The Train to Qinghai Province

Photo: Sitting in the aisle during our 19-hour hardstand train ride from Zhengzhou to Xining, Qinghai Province (July, 2010).

Sander and I arrived in Greater Tibet yesterday evening by train from Zhengzhou, Henan, Province. There are different classes that passengers can choose from on the rail cars: 1) soft-sleeper; 2) hard-sleeper; 3) soft-seat; 4) hard-seat; 5) hard-seat standing. The names are revealing and that will have to do (I have traveller's diarrhea and am between runs. Therefore, this posting will have to be quick). Because this is the time of year when students and migrant workers move back home, or to other regions, making space available aboard trains, planes, and busses is tight, and tickets are hard to come by. In fact, our rail tickets were the last two available for that day. They were for standing room only, in two separate hard-seat cars. We bought them and decided we'd find a way to be together. The train was scheduled to depart around 10:00 pm and we had to be out of our room by 6:00 pm (after buying an extra half day to sleep a little more (Sander did, but I didn't).

I've been sleeping very little on this journey. Actually, I've hardly slept much over the past week for a combination of reasons: 1) jet lag; 2) excitedness; 3) fear of running out of money; 4) fear of not following through on my promise to show Sander Tibetan and Mongolian cultures in Greater Tibet; 5) fear of Sander getting hurt. Some nights I've waited for up to six hours for Sander to wake up.

While waiting, I'd pore over my books (I brought a small library) and finances to explore possible solutions with Sander after he woke up. We started this journey with $4,000 in our pockets. But after five days of travel, as we flew from Guangzhou for Zhengzhou, we had spent half of our money. I was in a near panic. Once Sander woke up and we ate, we talked about our situation and came up with a solution: we opted to cancel our plans of visiting Pingyao (famous for its well-preserved architecture), Shijiazhuang (where we used to live at a Chinese army college), and Shanghai (the location of the World Expo), and instead decided to focus completely on Greater Tibet in Qinghai Province. We figured if we got into the frontier region of Amdo, inflation would be nothing like it was on China's eastern seaboard. It was a gamble we had to take. We cashed $900 in Zhengzhou and dedicated that to travel money in Greater Tibet. Our remaining $1,000 in Traveller's Cheques that Sander was carrying would be used to get us from Xining, Qinghai Province, to Hong Kong for our flight home.

Photo: A long, cramped, grueling ride (July, 2010).

But first we had to get to Xining. The hard-seat train car was new, clean, with air-conditioning and a high ceiling. Every seat was taken. Sander and I didn't have a seat and had to stand in the aisle. What the Chinese do, is sell the aisle-space to an additional 30-50 people. This can nearly double the number of people in the car. With the aisle packed, and people eating and drinking (mostly hot soups and teas), there is a constant flow to the toilets where lines form since, I'm sure, the rail car designers didn't anticipate up to 100% additional passengers using these facilities. As a result, Sander and I sat on our backbacks and constantly had to stand to let people squeeze by to use the toilets, where one was located at each end of the car. And then there were the train attendants, coming through frequently selling food and sweeping the aisle. When the attendants came through we had to squeeze between the legs of those passengers in actual seats. No part of anyone's body was left untouched. For those in seats, it was a sort-of party (but I assure you that hard-seat is no party for any long journey, especially with a crowded aisle). For those in the aisle, it was a testing of stamina. We were on this car, in this aisle, standing and sitting, for 19 hours. That was after four hours of waiting outside in the plaza and later inside in the boarding gate. And this was after my hardly sleeping for a week. The ride was hell.

Photo: The Meining Binguan, Xining, Qinghai Province (July, 2010).

But now that we are in Qinghai Province, our gamble paid off! Today, we brought our daily expenses down to 181 Yuan Renminbi (RMB), for food, lodging, groceries, and a map). We will spend less than 50 RMB for this posting and supper. That amounts to about 231 RMB for the day. This is great news because we figured that we had to live within a 250 RMB/day budget over the next three weeks to make this work. It's working.

Photo: Sander making coffee in our room at the Meining Binguan in Xining, Qinghai Province (July, 2010).

And it's worthwhile. This is without question one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, city I have ever seen! Tibetans and Hui are walking around in great abundance. In the nearby market we saw several Tibetans in off the steppe buying supplies, such as large cartridge bullets that are still worn in belts like the sort Poncho Villa once wore. Another was looking at beautiful leather and felt boots with upturned toes (a Mongolian influence).

Now our journey begins! Everything that came before was just to get here. This is where the excitement starts, and we are both so damn excited! Today Sander and I made a matrix of the places on the steppe where we want to visit over the next three weeks, which includes the good things about each place based on Sander's values and goals for this journey, the costs in time and distance, and decisions on what to include and what not to after much research. Then we mapped out a route. Fortunately, my poor Chinese is good enough to read a bus schedule and there was one on the Qinghai Provincial map we purchased, giving us an enomous amount of information at our fingertips. But more importantly, Sander also cross-referenced between various books we'd brought to extract additional information to make an incredibly informed and organized journey into this steppe of Tibetan and Mongolian cultures.

I will post before we leave (after I rid myself of this bug).

Brad