The day-and-night-and-day train

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Twenty-seven hours on a train. Kill. Me. Now.
Thank God, is all I can say, for the Chinese railway. If it had been a British train, I think I probably would have been put off trains for life.

I chose a yingwo (hard sleeper berth) and was not disappointed - it was perhaps my most 'China' experience.

The whole carriage is set up as one big dorm, with a single corridor down one side, scattered with folding chairs and tables, and on the other side triple bunk beds. In a token gesture of creating privacy, the carriage is subdivided by slim screens into partitions of 6 beds. The middle and upper bunks are accessed via a ladder attached to the partition-dividing screens - so you share access with the people in the next partition.

You run into most of the other people in the carriage (so about 48 people) at least once during the journey (and if you're European, 178 cm, with blue eyes, you get many a curious person finding some excuse to pass by the partition to have a good stare). However, since the space between the bed stacks is only about a food, you are really up close and personal with the other 5 people in your partition.

Since the middle and upper bunks are spaced too close together to sit up properly, most of the travelling not spent sleeping is spent sitting on the bottom bunk (the occupants cheerfully submit to complete stangers sitting there) or on the folding chairs.

I am sharing my partition with a family of 4 (parents, daughter and daughter's husband) who, I think, are returing form holiday to their hometown, about 8 hours north of my destination, Guilin. The fifth denizen is a lady from North-West China who is on holiday with her, I assume, partner (who occasionally visits from the next-door partition), and who has an even longer journey than me, as she is headed fopr the terminus, Nanning.

As ever, the arrival of a foreigner caused quite a stir and much good-natured questioning. My Mandarin and their English, limited though both are, sufficed to establish my destination, nationality and itinerary round China.

I find that, in the absence of direct conversation with me, most Chinese people will discuss me or my route among themselves with the occasional friendly but awkward glance in my direction. Often the glances are somewhat hopefuly that, against all evidence to-date, I will magically develop perfect mastery of Mandarin and join in the conversation properly.

This family-plus-one was no exception, and they repeated the information they had gleaned from me to each other - the only words I could understand being the place names. I find it charming that it appears so vitally important for them to repeat and agree upon what I struggle to impart. This is the obvious step along from the frank but curious stares that follow me everywhere and particularly somewhere as crowded as a train station.

The people I meet are always ready to help me - and, in truth, I need taking under their wing sometimes. More than sometimes. This family, horrified at my (in their eyes) meagre dinner kindly forced food on me - to my acute embarrassment - which I was, obviously, unable to refuse and not permitted to reciprocate. All except the chicken feet, that is, which I was allowed to decline.

Much of the journey is spent sleeping (although the rail company is quite millitant with the lights - off at 10pm, on at 7am), eating, talking idly with the neighbours (I have found that most Chinese people are perfectly ready to start up conversation with whoever is currently at hand - they are lot less stand-offish than we Brits, which is probably a direct consequence of situations such as the train, where they are forced in together with many other people, most of them strangers, and just have to get along with it).

They also played cards, the game of choice (much to my delight as it allowed me to join in) being a version of Big 2, with only slightly different rules (such as you can't play different poker hands together eg. full house to beat a flush, which I find really annoying!) which they were more than ready to point out.

The daughter of the family spoke the best English, and I taught her the game boxes, which I remember fondly from many a dentist's waiting room as a child. She was, to my chagrin, much better at it than me.

Eventually the family of 4 left and were replaced (with no change of sheets - not that it bothered the new arrivals). Not entirely unhappy at the chance to sit quietly and listen to my audiobooks, I had installed myself at the fold out table, when a girl who had just got on the train at the other end of the carriage ran up to me, sat down and made eager earphone-removing gestures. Cue a long, strained conversation, half English, half Mandarin (where my pronunciation was most severely corrected and no allowance seemed to be made for the fact that I physically can't reproduce some of the sounds she was making!).

She asked me to choose an English name for her, which quite left-footed me, but I rallied and eventually suggested Summer (to go with her slightly hyper personality), but she didn't seem to take to it.

I added her email address to my growing list (whether any of these people will ever email me, or me them, remains to be seen!) and was, I must admit, relieved when she left to get ready for her stop.

The train finally finally pulled into Guilin (pronounced gway-lin (intonation up-down, quite sing song), an hour late, at 2300. The last half hour or so had been mildly stressful for me, as I was worried a) that I would miss the station and b) because when you get onboard, the conductor takes your ticket and gives you a plastic card in its place, which you then have to trade back before you get off the train. Except the conductor hadn't been round to collect my card and I had no idea what happened if you accidentally stole the plastic card!

Two of the men who had joined us halfway were also getting off at Guilin. Unfortunately their method of communicating with me was taking anything I struggled to say and laughingly repeating it, or just talking at me in fast Mandarin and laughing. I'm afraid that, with minimal sleep and the beginnings of what felt like cabin fever, my sense of humour was not at its best and I mostly failed to see the joke. Although I am fully prepared to accept that that was my problem, not theirs, because I was, when it comes down to it, stressed (albeit only mildly) about a plastic card.

Needless to say, the card was successfully exchanged and the stop not missed (by the end I think most of the carriage knew which stop the weird foreign girl was getting off at and wouldn't have let me miss it). I grabbed the nearest taxi that agreed to use the meter and headed to the hostel, to find yet more bunk beds! Only 2 beds this time, though, and I crept gratefully into mine.

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