Shanghai to Wuhan: Travelling and trains…

Okay so it’s been a while since we updated you all on our trip over here in China. This is partly because we are actually over here for work (research), so it hasn’t been all touring and activities. We’ve got some pictures up and I’ll get to those stories too, but I thought I’d pick up where we left off – in Shanghai:

Shanghai is Mega-Huge, which is why it’s no surprise that the train station is a behemoth mini-city that’s the size of the astro-dome. So of course this presented some problems for our friend Kris, who was arriving in Shanghai the day we had to board a train for Wuhan, and whom we told to “meet us at the train station.” Once we got to the train station we realized instantly that we were going to have a helluva time finding Kris. Our first circumnavigation of the oval-shaped train station took us about a half hour. As we neared the departure time for our train, we went through endless “logic scenarios” in our heads, trying to figure out where he would go upon arrival. It was a bit like trying to figure out which way a mouse would go in a maze.

Jack: “Obviously Kris would go to entryway 7, where the train is supposed depart.”

Daniela: “But entryway 7 has no access to the boarding platform, where all the snacks and shops are. Kris would be hungry – he would go to platform 6 or 8 in order to get access to the platform.”

Jack: “If we’re using the ‘Kris is hungry’ logic, then I say he’d go to platform 12 where the Italian food is – Kris would want Italian food after a 12 hour flight.”

And on and on and on...

By way of a minor miracle we found Kris about an hour before the train departed, on one of our circuitous routes through the train station (he was not at the Italian food place). We were all carrying huge bags for our 1–month stay and subsequent travels, and we eventually made our way down to the escalators to enter the train boarding area. We were to board car 8 and our room was #18. As we stood in line to enter the train car, I noticed that we were the only ones carrying luggage. Red Flag #1.

Upon entering the train car I immediately realized why. A long, thin corridor stretched out before me. About 75 feet separated me and my luggage from “room 18,” and that corridor was packed with people sitting on little seats next to the windows or standing in the hallway. To the utter horror of my fellow passengers, I hoisted by 60 lb bag over my right shoulder and began navigating my way through the human maelstrom towards my room. Tiny Chinese women began praying, people darted quickly to the safety of their sleeping cars - small children were summarily snatched up and removed from my path. The corridor was arranged such that I had to walk with my legs on the left side, in between the tiny fold-down seats and the wall, and carry my bag over my right shoulder and the heads of people sitting on the seats. People looked at me as if I were certifiably insane. Somehow I got to “room 18” without dropping my bag on some poor soul’s head.

In my mind, we were going to be kicking back in a luxurious train car, resplendent with felt-covered seats, continual tea service and a flatscreen TV entertaining us with the latest Bollywood special. Unfortunately “Room 18” didn’t quite fit that picture. Our room was about the size of a pantry - or a perhaps a small walk-in closet, with 6 bunkbeds (3 per side), separated by a 2 foot crawlspace in the middle. What was immediately obvious was that there was absolutely no luggage storage space. For a moment we stood, contemplating the luggage conundrum, and then eventually just dropped our luggage on the beds, where most of it remained. Later on we found a “convenient” luggage storage space at the top of the sleeping room, requiring us to hoist our luggage up past the last bunk-bed at the top of the train car. Having no other option, we went almost immediately went to sleep.

I woke around 5 am and went into the hallway to watch the countryside through which we were passing. For hours we would our way through an agricultural landscape dotted with small townships. Some farmers were plowing small plots with their oxen – most were using hand implements; others were grazing their few livestock on overgrown paddies. I saw little, if any, forest. It was calm outside, overcast and wet. Occasionally the train stopped at little town and a few people got off, but mostly we just made our way through the rural countryside toward Wuhan.

Though the train would continue on towards Sichuan province to the west, the site of the massive earthquake, our stop was Wuhan – a city of around 7-9 million people and the capital of Hubei province. We “de-trained” around 7:30 am and found ourselves smack in the middle of another hugely populous city. We were tired, having slept restlessly and travelled continuously for days. It was oppressively hot outside and our trek through the train depot left us sweating. It all faded away when, at the exit of the train station, we saw a small group of Chinese girls, holding a small sign that simply read “Jack, Daniela & Kris – Welcome.” Our adventures in Wuhan were about to begin…