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Populace Direct Bus Glasses Supermarket

My favourite sign.

What I Miss About China
• eating with chopsticks every day
• clean, cheap, plentiful public transport
• being one of the tallest people around at any given time
• not being at work
• seeing Morag every day
• the adventure of being/seeing/doing all that new stuff

What I Don’t Miss About China
• the pollution
• the being stared at all the time
• missing Nicci and Jemima
• the noise

Things I Wish I Had Brought More Of Home With Me
• peanut-butter and chocolate Oreos
• good pictures
• one of those cute little tortoises for sale in Shanghai
• containers of peanut soy milk
• a nice Dragon-Turtle ornament from Beijing
• Pleasant Goat merchandise 


Things I Plan On Doing
• posting some of the not-so-great photos I took
• publicly thanking Fang Zhang for helping me out with translation before I left, and generally putting my mind at ease. Thanks Fang!

The saddest store in China, one guy, a black and white TV and empty, dusty, pop bottles.

On A Plane Home

Flight left a little late, just as predicted.

Sitting right at the back, had all three seats to myself, but a young man has joined me. He is sleeping right now.

We had a real honest to god, "ladies and gentlemen, if there is a doctor on board please come to the front of the cabin" style emergency. They asked in three languages, twice. Not sure what it was, or if a doctor presented themselves, but there was a bunch of hustling and bustling. Update - when we land in Toronto, passengers are confined to their seats while paramedics come on board, we had a bunch of tiny grannies on the flight, not sure if it was one of them or someone else.

We flew home by a different route. Straight-out over the East China Sea, up along Japan, across the Bering Sea, the south coast of Alaska, The Yukon, N.W.T., Manitoba and down into Ontario. We are up above The Soo right now.

They have just handed out the hated customs forms, and yet again not included a pen with it. I guess I should remember to bring one, but come on!

Our crew is very senior, seriously, three quarters of the staff look like they are ready to retire any time. I heard a couple of them discussing it while most people were sleeping. They had never been on a flight with this high a seniority rating before.

Between the 28 hours in planes, the at least 54 hours on busses and trains, and the mattress-less bed at Morag's, my sore bony ass is going to take a while to recover from this trip. I managed to sleep on the flight, but it was fitful and plagued by cries of "mercy" from my rear-end. I only managed to get in one and a half full movies and an amusing Australian short film about meeting God on this flight, oh yeah, watched the first 3 episodes of Community too.

Borrowed a pen from the man in front of me, the one with the hilarious little baby girl, who has been as good as gold, love her, hate customs forms.

Loved the trip, love coming home.

Waiting On A Plane

Sitting in the departures zone of the Shanghai Pudong Internatinal Airport. Beside me is a 2.5 - 3 year old boy watching some crazy kids show about tigers brushing their teeth, oh wait, now it is a human girl, getting her teeth brushed by her dad. He is watching it on his mother's super thin MacBook Air. It looks lighter than my iPad.

Morag and I had a fight about breakfast this morning, but we worked it out before I left. I am really going to miss being with her everyday, I think we were both coming to the point where we needed some space. She has a very small room.

Out into a rainy, damp morning (only full-on rain since I got here.) The roads and side walks on Morag's campus are paved with an assortment of stones, big, small, rough, smooth, even polished. The polished ones, slick with rain, made the walk to the bus with full back-pack and carry-on a little bit challenging. Morag says they are super fun when covered with a layer of snow. Onto the Special Number 2 bus for one last trip through Suzhou, out through the Quantum Gate - this weird installation/sculpture thing over the road leading to Morag's school, it has these two rings of bright white metal, attached by strings of lights, and the road, and tunnel run right through the centre of it. On one side there is a statue of Albert Einstein, and on the other I.M. Pei (who it turns out designed the fabulous Suzhou Museum.) At the train station I grab a quick veggie bun then jump onto the fast train to Shanghai, then a long subway ride with 2 changes, and here I am. No need for a limo or a cab, I got here by transit. Why doesn't Toronto have a subway to the airport? 

Plane is running late by about half an hour. Have 65 Yuen left and they are burning a hole in my pocket.

Had a snack which included the worlds greatest coconut milk ever. Half an hour till we board and although I have free Internet access, blogger is being a pain.

More Things Here

There don't seem to be very many (if any) high-water, apple-bottom, booties here. Most of the trunks I have observed are neat and petite, not completely empty like my own, but not stuffed full.

As near as my ignorant, unsophisticated western tongue can tell, Chinese hard liquor comes from one of two flavor classes. The Slightly Sweetened Medicinal Tincture group, and the Poison group. The one I had last night came from the latter. I don't know how long it would take to re-educate my palette, but I am guessing 7 lifetimes.

Did see the aftermath of a traffic accident today. Dented car, destroyed motorbike, people talking to the police. Just like at home.

I had a culturally insensitive moment a few days back and got hostile with a guy who cut in line at the post office. It was a waste really, language barrier reduced us both to angry gesticulations. Morag pulled me away and pointed out that I had in fact been standing sort of between two lines, so maybe he wasn't really butting. Whatever, since then I have been way more aggressive, you might even call me "the elbow kid", no one cuts in on me anymore, and I have even done a bit of cutting myself, not proud of it, but I have.

Went to the movies, which had assigned seating, which was weird because we didn't realize it at first and were sort of awkward about it. The lobby totally smelt of popcorn, and although I remembered Morag telling me something about it, I ordered it. They don't salt popcorn here, they sugar it! Not caramel corn style, more like they switch out our salt with sugar. A bit weird at first, but tasty.

2nd last day

You know who has a great 20 year old daughter? I do. Simple as that. She has entertained me, educated me, helped me, adventured with me for the last 16 days. She must have been bored, irritated, embarrassed, but she did it. She rocks. I am so grateful that she allowed me to take advantage of this opportunity.

I wasn't so glad when we slept in again this morning. I did try and wake her up at one point and she told me "I am in a very bad mood right now and trying really hard to be nice" so I let her go back to sleep, and did the same myself.

So, we missed breakfast again, however, it was so late when we finally got up that the cafeteria had reopened for lunch.

Then we took the bus to the North Suzhou Bus Station and caught an inter-city bus to the quaint little canal city of Tongli. It is sort of like Suzhou in the antiquity/canal/proximity to Shanghai department, but it has kept it's old town pristine, instead of building up around and in it. You get off the bus, walk about 15 minutes, cross a canal, pay an entry fee and it is like you have stepped back in time. Tiny lane-ways, people on little boats along the canal, gracious gardens, and a feeling that it would totally reek during the warm months. We visited a couple of gardens, looked at some shops, saw some museums and then headed back into the newer part of town for dinner.

One of the Museums was the Chinese Sex Culture Museum. They have two buildings, the one in Tongli, and one in Shanghai. The write-ups made it sound great, but it wasn't. Lots of stone phallus and naked people in the pretty gardens, but in the buildings themselves just a weird assortment of sculptures, found objects, artifacts and plenty of paintings of different coital positions (you have seen them before, from Japan or China, well this place had tons, pretty much minor variations on each other). The "curator" had tried to tie each room together with a theme, but the displays didn't really much reflect the ideas (and why was there a giant sculpture of a soaring eagle in the middle of the gallery of sexual deviancy?) There were some interesting "sex education" figurines that could be hidden inside larger ceramic figures, so that mothers could discretely use them to teach their daughter what was expected of them. The pillows that were built to hide dildos for lonely nuns and concubines were pretty cool too, but how people sleep on the hard wood or ceramic pillows I do not know. The whole place was more like an eccentric with an eclectic interest in the erotic decided to put their collection up for public viewing, than it was a museum.

Our dinner was scrumptious. We went into this tiny little hole in the wall, and were handed baskets by this 6 or 7 year old girl, then we went to a fridge and filled our baskets with our soup fixings. I had two kinds of tofu, bok choy, nappa, hard-boiled quail eggs, preserved greens, two kinds of mushrooms and ramen noodles. I handed it to the woman standing by the big pot of water and she cooked it up for me. Meanwhile the little girl showed us to our table, brought us a bottle opener, and straws. When our big steaming bowls of soup arrived we added chilies, and vinegar and chowed down. It was so cold in the place, and the soup was so hot and spicy that my nose was running like a faucet, but I didn't mind, I was hungry. For entertainment we had a blaring TV showing some crazy loud cartoon about a little boy and a pig who where friends, but yelled at each other a lot. All this for less than 3 bucks for both of us.

My favorite point in the day was about halfway back to Suzhou. Our bus driver is barreling along (don't have an actual speed, but factoring in the roar of the engine, the bouncing, the creaking and rattling, I would guess about 330km/hr) this elevated expressway, holding down firmly on his horn as he tries to veer across all 3 lanes of crowded traffic, flashing his lights and weaving in and out, when his phone rings, and he answers it, and starts YELLING at the person on the other end, no preamble, straight to the bellow. We made it though.

Tomorrow we will get up early, and we will make it to breakfast, then we will finish our Scrabble game, then I am off to the airport.

Egads, I will miss the big girl terribly.

Super Supermarket

Today's original plan had been to sleep in, then wander around campus (people are beginning to return, there were about a hundred or so in the one cafeteria open tonight, the day before I arrived, Morag was all alone. To put it in perspective, there are 4 big cafeterias on campus here, each seat between 300 and 600 people at a time and they are usually so full that you have to shove people aside to get up the stairs.), and then maybe visit the giant athletic/movie theater/bowling alley/coffee shop just off the south end of the campus. Turns out we slept in too late to wander campus and get breakfast, then when we got to the mega-use-complex everything but the movie theater seemed abandoned. So, we took a bus ride (about 40 minutes) to a shopping mall that along with 2 different donut shops, a two story KFC, and a Pizza Hut has a GIGANTIC Grocery Store. Well it was more than a grocery store really, imagine a Costco, but where you don't have to be a member and where you can buy just one or two of something and not have to go for the 20L jar of mayonnaise. I hadn't seen any bulk food in Chinese Grocery Stores (CGS), Auchan had it. I hadn't seen a produce section of any merit in CGS, Auchan had it (nearly all the produce was individually shrink wrapped, but there was plenty of it.) Plus a bakery, plus a butchers and a live aquatic animal butcher (be thankful you aren't a soft shelled turtle in China, your life expectancy would be pretty short here.) Not to mention the restaurant, and the two full aisles of Ramen Noodles - two full grocery store aisles of different flavors of Ramen and other instant Noodle soups. If we had been outside, instead of in air-conditioned comfort (both heating and cooling is referred to as air conditioning here - which when you think about it, makes sense) then the far end of the store would have faded into air polluted grey. The place was maximum size, no joke.

After buying belts, booze, mangoes, souvenirs and school books we came back to Campus and ate dinner at the cafeteria (not so tasty really, but less than one Canadian dollar to fill the belly to bursting.)

Then back to Mo's room to re-wire her bathroom light (guess where we got the electrical tape and the light bulb?) and try and Skype my darling wife to wish her a happy Valentines. No luck, she wasn't on line. But just so as she and everyone else in the world knows. I Love Her, and Can't Wait To See Her!!!

We might go see a movie later if we have the energy.

Downgrade

Guess where I am? A train station. Guess what I am doing? Waiting. Guess what all the guys cramped into the little anteroom outside the toilet are doing right under the no smoking sign? That's right, smoking! Plus c'est change. As far as new experiences go, well, I am interacting with my first Chinese schizophrenic right now, she is seated directly across from us, letting her invisible enemies have it and chain-smoking and chain-spitting up a storm.I am avoiding eye contact as best I can as she is pretty agitated.

So I want to retract yesterday's (she has moved over a row to pick up a newspaper) 100% glowing revue of Shanghai. I am downgrading it to "no cooler than New York." I guess yesterday was all sunny and bright, and we spent most of it in the French Quarter, and the subway lines we took were brand new. Today was grey and cold and polluted and snowy/rainy. The subway line (#2) was older and dirtier, Lujiazu station was missing ceiling tiles and Pudong was a bitter disappointment. Sure the Oriental Pearl Tower was like a pretty CN Tower, and the Shanghai World Financial Centre was like the worlds tallest bottle opener, but everything we saw was touristy and sorta gross. Imagine Niagara Falls surrounded by enormous sun-blocking office towers. To be fair, we didn't wander far from the edge of the river, and perhaps if it had been warmer we could have had a better time, but it wasn't and we didn't. We did decide to check out the Shanghai Insect Museum, which instead of the interesting educational science centre thing I had hoped for, turned out to be the most hateful, disgusting animal torture center slash petting zoo from Hell I have ever seen. I am so ashamed I spent money there. If there is such a thing as a Chinese ALF, I hope they liberate everything there and then burn the shit-hole to the ground. On the plus side for Pudong we did have a nice coffee in the Super Brand Mall.

Back in Shanghai proper we had a stroll along the Suzhou Creek, and then down the Bund, taking in the faded European grandeur. After that we walked in the centre of the Huangpu section of the city and visited the tres lovely Gongdelin Vegetarian Restaurant (since 1922 no less.) It was a fancier place, in a fancier neighborhood than last night's vegetarian restaurant, but the price was only a little bit more. Some things were nicer (tea, service), some worse (the meatballs). Both were excellent over-all, but if you are ever at the Gongdelin, don't bother with the Fried Sparrow. too much batter, not enough sparrow.

Now we are waiting for the train to Suhzou. Had a bit of a scare when the automated ticket booth kept telling us there were no more trains tonight, but we found a human and she sold us some. I think tomorrow is just lying around.

Countryside

During our 3 long train rides I have seen a bunch of central chinese countryside, and I have to say, it sure is full of people. Is there any 24 hour train ride you could take from anywhere to anywhere else in Canada that wouldn't spend at least some of the time traversing wilderness? I don't mean pristine arctic wild lands, but at least some area where you don't see houses, or farms or settlements at some point? We haven't gone through anywhere here where you don't see a farm or a road, or people working, or houses or some signs of people. I guess up in the north there is desert, and out in the west you have the Himalayas, but around here it is people people people.

Postcards

Normally when I go on vacation or travel I love to send postcards. It makes me feel good, I honestly get pleasure from it. So I have been writing postcards while I am here, and sending them off (19 at last count), but they just aren't giving me the boost they have in the past. Partly I think it is because I write on here every day, partly it is because I am nervous that they aren't going to even make it to Canada. (None of the many packages sent to Morag have gotten to her yet, although my mom received word that the one she posted has at least arrived in China.) Maybe next time, no blogging, just post carding. Probably not, I am doing the blog mostly for Nicci, because she likes it, and I really like her. So too bad for you potential postcard receiving people. Blah Blah Blah, what I really mean is I miss Jemima and Nicci, I am about ready to go home. I want my sweetie and my little baby. I want my bed, and my dog. The home fries at breakfast were good, but the coffee really sucked and I miss Nicci. Waaaaaa.

Things

The interplay between Pedestrians, Drivers, Cyclists here is like a dangerous crazy-ass ballet. It is based around the same precepts as queuing and perambulating on a busy sidewalk. Fill any unused space, DO NOT make eye contact, act like you own the place and yield to greater numbers.

Only a couple of days ago (after having to jump quickly out of the way of a taxi) did I realize that there are no stop signs. Head towards the intersection at full speed, slow if there is something bigger, merge right in, any lane will do. Pedestrians dive, bicycles dodge, horns honk, and weirdly, I have seen only one accident. Morag has seen one between two scooters and a cyclist, the one I saw was just a single vehicle (black Mazda Five with Roof Rack - Nicci, are you following me?) that managed to get itself rammed up on a median. Morag and I try to cross with a group of locals, if you follow their lead it is comforting. I was busy looking at a map yesterday and when I looked up Morag and the gang were already halfway through a multi-lane havoc-full crossing. I had to make the journey by myself, and I didn't like it. Cars seem to left and right turn on red lights, scooters can ignore any red light, and even if the little green man is flashing for you to cross, cars have the right of way and you have to be prepared to move out of the way fast. I am not saying it is bad driving - everybody seems to follow the same rules and know what is going on, it is just really foreign to me.

A lot of people smoke here. No smoking signs seem to mean - Keep it to a minimum. The slow train had plenty of no-smoking signs, but as long as the smokers kept out by the bathrooms, where there wasn't a no-smoking sign they figured they were safe. 8 people smoking in a 75cm x 200 cm space can really fill up a train car with smokey goodness, fast.

There isn't as much horking, honking, snorting and spitting as I had been led to believe (oh there is plenty, trust me, but not the levels I expected).

Green vegetables get cooked to within an inch of their lives (at least at every restaurant we have been to.) Also, green vegetables seem to come from the Green Vegetable fairy, and not the supermarket. Every supermarket we have visited is about 98% packaged food. One or two has a few wilted veggies, but nothing like the produce aisle at home. Yesterday, walking down a tiny side-street in the French Quarter we happened upon a little veggie market, and the produce was healthy looking, vibrant, plentiful and weirdly clean (the carrots looked ready to go into surgery), but this one market in Shanghai can't be feeding everybody, where is it all.

Tofu isn't a vegetarian threat to meat eaters here like at home. Tofu is a wonderful squishy addition to most any meal you get. Sadly, for us vegetarians it is usually cooked with some form of meat. We were on our tour of the Terra Cotta Warriors and Zsa Zsa our guide was busy being aghast about our vegetarianism, literally shuddering at the idea of giving up meat, and I said "but you eat tofu", she looked at me like I was an idiot and said "yes, tofu is delicious". So different than at home.

Sweets aren't very sweet here. Mildly sweet, usually bean filled or seed filled, and chewy or flakey, but not North American High-Fructose Corn Syrup Super Sweet. The only chocolate bars I see regularly (except in the lah-dee-dah richie-rich grocery stores) are Snickers, M&M Peanuts and various Dove things.

Ramen Instant Noodles are the food of choice for travelers. Every train and bus station I have been to has big piles of instant spicy noodles in cardboard buckets. All different flavors (how many types of meat can you dehydrate? All of them!), and colours and seemingly eaten by everybody. 

People prefer hot water to cold water. Every hostel we have been to has a hot water dispenser, only one has had a water cooler. It is good to have plenty of hot water dispensers, you never know when you want to eat some Ramen.

Again with the Trains!

OMFG! Take a fast train why don't you! No really, try it. The train we took from Suzhou to Shanghai today was so fast. It took an hour to get from Morag's place to the train station by bus, and then half an hour to get all the way to Shanghai. Check it on the map. Wicked ass. Our top speed was 341km/h. I know some of the fancy Japanese Mag-Lev trains go over 400km/h, but that is the fastest I have ever gone, except in a plane. I loved it.

OMFG! The subways in Shanghai! What a system. Big, complicated, cheap, clean, easy to navigate ticket buying system in English and Chinese (all touch screen), and on some of the lines the platforms have a glass panel and the train doors line up with sliding glass doors in the panel and it is like a big long train elevator door system. The best part about the trains though (besides the little LED flashing station indicator that shows you where you are and where you are going) is that there are no doors between cars, so you stand at one end of the train and you can see all the way down to the other end, and when it turns a corner it is like you are on the inside of a snake.

OMFG! The money here! A couple of posts back I mentioned that the social life/economy in the cities we have visited doesn't match up to the image created by those vintage Maoist posters. Well Shanghai, the birthplace of Chinese Communism, has gone completely the other way. (At least on the surface, I know little of the ins-and-outs of contemporary Chinese politics and there may well be things going on that rival the heyday of the Gang Of Four.) One of the activities we attempted today (and failed at) was visit a museum at the little house where the founding meeting of the Chinese Communist Party took place. It is in this ultra chi-chi boutique lined avenue. It is within spitting distance of a Rolls Royce dealership, and restaurants that look like they would be by invitation only. Just 2 blocks away are HUGE flagship Apple, and Versace outlets and acre after acre of upscale stores. (There was a Beard Papa though, and we did get a Cream Bun, and it was delightful.) The Party and what came out of it must still be important to people though, the whole time we were standing around the museum, people kept coming up and taking pictures of their families in front of the plaque on the door.

Really today was a failure in many ways. We slept late. We almost fought at the house, and then again when we got off the train in Shanghai. I tripped and hurt my knee. Two of the four places we set out to visit were closed by the time we got there. I got Beard Papa cream all in my mustache, some Belgians/Germans/Austrians made fun of us for taking the subway instead of walking, and the women at the Buddhist restaurant tonight treated me like I was an imbecile. But it wasn't a failure. The train and subway rocked it. The Chinese Propaganda Poster Museum was fantastic. Most of those posters were trashed when Deng Xiaoping took office, and the museum has thousands. We bought a nice one for Morag's room, to remind her that science is hard work, but paramount for the revolution. We didn't make it to the Jade Buddha Temple on time, but we did make it to the Jade Buddha Temple Vegetarian Restaurant, and despite the withering service, the food was such a pleasure. It was the first vegetarian restaurant we have been to, it was a relief not to have to keep an eye out for stray flesh, all the different fake meats were divine, and the greens weren't completely over cooked. (Bok Choy gets sort of gross when it is cooked to death, and I LOVE Bok Choy.) 

We are back at our Hostel, the bar may be playing nasty techno, but it is smoke free, almost empty, just us another backpack type couple and some chinese guys playing poker. The fireworks are going, but they are far enough off in the distance that they can be ignored. 

Tomorrow we are doing a couple of other sections of the city. The Bund (old European downtown) and Pudong (crazy new skyscraper downtown). The plan is to go home on an evening train, but we are going to decide if we want another night over breakfast tomorrow.

The Colonel

KFC has China locked down. Sure you see Mcdonalds (creepy little girl come hither patter playing outside every restaurant) and Pizza Huts (way more upscale, sit-down than at home), and I even seeb two Burger Kings, but KFC? Damn, the Colonel is in charge! As we walked through old town and the shopping core today there must have been 7 or 8 of them. It seemed the same in Bejing and Xi'an too. Morag says it is because people just aren't that into beef here, so KFC makes more sense. Could be, but I also wonder if it isn't that The Colonel's face (which is on all the signs, and posters and storefronts) resembles that of the venerable ancestor. Serious, bearded, looking down from on high. Maybe it strikes some sort of cultural chord, or maybe they just got here first and out-maneuvered the others. You also see plenty of Starbucks, some Dairy Queens, and any number of the high end boutique type shops - Fendi, D&G, Prada etc. Maybe the Party still holds sway in the country side, but in the big cities I have visited, the dollar seems to be the chairman.

Suzhou City Limits

Suzhou City Limits are hard to reach, because it is a really big city. We took an hour and a half bus ride from the campus to the "old city" and the downtown shopping core. The shopping core (imagine Yonge and Dundas that goes on and on) is just one tiny part of downtown. There appear to be several downtowns. At least that was how it seemed to me from the top of the North Temple Pagoda (the tallest pagoda south of the Yangzi - and a little scary, I kept thinking, the foundations of this were laid down 1700 years ago, and it is really tall and really full of people). The pagoda is part of a working temple, so there were lots of monks, people burning incense (the biggest incense I have ever seen, over a meter long and about a decimeter around!), and plenty of incarnations of the Buddah. 

Before that we had lunch at the saddest restaurant in the world. We only went in because we couldn't find another one, and it had these tanks full of live turtles, and frogs and crabs, and eels and fish, all waiting to be eaten. On top of that the only staff person present spent her time staring vacantly at some Chinese Idol type show from 2009. Creepy and weird, and the tofu dish had meat in it that we had to pick out.

Before the depressing lunch we saw the Humble Administrator's Garden, one of the nicest and largest enclosed gardens in China. Morag promises me that when she is a billionaire she will set up something like it.

And before that it was the Suzhou Museum. It isn't very big, but it is a beautiful building, the exhibits were well laid out, and the English translations were easy on the brain. (By the way, a big "thank-you" to China for providing translations on so many signs. Thanks!)

Tomorrow and the next day are Shanghai, after that we aren't sure and then it is time to go home. I really miss Nicci and Jemima, I can't wait to see them.

**OUT OF CHRONOLOGY NEWS FLASH**

Sitting in Costa Coffee at the corner of Fuxing and Madang , hope this doesn't offend anyone back home, but Toronto drools, Shanghai rules. 100% true. Sorry Toronto (and Montreal and Vancouver and really any other Canadian city.

Beard Papa Lets Us Down

We slept nearly the whole day away, and it was raining and cold, so as I stumbled around waking up Morag did her laundry. We left the residence around 7ish and walked to a nearby plaza for dinner. While there we went through The Lonely Planet to plan our next week. TLP talks about a place called Beard Papa, I mentioned this to Morag and she went into rapture about the cream buns you can get at Beard Papa, and didn't it turn out that there was one only a short bus ride away at the Times Square Mall (home of the worlds longest outdoor overhead LED TV screen). So onto the bus we hop.

Down through the mall (did someone say this was a Communist country? you cannot tell that from the high end malls in the cities) into the food court. There is Beard Papa. Sadly, there are no cream buns, well there are some, but they are in the oven, come back in 20 minutes. OK, walk around the really high-end mall, look at stuff we can't afford, marvel at the huge TV screen in the sky (and it was only partially on), buy some Chinese style junk food (kim chi potato chips, blueberry potato chips) in the really expensive grocery store, and head back to Beard Papa. Sorry, there are no cream buns, what? but you said? sorry, dang! Back on the bus and back to campus. Morag gets chatting to friends here, and on the Internet, so I do laundry, read some comic books and drink a beer. As I sit here typing this, my poor tired ass is reminding me that I just spent 23 hours on a train and to please give it a break. Tomorrow we tour Suzhou. 

There is no training for this.

What a train ride.

Sweet Jebus, what a train ride.

There is so much to say about it, but unless you were on it, I am not sure you would really understand.

Firstly, we were on the slow train. I don't think the train itself actually goes slower than most other non-super-train trains. But it stopped at nearly every town, and out on the tracks and just about anywhere else. Just sat there and waited. Not sure why.

Secondly, we were in hard seats. The seats had some foam padding on them, but they were benches, and couldn't tilt back. On our side of the train each bench sat 3, and on the other side they sat two. The  benches were paired, so that each bench faced another bench and there was a small table between them.

Thirdly, it was jam-packed with people. Every seat was taken, the aisle was jammed, and any open space had more people crammed in there as well. 

Getting to the bathroom, was an ordeal of squeezing out of your seat, stepping over the people sitting at the edge of your benches (they buy these tiny little stools to sit on), pushing past the people in the aisle and gouging your way to the line up at the toilet. I didn't drink or eat much so I only had to go once. I went early in the morning, and really, given everything else, it wasn't that bad. Stinky and covered in a pool of urine, but not that bad. Morag went a couple of times and said it was really gross by the end of the day.

Fourth, there is no privacy. None. Everyone is talking to and about everyone else. Needless to say, Morag and I were a big draw for attention. No one else spoke any appreciable english, and I am sure no one appreciated my faltering attempts at Mandarin. The man beside me (the smiling jack-ass was my name for him) had a translator on his google phone, and I had a phrase book on my ipod, so we managed a bit of information exchange, but it was minimal. No one believed that Morag was my daughter, someone called the conductor on us at one point and we had to show our tickets (only us, no one else in car 18), and Morag says that when I was asleep and snoring people were video-taping me (yes smiling jack-ass, I am speaking of you.) It gets a bit tiring being stared at for 23 hours.

Fifth, the noise! Oy the noise. Everyone has a cell-phone, everyone has every tone on their phone turned to maximum volume. Most people stare at their phone for at least two rings before answering it, and nearly everyone has different tones for text messages, and it is a bit like being in a huge arcade. There was one person at our end of the carriage that had this little chirp sound for texts or something, turned to the max, that went off at least three times a minute for the whole time we were on the train. I am not exaggerating. I couldn't see who it was, which was just as well, because I would have smashed the fucking thing, but it just kept going off. Plus people were playing music off their phones, there was music playing over the intercom (Guy Lombardo era big band tunes for the most part. Auld Lang Syne, Silent Night etc), and several people were watching movies or playing games on their laptops. Add to all this the general volume of that many people crammed in that little space and you have cacophony galore. By the last quarter of the voyage my brain had given in and I started hearing the babble in english. I kept looking around to see who might be speaking english, but really none of it made sense, it was just my brain being tired.

Sixth, the train was running late, and lots of the stops weren't on the map, so I didn't really have a sense of where we were, and most of the stops didn't have signs up that told you where they were, or if they did they were only visible as you were already leaving the station, so I was stressing out a bit that we were going to miss Sozhou and end up in Shanghai. I think they were announcing the stops over the intercom, but I couldn't really hear it above everything else. Thankfully nearly everyone got off at Sozhou, and some of the people who had been staring at us let us know that it was our stop. Even the conductor came by to make sure we knew to get off.

From the train station we caught a cab, it was the middle of the night so no busses were running and got back to Morag's residence. We were so tired we fell into our beds, and I slept for 13 hours straight.

I wouldn't trade the experience, and we were lucky to get any train ticket out of Xi'an at all (let alone seats). I enjoyed watching the people interact, and was happy to see that even "one child policy" teenagers are sullen and rude to their parents, but I don't think I will ever want to do that again. If I am back in China when Jemima is a University Student i think we will book soft sleepers well in advance, or maybe fly between cities.

Bulls In Xi'an Shops

So our last day in Xi'an was spent walking. We walked a lot. It is a city of 8 million, so the nice old part inside the city walls (44km long rectangle, wider than tall, don't know the measurements, so can't give you the area, sorry.), is just a smidgen of what there is on offer. We spent a good portion of the day wandering around outside the walls, but not very far. It is a big city by Canadian standards and we were certainly well outside any "touristy" areas.

In the morning, after another leisurely breakfast - turns out there is a breakfast even slower than the Mexican, and that is the Israeli one. I don't know what qualified it as Israeli, it was just fried eggs with tons of canned tomatoes over a layer of barely cooked potato strips. It was quite tasty though. The English and American breakfasts were ready in a jiffy for everyone who ordered them. I think it might be the addition of potatoes that puts the kibosh on a speedy repast - we packed up our room, stowed our bags and headed out. Our first stop was the Great Mosque in the heart of the Muslim quarter. It was great (size wise) and a Mosque (lots of prayer mats and men getting ready to pray in their little prayer hats), but it was in pretty poor shape, and like almost everything else in every city we have been to, covered in a layer of grime. – It is weird how dirty and how not dirty everything is. The walls, streets, benches, anything that sits still is REALLY GRIMEY, a few things that move are too, stray pets, the beggars,the medium and slow trains. Most things that move are shiny and clean. The People, their Cars (haven't seen a carwash, but any vehicle that is getting used regularly seems to shine). Given the number of people, and their endless ability to litter you would think that the country would be up to it's hips in garbage, it seems though that there are these tiny old people that come out early in the morning that clean it up. Seriously the entrance to the Subway late at night is just a shambles, get up bright and early and it is all gone. Oh, and you NEVER want to sit down on a floor EVER. Enough about the grime – The Mosque was an interesting blend of Chinese and Islamic. The arabic calligraphy blends in nicely with the dragons and lotus flowers. The prayer hall was impressive, but we weren't allowed inside. I don't think non-muslims ever are, but on top of that they were getting ready for noon prayers. After finishing up with that we walked through the quarter and had Cold Noodles with Sesame and Ice Peak Soda. I know, what a surprise, but they are so good. From lunch we headed out on a long walk through the walled city and beyond to The Temple of the Eight Immortals. An ancient Taoist temple set on the sight of a teashop where someone got hammered and said he saw all of the Eight Immortals sitting around him drinking. I know there is more to the story than that but that was my take-away from the poorly translated, highly reflective, almost impossible to read signs outside the temple wall. Inside it was a working temple built on the same model as all the other temples (and the mosque) we have seen. Lots of courtyards surrounded by little prayer rooms and a central gate leading to another courtyard, back and back until you get to the main one, and then a garden behind it. The Temple was quite busy, monks doing prayers, tons of worshippers. The incense brasiers were so full that most of them were on fire, rather than smoking and people kept burning themselves trying to add their incense. I am more used to the smell of Indian/Hippy incense, so at first the chinese stuff just seemed to smell like smoke, but I am accustomed to it now and kind of like it. I have to learn more about Taoism, what was going on in that temple, especially all the offers to statues of crabby looking old men with long beards just doesn't mesh with my simple understanding. I didn't see Piglet anywhere.

Another long walk took us to this park. It was a big park with a driving range, a pond for rowing, an amusements section, and a very sad park. I guess someone forgot to put up the don't walk on the grass signs (they have them most everywhere you find grass), and most of the park was just beaten down dirt with trees poking out of it. Between the dead dry dirt, the dead winter trees, the layer of grime, and the ever-thickening haze of the smog, well it wasn't an uplifting park for me. The families there seemed to be having fun though.

After that, a very long, long, we can't find what we are looking for walk took us almost all the way back to the hostel. Seems like the highly recommended restaurant we were searching for is no longer there. People pointed us in the direction for it, but the building was half abandoned. No worries, a second highly recommended restaurant was just a few blocks away. And it was good. Spicy noodles with Tofu, incredibly spicy potatoes with peppers and onions, weird pear flavored beer. MMMM MMMM. We still had 5 hours until our train left so we sat in a really expensive cafe and drank really expensive coffee (Actually no greater than Starbucks price, but the 4 we had were more than the dinner, including beer), then picked up our bags and walked (we had time to kill, but my hips, knees and ankles felt like they were being murdered) up to the train station.

There were 2 hours to go until the train left, but there was already a line up, so we lined up. What a mad jumble. Pushing, shoving, stepping over. Cramming into any square inch. We couldn't figure out why, all the seats are assigned, so people who have them don't need to worry, all the standing spaces are just that, one carriage is as good as another. Morag got really crabby at being shoved, sat her bag down and went to sleep on it. Changed the whole balance of power in our section of the mob/line. People behind us would see the empty space beside me, and come plowing forward to move into it, get up to me, realize there was a body in the space, but between the prone Morag and the whole family with the huge bags beside her, there was no way past. Rolling eyes, tentative half steps, attempts to climb over. If I hadn't been so tired I would have enjoyed it more. Suddenly, with an hour to go, the sign changes, there is a collective groan/growl/rumble that runs through the crowd, everyone jumps to their feet and starts pushing. Both Morag and I were lifted off our feet a couple of times. People were in a panic to get on the train, running flat out down the platform for a train that wasn't going to leave for an hour. I really don't get it,  my guess is that the standing only folks had to grab luggage space. It was difficult to get to our seats, because of all the people standing in every doorway, seriously, put your body in a doorway and don't move, even for the big fat guy with the huge backpack, just don't move. It was a bit like a rugby scrimmage. Once we got to our seats, and then kicked out the squatters (only pay for a standing seat, then sit wherever and whenever you can, even if only for a few minutes) we fell promptly asleep, even before the train left the station.