Midnight Train

I tucked my money belt under my shorts, clipped my camera to my belt loop, and pulled on my back pack. Walking passed the mirror in the dining room, I looked like a backpacker! I was so excited! This was what traveling was all about.

I walked down to the hotel lobby. In my head, I meant to send several texts/emails to be people before I left. I was going to tell my parents I was leaving and let Bryan know I was now off WiFi and he’d have to reach me on my Chinese cell phone number. All that said, I was so excited that I completely spaced out doing both and walked out of the building without doing either. On my way to the station, I saw Nate coming back from somewhere and we wished each other a good weekend.

Vivi had suggested that I leave for the station an hour early. Since I didn’t really know where I was going, I gave myself two hours. I took line 2 on the subway to People’s Square, then I transferred to line 1 to Shanghai Train Station. When I got off, I saw a woman with a hard-sided, blue, rolling suitcase. I figured she must be going somewhere—probably somewhere that involved taking a train—so I followed her up the maze of escalators and to the train station.

The top escalator dumped out in a brightly lit, neon square. There were beautiful tropical trees and modern looking buildings all around the open area. There were also quite a few more homeless people and beggars than I’ve seen anywhere else in Shanghai.

I followed the lady with the black suitcase into what was clearly the main train station building. Against the wall was a row of automated ticket machines. Electronic signs overhead rotated between Chinese and English. The English message read “Chinese citizens pick up tickets with Chinese ID card. Foreign passport holders must pick up tickets in ticket office (200M to the left.)”

I turned to the left and walked to the end of the hall. A barrier blocked entrance into the main room of the train station, where a line for security was queued up. Passed the checkpoint, four escalators led up several stories to the main waiting lounge. There was a large, electronic, neon billboard over the escalators that listed the trains and their departure platform. The entire thing was in Chinese except for the train number and platform number.

I didn’t see a ticket office anywhere. I wondered if it might be on the other side of security so I went outside of the building and walked to the other end of it. There was definitely another entrance to another hallway of machines, but it was locked. Returning to the room I had started in, I re-read the sign.

“Chinese citizens pick up tickets with Chinese ID card. Foreign passport holders must pick up tickets in ticket office (200M to the left.)”

I saw a security guard giving some locals directions. I figured he might be my best bet to get anywhere. When the group he was talking to left, I approached him and said, “ticket office?”

“Outside, that way,” he said pointing. I followed the line his fingers made. In English, I believe the technical term for that direction is “200 M to the right” but who am I to criticize and electronic ticket sign.

I went outside and walked in the opposite direction I had before. When I go to the end of the building, I still didn’t see the ticket office. Another security guard was passing so I asked him, “Ticket office?”

“See that red sign,” he said, pointing to a neon sign on top of a 5 story building. The building was on the other side of a road. “That sign says Ticket Office in Chinese.”

Well that’s helpful.

“Thank you,” I said. There was an underground passage to get to the building. I noticed as I went into the underground passage, there was a sign that said in English “to ticket office” but it was printed in size 18 font.

The ticket office was on the third floor of the building with the red sign. Inside was absolute chaos. There was a row of 20 or so windows along the back wall. Over each was a scrolling electronic banner, each displaying a series of times followed by a bunch of Chinese characters. Occasionally, I’d recognize the characters for Shanghai, but that was it. Each line was long. The room was loud and the speakers one the glass panels of the windows creaked and crackled as the ticket agents talked through them.

There was no English anywhere. I decided to just pick a line and see what happened. The family ahead of me was a large Middle Eastern looking group. They all spoke Chinese pretty well, but the man behind the counter seemed very impatient. When they had finished, he yelled something as they gathered their belongings. He started waving me forward, so I gathered that had been my cue to come forward. Stepping up to the window, I slide my passport and cell phone under the glass. On my phone was a picture of the confirmation number from the website. He studied the number and then punched it into a computer. He then typed in my passport number. A square shaped ticket popped out and he slid it back to me under the glass.

Success!!

I went back downstairs and through the pedestrian walkway under the road. When I got back into the square I made my way over to the entrance for security. The different lines were marked with signs in Chinese but I had no idea which one to get into. Once again, I just picked one. It didn’t really seem to matter because by the time we got inside, all the lines had merged to one.

I took my cellphone, ipod, and wallet out of my pants, put them in my money belt, and tucked the belt into my bag. As I did this, I realized I was pretty much the only one doing so. Everyone else was going through with their belts, watches, phones, etc. Everyone set off the metal dector, so everyone got wanded on the other side. Everyone set off the wand too, but no one seemed real worried about it.

Once through, I took the elevator upstairs. My train number was G7030, an I saw on the board that waiting was in lounges 7 and 8. When I got to lounge 7, I saw that there was another metal detector to go through. I decided to grab dinner first before going to sit down.

There was a restaurant that I passed that had Baozi on the menu (the little rolls I ate my first morning in China.) I thought about getting those, but when I got to the restaurant, I realized I couldn’t really identify the meat that was going into them. Instead, I decided on the noodle bowl. When I pointed at the big picture menu, the woman behind the counter pointed at the same item to confirm it was what I wanted. I also pointed at the drink menu and said “orange.”

“This,” she said pointing at the wrong one.

“Eight,” I said, saying the price of the drink.

“Oh this,” she said pointing at the orange juice. I nodded.

I took my receipt to the kitchen window to get my soup. Once I had it, I realized there was nowhere to sit in the restaurant. One of the staff also noticed this and smiled at me. I started walking to the counter and pointed at it to indicate that I was fine eating standing up, but the woman shook her head. She motioned for me to follow her so I did. Leading me over to a two person table, I saw that a woman was sitting at one seat enjoying her soup with her purse on the seat across from her. The woman I was following picked up her purse, put it on the ground and motioned for me to sit across from her. I did, but I felt very awkward. I didn’t mind sharing my table, but I felt bad to invade this lady’s space…much less having her things thrown on the ground with no say in the matter.

As I glanced around the restaurant, I realized I was the only white face in the room. Looking out the window, I appeared to be the only white face in the train station. I can understand; this was not a user friendly or intuitive system, but in its own way, it was a lot of fun!

I finished my soup and headed to the lounge. Buying a Mirinda on my way, I cleared the second metal detector and took a seat in the waiting room. It dawned on me that no one had looked at my passport since the guy who gave me my ticket. All of the security seemed to be very much for show and not so much for effecting crime.

But this waiting room was quite nice. It was decorated with large red knots, which Johnny had taught me about after his trip to Nepal. The entire knot is made from one piece of string, but it resembles a small square cloth with large tassels hanging off of it. It is used in prayer to trace the string the knot, in a similar fashion to a Catholic rosary.

The room was large. There was a bathroom and drinking fountain in each corner. Large, tube shaped vents dumped air into the room on all sides. People were sleeping on the benches and on the floor, while little kids ran around rambunctiously playing. One boy was running behind a rolling a suitcase that was taller than him. When he got up enough speed, he’d jump up, landing on top of it on his stomach, and coasting across the room.

I had about 40 minutes until my train left. When an announcement was made in Chinese, I noticed that about half the room got up and walked to a set of turnstiles that were on the opposite side of the room from the metal detector entrances. On the electronic sign over the turnstiles, there were two train numbers listed. The second was mine and displayed in yellow. The first was a different number that had just turned green. I figured this must mean that that train was boarding. I took note on my watch that the boarding had occurred about 15 minutes before the scheduled departure.

As I waited, I opened my devotional app on my iPhone. Today’s reading was about loving people even if you don’t understand their behavior. It made me laugh. A lot has happened the past three weeks that I don’t understand, but I have met some amazing people. And this is probably a great life lesson; we all come at life with our own lens but rather than judging one way as right and condemning another as wrong, we really should love people just because they are people.

Two little kids were running around on the bench behind me. Their laughter was so contagious, it almost distracted me from the announcement. I heard the voice speaking Chinese and looked up to see that my train number had turned green. Getting up, I followed everyone else in the lounge through to the turnstiles. Feeding my ticket into the front machine, the machine ate it, and then it popped out the top. When I pulled it away, the little plastic gate opened and I stepped through.

Around the corner, I exited a set of doors and was outside on a balcony overlooking the train tracks. All lit up, it beautiful and I wish I had gotten a picture. But instead, I shuffled along with everyone else down the six flights of stairs to the platform. The train was already here.

The tricky part now was figuring out where to get on. The corner of my ticket had a number 4, followed by a character, followed by 4F, followed by a character (for the sake of visual reference it basically looked like 4$4F@...with the symbols representing the Chinese characters.) I looked at the side of the train and realized that each door had a number by it. I walked north, to nearly the other end of the train to find door number 4. This was a high speed bullet train, and the inside was laid out like an airplane with three seats on either side of an aisle. I found seat 4F and noticed it was empty. Figuring that must be way the number system worked, I took a seat. Soon another man came and sat next to me, but within seconds of sitting down, he was asleep.

We pulled out of the station about 4 minutes ahead of schedule. It was at that point, that I realized I had no idea how long this train ride was. I mean, I knew it was about 30 minutes to Suzhou, but I didn’t know how many stops we would make between here and there. I didn’t even know what the Suzhou stop was called.

A young girl came through checking tickets of everyone who had just got on. When she got to my seat I asked, “How many stops to Suzhou?”

She smiled and shook her head. I realized everyone on the train was craning their neck or and turning around to look at me.

“Speak, slower,” she said.

“How many stops to Suzhou?” I asked again, trying to enunciate the word.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Sorry again.”

“Suzhou,” I said pointing to the characters on my ticket that were across from the ones that I knew said Shanghai. “One stop or two?” I held up my fingers.

“One,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

She walked off, but everyone continued staring at me. I decided to text Vivi to confirm if Suzhou was the first stop.

I didn’t hear back from Vivi, but as we pulled into the first station, I didn’t hear Suzhou mentioned in the announcement. Looking at the signs on the platform, none of the characters matched my ticket. I decided to stay on and as the train pulled away I thought to myself well I either just made the right call or I’m now in really big trouble.

About 10 minutes later, they made another announcement. This time, I clearly heard the word Suzhou and felt overwhelming relief. At the same time, Vivi texted me back to tell me it was the second station and that she hoped I was not lost. I replied to let her know I was okay. I tapped the guy sleeping next to me and he woke up. With a big smile he stood to let me out of my seat. Joining the other people that were waiting by the door, I was ready to get off when we arrived. The ticket girl came by and told me “this is Suzhou.”

“Thank you,” I said, while thinking in English the correct answer would have been two stations, but I did appreciate her help.

When the train stopped, I shuffled out with crowd and followed them towards an exit sign that led downstairs. At the bottom, I was in the main hall of the station. Bryan had texted me a couple days ago to take the green subway line to Binhe Lou and that he would meet me there.

“There are only two subways in Suzhou,” he’d said, “so it’s pretty hard to screw it up.”

I found  a map and saw that I needed to take the red line three stops, transfer to the green line, and then take the green line three more stops. I bought a ticket at the machine (which was in English and was identical to the ones in Shanghai) and went down into the subway. Admittedly, the Suzhou subway is significantly cleaner than the Shanghai system. That is not to say that Shanghai’s isn’t clean—compared to Europe it is spotless—but Suzhou’s just smelled nice and really was a little more polished.

On the train, I made my first significant cultural observation in Suzhou. It’s been pretty obvious since I’ve been here that Chinese people have very little body hair. Women are always hairless, but even  men have very little hair on their legs or arms. Low cut v-neck shirts are also popular in style and as Johnny pointed out in Shanghai, the never have hair on their chests. This however appeared to be untrue in Suzhou. I didn’t necessarily see hairy people, but they were hairier than in Shanghai. Both men and women had slightly more visible hair on their legs and arms. This makes me wonder if perhaps grooming is different in Shanghai since it is a more international city.

When I got to the junction to transfer, most of the crowd got off. They all piled onto the escalator while I joined a few people in jogging up the stairs. At the top, I saw the train was already there for the green line. I ran to get on it, in my head looking something like James Bond diving through the glass doors (even though the doors weren’t closing yet.) As I got on, I realized this train was going the wrong way. I immediately got off and thought to myself I just ran for my first subway and it turned out to be the wrong train…for like 2 seconds, that was almost really cool.

The subways appear to come a lot less frequently in Suzhou. When I was finally on the correct train, I texted Bryan to let him know I was in route. He wrote back that he’d meet me at Exit 1. When I arrived, I followed the signs (which looked just like the black and yellow ones we have in Shanghai) to exit one. He wasn’t there yet, so I waited leaning against a railing, which took the weight of my pack off my hips. Several mopeds went by while I was waiting, and even though Suzhou still has 10 million residence (a nice small town) it was noticeably quieter than Shanghai.

When I saw Bryan walk up, I said, “Dang it I was really hoping you were going to show up on one of those scooter things.”

He came up and hugged me saying, “It is so good to see you! I am really glad you came.”

I was glad I came too. We told stories and laughed all the way back to the hotel. His room was more of a traditional hotel room, and when we got inside, John joined in the laughing and storytelling (Emily was asleep across the hall.)

“So this is going to be a very cheap weekend,” Bryan said. “The plan is I am going to mass in the morning, you are welcome to join me. Then we will get lunch. Then we have to go to a 30 minute staff meeting at work, which you can come to. It will be cultural for you to see how a staff meeting here works. Then we’ll go to the down town area. If you want to get a silk suit I will take you to my tailor.” At that point he showed me the silk suit he had bought and it was really nice. “And then Helen, my boss, invited us over for dinner tomorrow night, so you can see some more culture.”

It sounded like a good weekend to me! We fell asleep laughing and as we did, I thought to myself, I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time. It felt good and I was ready for a fun filled weekend.