我们找不到火车票

It began in a wet, rainy place where the sun seldom shines.  Moss grows on the sides of buildings there, as trees are rare and buildings plentiful.  The depressed clouds drip continually but never get angry enough to storm.  The constant moisture clings to you, gets in your bones and soaks into your spirits weighing them down little by little.  It began there high on a hill overlooking the town square.

At the top of the hill rests the city train station.  We arrived there in the afternoon, two girls with backpacks full of hope and fear and a few too many substantial items to get us through the next week.  We were on our way to the north, where the sun shines and the wind blows.  We were giddy with the knowledge that the trip was actually happening after dealing with numerous setbacks the week before.  We were fearful that it would be a disaster if we didn't get our passports, or worse--if our visas to India had been denied.  I had woken up with a cold but was determined not to let it stop us from going, after all, the other pieces had fallen into place.  I stuffed my bag full of NyQuil and kleenexes, tea bags and the secret hope that people would run away from me screaming if they thought I had H1N1.  Jessica set off to find dinner while I waited in line to buy tickets home.

As I stood in line to buy tickets home I noticed a guy edging his way to the front, with wads of bills clutched in his hand.  I looked at him in awe of his daring and decided I wasn't in the mood to put up with cutting in line so I said, "Hey!" with as much force as I could.  The word may not have been Chinese but my meaning was quite clear.  After eyeing me for a minute, no doubt deciding who would win in a fight, he shuffled to the back of the line.  I turned around feeling victorious in time to see a lady jam her arm in front of the window from the exit line, cutting off the guy who's turn it was.  Before he had time or willpower to react she barked out her request to the lady selling tickets.  No one even blinked, they just accepted it as an unavoidable part of buying tickets.

One other lady managed to cut her way to the front before I made it to the window.  When I got there I asked about the availability of trains from Beijing to Wuhan on the 1st of February.  There was painful suspense while the lady typed in her request.  Nothing.  So I asked about trains to Yichang.  Nothing.  The 2nd of February was tried next.  Nothing.  I exhausted every option I could think of.  I began to suspect we were never going to make it home.  I knew this would happen, that buying tickets during the Spring Festival in China is like trying to wean my roommate off of milk tea, but I hadn't bought tickets earlier out of fear that the trip would be canceled.  My ability to think about other options while translating my  thoughts into Chinese for the ticket seller to understand was quickly reaching its limits so I ducked out of line empty-handed.

I met Jessica trudging up the formidable hill to the train station, breathless but holding supper in her triumphant hand.  Both of us were worried that upon arriving in Beijing we might not find a way home.  But rather than dwell on the problem we decided to solve the most pressing issue: hunger.  We fell on our food with abandon and with full bellies and happy tongues loaded our train.

The bunks we'd reserved for the next 22 hours were on the bottom.  Within minutes of depositing our backpacks and sitting down, we found our bunks serving as chairs for our neighbors all around.  We didn't mind sharing but as I was sick and Jessica is never averse to sleeping when she has the chance, we were both soon stretched out and slumbering.  At about 10 o'clock the lights in our car were turned out and I thought we'd all be able to sleep peacefully.  Then it happened.  Beep be-be-be-beep.  A minute of silence.  Beep be-be-be-beep.  I glared angrily in the dark and listened for the direction of the sound.  It was the guy in the top bunk receiving text messages.  I fantasized about ripping it out of his hand and throwing it out the window.  I imagined how relieving it would feel to free him from his invisible prison and show him that there is life beyond cell phones.  Maybe he would thank me.  Probably he would curse me.  But happily I wouldn't understand the words that he chose and could pretend that they were a blessing.

Eventually my anger wore me out and I slept again.  At 6am the bright minds in charge of the train decided to start playing music.  Soon cigarettes were lit all around, cards were being played, and subdued talking turned into uninhibited yelling.  We groaned and plugged in headphones to drown out the ruckus.  Fading to sleep again we noticed our beds being used as seats again, but didn't care.

Later that noon both of us had dragged ourselves to consciousness and were beginning to feel the pangs of hunger.  We eventually got around and went to the meal car where the lady asked me if I could read Chinese characters.  I told her a little and she gave me a menu, obviously impressed by my intelligence.  I perused their meager wares and settled on one I could read: chicken.  I ordered it and she told me they didn't have any left.  So I chose another dish, less sure what I was asking for and she apologetically told me there wasn't any of that either.  Then she told me the only things available were fish and rice.  I'm not sure why she bothered to give me a menu in the first place but I didn't feel much like paying 25yuan for a fish, so I headed back to my bunk to buy a bowl of instant noodles from the annoyingly constant hawkers who parade up and down the aisles.

After lunch I finished Wuthering Heights and spent the rest of the train ride musing, and formulating different scenarios that explain how it became such a famous book.  Then Jessica and I alternated suggesting routes home.  We considered trains to other cities in Hubei province.  We considered buses that smell  of stinky feet and stale smoke.  We considered hijacking a flying carpet.  We reminded ourselves multiple times to try to buy tickets when we arrived at the train station in Beijing.  After a full 22 hours of sitting on the same hard bunk we stumbled off the train wondering why the ground had stopped moving.  In our state of confusion we accidentally exited in exactly the place we wanted to be and boarded a bus to the other side of town.  It would be an hour before we remembered our resolution to buy tickets of some kind.

I've invented a new game I like to play in China.  It's a one-person game but anybody can play.  The rules are simple.  Try to remain standing on a city bus without holding on to anything.  This game is made more difficult when the bus ride lasts over an hour and made more simple when the bus is so crowded people are smashing into you from all sides, as is often the case in China.  We were a little worried we might lose the ability to breathe because of the number of bodies crammed into the pressure cooker on wheels.  After an hour of getting jerked around, stepped on, and squished we arrived on the East side of Beijing and called our couch surfer to meet us at the bus stop.

If you've never heard of couchsurfing.com go there right now (after you finish reading my blog that is).  It's a life-saving website for people who really want to go to Beijing and don't have their passports so they can't stay in a hostel.  We met a really sweet girl named Juliet, she took us back to her apartment and cooked dinner for us.  She was from Wuhan so the food was good and spicy and everything you could hope for in Chinese food.  Our bed for the night was a choice between a tent set up in her spare bedroom or the over-sized couch.  We asked her for advice on getting back to Yichang and she tried to help us look up tickets online, but didn't give us much hope.  We went to sleep fretting about whether or not we'd be able to make it back home.  We decided to get up at 8 the next morning and go to the train station to try again.  Would we make it back to the land of the clouds and rain?  To be continued...

"The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history."

-Hegel