Soft Sleeper Train, Hard Night

Saturday June 12. 2010

We got up early in case something went wrong (which it has before) and to make sure we catch the train from Shanghai to Xian. We were on the street by 6:00 and all the street food guys were opening up already, probably for the construction guys. The night before we got fruit at one of the local stands, where I had to get my picture taken with one of the kids working there. Very common and as always, the teens are very nice. We both got a jianbing which is Jake's favorite breakfast food. It is a 12” tortilla (made on the spot) with an egg, some secret sauce, and some kind of crunchy wafer thing folded into the middle of the whole thing. They are about $0.45 and very good. Ate them on the way to the subway. Got to the train station with plenty of time which means you get a place to sit down in the waiting room. We have soft sleepers, but not in the same room. Each room has 2 top and 2 bottom beds but no seats other than the bottom bunks. The top ones are cheaper but if you share a room, the bottom beds become the sitting room, so the top actually gives you a bit more privacy. My roommates were a family of 4, which the conductor women gave them a hard time about (only buying 3 beds). The father worked for Bosch in the auto industry and the 2 kids were about 8 and 6 and both spoke beautiful English. The boys were born in the US in Detroit, as the dad worked there for 5 years. The boys go to an American school so English is very comfy for them. If you know English, you go places in China. They were going all the way to the last stop on the line and Jake and I were only going to Xian. Jake's room also had a family so we were both in the same situation.
We actually slept after the train left and then got up and had lunch in the dining car. The waiters have police uniforms on so not sure what that is all about. Jake's Chinese is pretty good (he will tell you different) and everyone complements him on it.
We spent a long time just watching the countryside go by, trying to figure out what everything was. The dad in my room answered a lot of questions for us . They grow a lot of wheat (for all those noodles) and they plant them on every square inch of land they can find. I saw then harvesting by hand in some spots and as we got further north, the fields got bigger and I started seeing combines at work. There are some rice paddies and some corn being grown as well. We saw a giant noodle factory in the middle of all this wheat area.
There seem to be 3 kinds of buildings in the country / small cities. The oldest look like something put up in the 60's which are concrete and getting very run down with cracked concrete stained by the rusty wundo hardware. Usually one or two floors. The next type are 5 to 20 story apartment buildings maybe put up in the 80's which are a bit run down but functional, pretty modular. The latest buildings are 30-40 story tower apartments put side by side and all identical. They are usually building several of these at once creating what look like whole new vertical cities. I guess it makes sense to pack more people into less space. They may be using coal ash for bricks because I am seeing a lot of grey buildings and there are coal plants everywhere.
Speaking of coal, I forgot to mention that in Shanghai at night, we saw coal barges running with no lights on, sitting low in the water, going one after the other downstream while the bright lit up boats got up and down the banks which hides the barges. During the day there are empty coal barges going upstream sitting way up out of the water. Coal is used for most of their electricity I am guessing. The countryside has electric lines going every which way. Everybody has air conditioning and electric appliances. The street vendors and restaurants use electric, propane and coal for cooking. Compact fluorescent bulbs are most every where. They are charging a lot for electric scooters.
So we turned in around 9pm and I slept until about midnight when we must have gone into Trak-So-Ruff and Shreep-Rike-Poo provinces. I didn't get back to sleep and finally got up at 4am to packup. Our train got into Xian at 5am. Xian has a lot of young Chinese tourists (backpackers), but again no Anglos. We got coffee an McDonalds (about the only place that sells coffee) and figured out how to get to the hotel. Another picture with Jake and a young Chinese student, then a 5km walk to the hotel. They do not mind us checking in at 7am so we showered and lined up a tour bus to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. Oh yeah, bought some amazing fresh made street donuts (still hot) for $0.05 each and had them for breakfast. Off to today's adventure...