a detour, and made our way to the bus station ok. Thankfully we found the correct bus stop, and the bus arrived shortly afterwards. I paid the 2Y/person, and showed the driver my print-out from the panda preserve website, hoping that he would stop at the correct place for us. After about 25 minutes, the driver stopped, and hollered at us. Sure enough, we were just across the street from the main entrance. The preserve itself was great. The signs were well translated into English, and sufficient in number such that finding our way around was never confusing or difficult. The bathrooms (which are often legendarily horrible throughout China), were clean, and well maintained. On top of all that the park itself was nice. It was much more than a big panda zoo. They had an excellent movie which explained the history, purpose & goals of the preserve. And of course, there were numerous areas with pandas for viewing. Generally speaking,they were segregated by age (newborn, cubs, young adults, and mature adults). I'd estimate that we saw between 20 & 30 pandas that day, and spent nearly 5 hours in the park. Afterwards, we caught the bus back into town, and walked back towards the train station. Since we had nearly 5 hours before our 8:25pm train,we took our time, and stopped several times on benches to people watch. Chengdu is the first, and only Chinese city where I've ever noticed benches on the street. At one point we sat & watched a guy hanging a new sign above a store (all in separate Chinese characters), all the while standing on an 8ft tall 'ladder' which was literally just some wood nailed together in the shape of a ladder. We also stopped briefly in a tiny bakery where i purchased a few cream puffs which were really delicious. Once we were back in the vicinity of the train station, we headed down a side street to search for some fruit to eat for breakfast on the train the next morning. From what i've noticed nearly all the fruit sold in China is what is regionally seasonal. So basically every store and street cart sells exactly the same 3-5 fruits. Right now, that happened to be pomegranates, grapes, red apples, asian pears, and tangerines. We got a few apples, pears & tangerines, and wandered back towards the train station to look for somewhere to rest for a while before seeking out dinner. Of course it was now an even worse circus than 10 hours earlier, and we struggled to find a relatively clean & quiet place to sit. Eventually we found an empty table in the seating area of a large fast food place (Country Style Cooking, a Chinese food chain), and we remained there for a few hours. We ended up eating there for dinner as well. I honestly didn't think the food was anything special, but David liked it. Following dinner we returned to then train station to retrieve our bags, and enter the fray in the massive waiting hall. While the train did start boarding on time, the process was complete & utter chaos. People were literally pushing & shoving to get to the gate, all to board a train for which they all had tickets with pre-assigned seating. It got so bad that David was freaking out because he was being crushed by people trying to push him out of the way. I eventually screamed "STOP!" as loud as I could. That scared everyone in my vicinity into ceasing the shoving, most likely because I was significantly taller than most everyone, i looked furious, and of course it was English, and they likely had no clue what i was saying beyond 'that white guy is super angry'. We finally got to our train car, found our cabin, and attempted to settle in for the night.
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It was not a good night on the train. While David said that he slept well, I definitely didn't. The train was very warm the entire night, and that alone inhibited my ability to sleep well. However, to make matters worse, the guy across & below me was snoring super loud for much of the night. Additionally, the guy across from me kept whipping out his tablet to watch a movie without any headphones. To make matters more interesting, the train that we were on did not go to our final destination, so we also needed to switch trains that day. This would normally not be a difficult task, except that, with the exception of their limited route 'bullet' trains, there are no English announcement or signs on the trains. As a result, every time we pulled into a station, I had to carefully scan every sign to attempt to figure out where we were. Our train actually arrived about 15 minutes late. The city that we were connecting through was called Huaihua (pronounced wah-i-wah). This city of 2 million is on the small side by Chinese standards, but felt every bit as frenetic and bustling as the other larger cities that we'd travelled through thus far. We actually had a 3 hour layover, which worked out well, as that gave us enough time to find lunch, and relax a bit before the next train. We wandered the streets near the station and eventually got lunch at a small food cart offering cold noodle salads, which was quite refreshing. It had spaghetti-like rice noodles, shredded cucumber, peanuts, kelp, and some soy chilli pepper oil sauce. Afterwards we wandered through a shopping mall, before returning to the train station to catch our 2:25pm train to our destination for that night, Zhangjiajie. As the Chinese holiday week ended the previous day, the square outside, and the inside were both relatively empty. It was a stunning stark contrast to the mass chaos of the past 3 days. The train departed and arrived on schedule. Upon exiting the station we saw the hotel owner waiting for us with a sign with my name on it (albeit he was holding it upside down). He escorted us on a 10 minute walk to the hotel. This hotel had great reviews on TripAdvisor, and was quite the bargain at about \$23/night for a room with 2 beds, free WiFi, and a private bathroom. However it would not have been easy to find, as we had to walk down 2 dirt alleys to get there. The room did live up to expectations, and was clean and comfortable, even if it had the hardest beds I've ever encountered in Asia. After dropping off our bags, we headed back out to find dinner, as it was past 6pm. We eventually came upon a row of restaurants, all seemingly serving identical cuisine. Each of them had a refrigerated case with skewers of different meats and sides, which they were grilling right out in front. We picked one place at random, and they handed me a metal tray to select the skewers that I wanted cooked. We ended up getting a total of 17 skewers, including chicken wings, tofu, fish balls, chicken thigh, beef cartilage, bacon, bell peppers, steam buns, a sausage, and squid. All of it was delicious, and came to about \$11 for the two of us. After dinner we stopped in a small grocery store for more water, fruit, and some ice cream (i got coffee, David got chocolate+caramel). We then returned to the hotel and relaxed before going to bed for the night.
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We slept relatively well despite firecrackers going off a few times during the night. After showering we went for a short walk up a side alley where we found several tiny restaurants selling roughly the same things for breakfast (assorted noodle bowls, steam buns, and tea eggs). We picked one place, and both got a noodle bowl with tiny pieces of beef, chillies, beans and green onions, for 5Y each. On the table were also several small bowls of different kinds of pickled vegetables to add in. It was all quite delicious, and made a filling breakfast. Afterwards the owner of the hotel offered to lead us to the cable car station that would take us to Tianmen Mountain Forest Park. This happens to be the world's longest cable car route, at just over 7.4km each way, to the top of the mountain. It was admittedly quite impressive, even if the thick smog did obscure the views. Once we reached the end of the ride, we walked a few flights of steps to the true summit of the mountain. Interestingly, we were now above the layer of air pollution, and had amazing views in all directions, even though we couldn't actually see down to the city below. Next we took a ski lift to a neighboring mountain to explore Tianmenshan temple. The temple was quite serene and pretty, and since it was still relatively early, it was mostly devoid of other tourists. Afterwards, we hiked the 2.8km western hiking trail which wound its way along the western perimeter of the mountain, all the way back to the summit cable car station. The trail was quite scenic with numerous red prayer ribbons tied to trees, and extensive views of the sheer cliffs (which reminded me somewhat of Yosemite valley from above). Along the way David & I were stopped several times by random Chinese people to have our picture taken with them. Once we reached the end of the trail, we got back on the cable car to the mid-point station. From there we boarded a bus which drove us part way up the mountain to the Tianmen 'cave' (which is really an arch through the mountainside). We stopped for some lunch first, where David got 2 kimbap rolls, and i got a rather poor bi-bim-bap imitation. I suspect that they get many Korean tourists, as nearly all signs were translated into Korean as well as English. Next we climbed the long, steep staircase into the base of the arch. The climb up was a bit strenuous, but not horrible. Unfortunately, the views from the top were primarily obscured by the ever present, disgusting air pollution, such that the only thing that we could see clearly was the bus parking area at the base of the steps. We found the walk back down to actually be more difficult than up, as our legs were tired from the climb, and the steps were fairly narrow. Once at the bottom, we got on the next waiting bus, rode it back to the cable car station, and then caught the cable car back down into the city. In total we spent just over 6 hours in the park. We spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing in the hotel room. At one point we heard a few hundred kids in the school next door singing songs. For dinner we returned to the same restaurant as the previous night, although this time we got stir-fried flat rice noodles with eggs & vegetables and David also got 3 skewers of meat. It was all quite tasty for about \$7 total. After that we shopped for some fruit, and then returned to the hotel to relax for the remainder of the evening.
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We slept fairly well, and headed out for breakfast. We ended up going to the same place that we had breakfast the previous morning. This time I had a noodle bowl with pork & kelp, while David had 2 hard boiled eggs and 2 steam buns with pork inside. We spent much of the remainder of the morning relaxing in the hotel room. There's a school next door to the hotel, and for over an hour we were subjected to school kids singing random songs, including 'Jingle Bells'. A bit after 10am we checked out, and made our way to the train station. Along the way we stopped to pick up dinner for on the train, and we also found lunch. There was a shopping mall diagonally across from the train station, where we got some fried chicken, golden raisins, and drinks (kiwi juice for me, apple juice for David). Afterwards, we proceeded to the train station. The woman at security/ticket check booth gave our papers extra scrutiny for no apparent reason, although I have to wonder if had never seen a US passport before. Zhangjiajie's waiting hall was easily the most primitive that we've been through. There were no electronic signs anywhere indicating which waiting hall to use for our train. Eventually we found a cardboard printed sign with our train number on it. While waiting for our train to start boarding, I observed a family sitting across from us casually dumping all of their trash on the floor. Orange peels, plastic bags, cigarette carton wrappers, everything. And no seemed to be the least bit surprised or bothered by it. Finally, we boarded the train, and found our berth. Immediately we noticed that the train car was super hot. For whatever reason the AC wasn't even running. I hunkered down for 21 hours of misery. However, about 2 hours later the AC suddenly turned on, and after that the temperature was relatively comfortable. As I was preparing David's beef noodle bowl dinner, a blond German woman approached us, and introduced herself. She had been travelling throughout China by train for the psst 3 weeks, and we were the first Westerners that she'd encountered on a train. Interestingly, she was the first Westerner that we'd seen on a train since the ride from Beijing to Xian. After we finished eating David spent more time chatting with her, and she gave him a few small bags of tasty German gummy bears. A bit later in the evening a Chinese woman boarded the train, who knew about as much English as I know Chinese. Yet that didn't deter her enthusiasm. She kept giving David random snacks throughout the evening. At one point she pulled out her camera and proceeded to show me pictures from when she visited the US 2 years ago. I never had much of a clue of what she was saying, but she was really enthusiastic the entire time anyway. I went to bed for the night a bit after 9pm.
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Our K534 train arrived in Shanghai about 30 minutes early, and we made our way to the subway, to ride to the hotel. We were staying at the Pentahotel, which was near the Zhongshan Park subway station. We got settled into our room, and then headed back out to find some lunch. We ended up getting some savory pastries at a nearby bake shop, which were quite tasty. Next we headed back to the subway to see the Jade Buddha Temple. I had been once before, the very first time that I had been to Shanghai, and really enjoyed the calmness inside the loud bustling city. Next we took the subway to People's Square Park, and wandered around for a bit. Initially it seemed like there was a playground for kids, but that turned out to be this scary amusement park, with ancient looking rides. Afterwards we walked down to the river front to look at the Pudong skyline. We saw the under construction Shanghai Tower, which already dwarfed the Shanghai World Financial Center. David was quite impressed. We went for dinner at a restaurant which served food from China's far western Xinjiang province. I had eaten there once before on a previous trip to Shanghai, and enjoyed it. The food was equally good this time. We ordered green beans with garlic & chilli peppers, fried lamb chops with cumin, and a sampler platter which included mutton, lamb, beef, chicken, rice pilaf, and some grilled vegetables. All of the food was excellent, and we left quite satisfied. To finish out the day we went up to the 100th floor observation deck of the Shanghai World Financial Center. This was quite possibly the highlight of the entire trip for David.
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All trip pictures are posted HERE.
This post is part 2 of the "china-2013-10" series: