Adventures are timeless. They inspire or they caution as we stack them in our memory bank for future references.

One such was the train journey from Hong Kong to Beijing, Shanghai and back to HK. Nothing extraordinary, one may say, but for the fact that it was three women in their early and late sixties travelling to an unknown destination. Two of us were from Hong Kong so somewhat familiar with lifestyle across the borders and the third from Muscat, Oman.

The train journey was a window into the real China with glimpses of fictional references. On another level it was the beginning of other journeys into the unknown.

Sometimes, the best adventures are the ones we never plan.

The Dragon Wagged Its Tail…Hong Kong-Beijing-Shanghai Express Train Journey.

TRAIN JOURNIES REVISITED….

Train journeys, whether in home country or across continents, is a sure way of stepping on stones and warts whether short or cross-country across open land or tearing through crowded cities.

Of the many the one flabbergaster was the Hong Kong to China (2009) train ride. The journey was not ‘epic worthy’ on the lines of the RIDING THE IRON ROOSTER (1988-Paul Theroux) but a journey that fractured the ‘China invincibility’ of an unknown country and its impassive ‘masked’ people. Our trip had coincided with the just ended Beijing Olympics with Beijing reeling under massive uprooting and constructions and the casualties were the ancient alleyways or Hutongs and housing replaced by wide roads and swanky constructions. There was a feeling of deja vu because apart from architectural wonders, ancient and man-made, the people too were elusive due to language and cultural differences.

The soul was missing.

My friends had misgivings about my plan to cover Hong Kong-Beijing, Shanghai and back by super fast air-conditioned trains into the unknown. They were not as scathing as  Neville George Mullard or Bunt ( Paul Theroux’s novel KOWLOON TONG) who considered his manager’s act ‘to wake up and take the train to People’s Republic of China and return before ten the same morning’ a foolish act . They were skeptical about the outcome of pushing into a country where language was going to be a barrier. There were three of us, two friends and me, females close to crossing into Sixties, from Muscat, Oman and Hong Kong, with no speaking knowledge of Mandarin or Cantonese…. venturing into the unknown

We still went ahead

Plans finalized, bookings done and on designated day assembled at Hung Hom station, (Kowloon) waiting for our train. First lesson…The selection of train is alphabetically arranged with ‘T‘ the special express, “C‘ and ‘D‘ the flying ones followed by ‘Z‘ the direct express train. For us it was T. The choice of bunks is linked to dollars and If prepared to splurge one can opt for Deluxe sleeper for two with toilet en suite. We opted for the 4 bunk soft sleeper, spacious and carpeted with personal television, clean crisp sheets, comforters, pillows, hangers, luggage compartment (along top of bunk), hot water flask, step-on garbage-bin, mirrors, reading lights and freshly-packed different coloured bathroom slippers. There was choice between squatting and western style toilets at the two ends of the coach and towards culmination of journey it was difficult to locate a clean one with toilet rolls. Anyways, it was a through train and one could go clean toilet-spotting. 

Hung Hom station was crowded, too many people preferring track travel, but to credit of passengers we queued up for our berths and except for the slight mishap of standing in different queue till corrected by an impassive ticket checker, it was smooth take off.

T 98 streamed out of Hung Hom at 15:15 p.m. sharp. The layers of my travel misgivings were slowly peeling off and I settled down waiting for the missing passenger of our  coach. We were three and the fourth berth remained a silent witness to our sense of space. The train, meanwhile, continued on its journey passing Sha Tin, (New Territories) on way to Lo Wu on HK/China border, chugging across the familiar Pearl River Delta’s green belt and continued across to Guangzhou ignoring Shenzen, the shopping delight of million dreams.

A continuous drizzle added a chimerical effect to the picturesque  antiquated ‘shark’s teeth’ mountains of the Delta.  The magic moment was short-lived as the pastoral-landscape metamorphosed into warehouses and buildings with trees planted along tracks, probably serving as cover-ups for the habitats, and with no English signage to figure out where we were heading to, left it to conjecture.

By 10 pm it was a ‘silent’ train with no loiterers around and with nothing visible outside, it was still raining, Chitchat and few pages of reading we decided to sleep it out. I did wake up once, probably when the train halted at a station, and could make out silhouettes and empty platform. T 98 stops at few stations including Guangzhou for passengers to disembark.

Day 2…early morning was bright and sunny and this somehow metamorphosed into ‘last sunrise’ for next 5 days, (Beijing was grey and gloomy and Shanghai a shade better.) The light brought along some life along the tracks and roads with pensioners sitting in front of houses and somewhere along the line children playing in the accumulated rain water. We were moving towards towns or cities with progressive tangible structures and well-organized greenery interspersed with sections of crowded housing and perfected village ambiance of street corners and food stalls. The region appeared compartmentalized, nothing dusty or droughty as the Indian countryside, and somehow I felt a bit cheated. It was ‘unreal’, copybook style.

Lunch in the restaurant car accompanied by black milk tea, tasted more of Carnation milk and not worth the 30 Yuan teapot tea. The twenty-two hours were stretching into forty-eight. There was no interaction with fellow passengers, still in their cocoons visible through half closed doors. The toilets too were loosing out on cleanliness and we were looking forward to a refreshing water soak and cup of hot Indian or black milk tea. I ventured out from mu cabin hoping to ‘talk’ to a fellow passenger. There was on but she was in an animated conversation on her cell phone and refused any eye contact. A walk up and down the aisle and I slid into my slot.

The train streamed into Beijing West platform or, to me, a mirror image of a ‘World War Two’ German station as depicted in movies minus the swastikas and Nazi guards. This section of station was deserted with no milling crowds except for station staff. The health check and disembarkation forms had already been filed and handed over on the train itself and now we had to wait for our number to move out of the privileged area.

The first push and shove of the exit and this was China of billion heads. The language problem reared its head again and after a few false directions located the ticketing section, for booking Beijing-Shanghai segment, and an English-speaking counter where locals outnumbered tourists. The transaction took time, explaining in slow diction, and by this time the line was getting restive at the extra minutes we were appropriating. A frumpy middle-aged woman came up and hollered, as it sounded to me, at the counter person for taking so long. I felt like hollering back but decided otherwise and waded through the flood of people to relative quietness.

By now our collective patience was running out with the high-pitched babble and next step turned equally infuriating. After much asking around the taxi stand we were told that it was on the lower level, from where we had just come up, Adding to the injustice…. the down escalator was not functioning. A ‘girl’ Samaritan guided us and before we could figure out our bearings we were swamped by cab drivers quoting exorbitant rates.The fare was finally settled for 200 Yuan for the ride to hotel on Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang district. Fortunately we had the Chinese translation of hotel name, otherwise it would have been a taxi merry-go-around Beijing. The hotel reception staff advised us to take metered taxis and ‘take receipts’.

We had traveled from an ‘anthill’ to a ‘mountain’ and the vastness of Beijing remained elusive under its grey skies presenting differing images: the new CCTV tower of ‘Big Shorts or Dakucha’ fame (its shape of two buildings joined together in mid-air) straddling the world; the muscle flexing Great Wall of China or the evanescent triviality of Forbidden City. It was at the railway stations, hutongs and shopping complexes that there were brief encounters with people from different corners of the vast country. The city remained ‘out of reach’ and the more we tried to get to know, an invisible barrier would keep us away from the citizens. Sometimes they were rude, sometimes impassively indifferent or could-not-care-less. We did not want to think in ‘race’ terms but maybe we were from India that somehow contributed to our unwelcome. We on our part had come to see the country and were doing that.

We were not foodies so had limited our cuisine explorations to the known, fries, burgers or vegetarian noodles and rice and missed the “Indian Chinese cuisine’.

Four days in Beijing, a city of striking contrasts, ancient, imperialistic and modern, and still an enigma. It was time to move on to the next city on our agenda…Shanghai.

Beijing Station (south) is a mammoth structure and pushing our way through a labyrinth of escalators, waiting rooms, passages and walkways, finally located D 301 Beijing/Shanghai express train, an immaculate all white, brand new 200 km sleeper train with staff in spiffy red uniforms and slightly intimidating.

The other two passengers were already in the 4 bunk Soft sleeper, we had the lower bunks, so we quietly fixed our suitcases and had sandwiches and salads purchased from Seven Eleven store. The third friend had stayed back in Beijing so it was two of us now. D 301 was a 1,500 km luxury for 730 Yuan and 12 hours of travel time from Beijing to Shanghai. We slept our way through the entire stretch as did the two gentlemen in the upper berths, till we reached Shanghai early morning. The night travel was a mistake as we missed out the countryside that might have added some color to a journey that was turning out as bland as the grey skies accompanying us throughout the night.

Shanghai station was a let down. The train glided to a decrepit platform with non-working escalators and men wanting to carry our luggage to taxis… reminding me of our Indian stations, though slightly cleaner and presentable. The previous experience in Beijing had prepared us to haggle for taxi fare and we finally made it to our hotel to the other corner of Shanghai past constructions and road widenings for the International Expo to be held in in 2010.

Shanghai was a whirlwind two day stop of sightseeing from temples to water towns, the No 1 commercial street Nanjing Road, the Bund along the Huangpu river, the Ming and Qing architectures, Yuyuan Garden, Xin Tian Di with its modern additions, the 1700 years ancient water town of Zhujiajiao, few miles from Shanghai, the Jade temple… the city is a mishmash of ancient and modern, of Chinese and western. Two days was too short a time to unravel the mysterious dark side of Shanghai, the city of revelry and artistic passion, the 1920s and ’30s ‘smoky, swirling den of iniquity and gangster landscape.  Like true-blue tourists we went by the guidebooks, seeing what was expected of us, nothing unknown, and in our minds planning to visit Shanghai again.

Communication was a major handicap and it was the youngsters who came to our rescue…. when we lost our way or were stumped by restaurant menus. At one roadside eatery, my friend conducted an impromptu pantomime of flapping hands as chicken wings to order a chicken dish. It did not impress the grumpy waitress who dumped ‘beef’ in front of us. It was near closing time so we ate or ‘lumped it’. I am no beef-eater, so my friend had the beef and me the side vegetables. We also said ‘lump it’ and left without any ‘tippo’.

RETURN JOURNEY: 36 hours in this ‘Paris of the Orient’ and we were ready for return journey to Hong Kong via T 99. We reported an hour earlier for immigration clearance and patiently waded in slow motion to waiting train through teeming mass of luggage toting crowd. This time it was Hard Sleeper with 6 bunks, the upper, middle and lower.   The berths were padded, with clean sheets, comforters and pillows and items missing were water thermos, TV, sliding door and slippers. But still way ahead of third sleeper of Indian trains. Our companions, girl studying in Switzerland and her friend probably working in Hong Kong, were too engrossed in each other. The first thing she did, next morning, was to diligently retouch her face, oblivious of our enthralled attention. The 5th and 6th passengers had not checked in ( top berths) so we did not feel squashed in our middle berths….small mercies.

The hard-sleeper carriage was crowded, and the narrow folding tables and chairs , placed in the corridor, were convenient sitting cum look-outs. There was this tourist busy pounding on his laptop probably blogging his experiences; a group playing cards and a mother tutoring her daughter. It was a tired and a quiet lot returning home or preserving energy for Hong Kong visit.

Once again we risked dinner in the restaurant car, oily eggplants with white rice, leaving the Kentucky Fried burgers purchased at Shanghai station for breakfast. There is hot and cold water available in train, convenient to make cup noodles or tea/coffee, the three-in-one variety.

We were woken up by the early morning sun, streaming in through the windows…a boon after five days of grey clouds. The continous piped music was grating but it did not lessen the charm of the transitory countryside as the train passed through Guangzhou East to reach Hung Hom around One p.m.

An end to a seven-day journey to be reconstructed at leisure as a window to a country which till now for me was tagged with ‘Indian Chinese cuisine’ or ‘Made in China’ products. This was more of train-tripping, filling-in-blanks of an unknown China and helped in understanding a country better, a humane version peeping from behind red curtains.

. * Train Information: http://www.china-train-ticket.com http://gohongkong.about.com