shankar2k's Journal: Train Ride to Chengdu

My expat gaming friends were scaring me about this one. Because John and I had booked our train tickets so late, we had to get hard sleeper class train tickets. We weren't able to get a precise estimate of how long the trip would take. It would take anywhere between ten and twenty hours.

Our compartment mates were characters, probably the most interesting set of characters that I have met in China. Let me go through the list.

1. Siddhartha - This guy was an Indian diplomat. He was eager to practice his Chinese, which is the first I've heard with an Indian accent. He acted as our defacto translator to the group.
2. Old Guy - I forget his name, but he was trying to start some kind of revolution on the train. He would gather other old men together and discuss how free markets have benefitted China. He was really worried about John and I travelling through Chengdu, so tried to plan our trip for us.
3. Bureaucrat Guy - This guy didn't say a word for the first six hours of the train ride. Then he bought some beer and bai-jiu at a station and started getting into the spirit of things. I think his name was "Zhang", as in "stretch".
4. Bureaucrat's SO - I wasn't exactly sure what her relationship with Zhang was. At first, she seemed like his wife, but she looked to be twenty years younger than him. They never clarified the status of their relationship, so I can only assume, she was his mistress. She was downright motherly to us, and spent most of the trip opening and eating sunflower seeds.
5. Military dude - He wasn't exactly our compartment mate, but he spent a lot of time in our cabin. He latched on to us when he discovered that two of us were Indian, and one could speak Chinese. His mistress/girlfriend/whatever (she was also about twenty years younger than him) was a yoga instructor and needed some accreditation from Indians for her yoga course. I'm not exactly sure what Siddhartha told him in the end.

The trip ended up taking about 30 hours. Its sound long, but I have a talent for sleeping, so was out for more than half of it. It was a bit of a struggle for John, because he's a coffee drinker, and the Chinese generally aren't, so there was none to be found on the train. Here's a glamour shot of me receiving Tomato Egg Soup, a dish I often end up with when I explain that I don't eat meat. I'd say it was one of the memorable adventures I've had in China.