Chinas Train Journeys

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Train journeys in China are pretty interesting. Rumour has it that at any one time there are 10 million Chinese travelling on a train, or, if you prefer, the population of Portugal. Sometimes it feels as though that estimate is a little on the light side.

Given the vast distances across the worlds third biggest country, it's surprising that it only takes a night to travel from one place to another. The people you meet make it an experience in itself. On our train journey from Kunming to Chengdu (south East to Central China) we were playing Rumi when we began to attract a crowd, our white faces standing out from the rest of the carriage.

We invited one lady to play with us and she picked the game up alarmingly quickly (I guess this explains all the Chinese in casinos), she then explained the game to all the others. Not a word of English was spoken and it was quite an achievement that sombody could pick up the rules so quickly without them being explained.

Around 8pm a few guys from somewhere in our carriage bought a bottle of Baijo and insisted that the winner sink a shot of the foul stuff. Sensibly, the original player pulled out and became a spectator. I somehow hit a winning streak, and no matter how much I tried not too hard, I won three of the next four games and had to drink each shot to a cheer of "Gumbei" from half the carriage. Fortunately, it was then decided that everyone should have a shot. Rhian took a sip and then pulled a face that said "but I'm a girl". That old get-out.

I couldn't do the face and so when I'd finished shots four and five I was pleased to see that the bottle was empty. Then the lady with a trolley full of goodies rolled by and sold our new friends another bottle for 2 quid. My heart sank! We played cards and drank Baijo until the lights on the carriage mercifully went out at 10.30.

The morning held a pleasant surprise as the gents had finished drinking and instead of playing cards we got out a map of China and they showed us where they're from and wanted to know where we'd been, where we were going, and why.

It's on the train journeys that you mee the people who ordinarily don't see "western" faces.

The train journey from Chengdu to Xian was slightly less eventful, but we met up with an English language teacher called Lina, she wanted to practice her English pronounciation with us. We ended up playing Monopoly with her. She was fascinated with the game and so we promised to continue playing in the morning.

I don't think Lina slept much, she was awake and waiting for us when we awoke, "Can we play monopoly now?" was the first thing I heard! A couple of hours later and Rhian had bankrupted me and ripped Lina off in a number of deals. We pulled into a train staion and so I asked Lina, "Is this Xi'an?". "No, no, next stop" she said, so she rolled the dice again. Ten minutes later the conductor came up the aisle screaming at us.

It turns out we were at Xi'an and we had twenty seconds to collect our things and get off. In this time the conductor had learnt the English word "Hurry" and shouted it repeatedly until we were off the train. We managed to roll off the train just as it left, the looks we got were even more curious than usual.

As I write this in my book we're now on a train hurtling towards Beijing at 258km/hour and it almost rivals any train in Western Europe. Except of course that the toilets are still the squat type. At 258km/hour you really do grab hold of the rail in front of you.

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