zimatravels

In 1990, I returned to China and took two college-aged friends I had met the year before traveling to places in China they had never really expected to see in person.  In the 1990s, life for Chinese people, and especially for penniless students, was very different from the China they now experience as middle-aged adults 20 years later.  As many trains as I took over my years in China, each one was its own adventure.  This one was not for the squeamish.

August 6, 1990

I suppose conditions for cows are worse, but they don’t have the mentality to understand and resent the way they’re treated like I do.  In China, we are herded, corralled, squashed, discounted, abused and dehumanized, especially traveling hard seat in a train.  This is the way most Chinese travel — if they travel at all.  It is as uncomfortable as could be — particularly for those who don’t even get the “luxury” of a hard seat.

The train is a microcosm of the problems of China.  Poverty, overpopulation, overcrowding, lack of respect from petty railroad personnel who I even saw hit an old man who didn’t have a ticket, government corruption and inefficiency — all with an overlay of dirt and grunge.  As some compensation, a certain camaraderie does develop between fellow sufferers who attempt to maintain their dignity as best they can.

Russell tells me he simply empties his mind to deal with the boredom of long train travel.  I, however, cannot seem to do this.  Instead, I find it’s a good time for peoplewatching.  I had a lot of time to observe a group traveling together.  They were only teenagers and a fairly scruffy looking lot.  They had been able to get tickets for seats, and they felt proud of this power over those unfortunate unseated souls who tried occasionally to squeeze half their bottom on a mere corner of a seat.  While I and others periodically gave up our seats or a portion thereof to accommodate the huge, unseated population of the train — some children and tired-looking old people among them — these six jealously guarded every inch of “their” seats.

The group reminded me immediately of the old “Our Gang” movies I used to watch as a child.  The leader of this motley group was the shortest boy.  His manner left his leadership in little doubt. He loved being the center of attention.  Thus, all his actions were conspicuous and exaggerated.  For example, he took wads of money out of his pockets and stuffed them into his t-shirt.  Later, he took them out, arranged them, and slowly and repeatedly counted each bill.  It may have been the group’s money perhaps painstakingly saved to bring home because I noticed it was all in small denominations.

They passed the time chatting, smoking cigarettes, eating and sleeping.  One of the boys and one of the girls sat on the seat for two.  The boy rarely spoke, often smoked, and gruffly kept pushing a tired lady who kept trying to sit on a small portion of this seat.  His girlfriend wore a discolored bruise on her arm, which I had no doubt he had given her.

The other girl sat next to me in a coveted window seat.  She was a chubby, plain-looking girl who was presumably the girlfriend of the leader, which she showed by being as disagreeable to him as she dared.  When he tried to do something nice for her, such as buying grapes for her, she promptly rebuffed him.  However, she only went so far in acting brazen and rude to him, and ultimately always relented.

Three boys sat across from me.  Of course, the leader took the best seat near the window, which he never gave up to anyone, including his friends.  The boy next to him had a very pale, sickly complexion.  He exhibited what seemed to me like a genuine rather than self-serving deference to the leader.  In turn, the leader treated him with good-natured contempt.  The third boy was the healthiest and best looking of the group with a bland, congenial, and undemanding personality.

Most of the endless hours were nighttime hours.  They were the most interesting for observing.  The girl next to me, and the leader opposite her, had an enviable ability to sleep through many hours of hard seat misery.  She put her head on her bag placed on the small table between them, and scarcely moved.  The leader kept changing position often, imposing his head and body on the lap of his kind companion who cradled him rather tenderly.  Sometimes the leader rejected his touch rudely, but at other times demanded a soft spot on his neighbor’s lap.  In time, the third boy was crowded out altogether, but affectionately gave up his seat to the reclining sickly boy and leader who snored away.  Since there was not even floor space because all space was occupied by the unseated, he resorted to draping himself over the narrow edge of the back of the bench.

The most active one during the night was the bruised girl.  She often played with smoking cigarettes — a rather daring act for a Chinese girl.  And she did it as grotesquely and as obviously as she could manage.  She seemed to be a moody and sad girl whose unhappy future I mentally predicted.

I have often noticed that Chinese show little delicacy when waking someone up.  She displayed this by extremely rudely pinching the sleeping girl next to me.  She did this several times in the course of the night since she dared not wake up her grumpy boyfriend to get near the window.  She first woke up the girl because she wanted to sit on her girlfriend’s lap and stick her head out the window to chant a long, lamenting refrain over and over.  She next woke her up when she wanted to brush her teeth and spit out the water into the middle of the night.  And, exactly at 3:30 a.m., she again woke her to sit on her lap while she slowly applied her make-up for the day.  The sleeping girl tolerated it well with the resignation of one quite unable to control her friend.

Trying to sleep in such hot, unbearable stuffy trains (for some inexplicable reason, the fans are never used on summer nights) must be experienced to be understood.  It is anatomically and mentally anti-human.  The contortions one tries approach the acrobatic.  I had watched the undemanding third boy finally receive a piece of seat from his sickly friend.  He gratefully sank immediately into a deep sleep, only to be painfully awakened by his friend pinching his eyelid!  His friend then murmured a couple of words, and pushed him off the seat again.

By 7 a.m., I had lost all curiosity in the human interest aspects of Chinese hard seat train behavior.  I laid out my plastic poncho over the trash and spit and cigarette butts and crawled under the seats.   Sleeping amidst the rubbish seemed worthwhile in order to spread out my fatigued body.  As I extended my leg, a hand grabbed my foot before it crashed into his face.  Another under-the-seat squatter had set up his turf, complete with a mat, tea, and cigarettes.  I carefully angled my leg away from his face, and we both settled in for a snooze.

To add yet another insult to my human dignity, I was stopped as I was leaving this train of horrors to pay an additional 50 FEC because I was a foreigner!

My first visit to Beijing was in 1989 prior to starting a job teaching English in Hangzhou.  I returned in 1990 and took two college-aged Chinese friends traveling to places in China they had never really thought they would get to see.  In the 1990s, life for Chinese people, and especially for penniless students, was very different from the China they now experience as middle-aged adults 20 years later.

July 27, 1990

Both boys are overwhelmed at being in Beijing.  Rather than running all around to glimpse everything they have ever read about and dreamed of seeing, they have slowed down to a crawl.  Richard says he wants to savor everything.  It may be like the way I was so saturated by the beauty of Norway, I couldn’t absorb anymore and had to rest.  In their case, it is not feeling saturated by beauty, but being places they never thought they would be.

We are staying at that terrible hostel I stayed in my first time in Beijing.  I don’t know whether I dislike more the Chinese clerks who literally scream at the foreigners like naughty children, or the drunken British boys who sing under my window all night.

Before I go on with Beijing, I want to back up to our time in Qingdao about ten days ago.  The three of us felt an amazing atmosphere of relaxation and friendliness of the people.  Unlike other parts of China, the people there were well dressed, pleasant, and didn’t push and shove their way around.  This city was quite clean for China, with care taken in trees, parks and decorations.  I’m a newcomer to it all, but Russell and Richard kept commenting on it.  Even a moneychanger took us to his home for a pleasant exchange with tea.

One reason Russell and Richard were anxious to see Qingdao was the chance to swim in the sea.  Their first encounter with sea swimming was a rough one indeed.  I rented inner tubes for each of them and then swam back and forth between them trying to keep them from drowning.  That experience whetted Richard’s appetite for sea swimming, but surfeited Russell’s.  However, we all agreed that it was a wonderful time and a very special place.

Another pleasant encounter for me was on the train between Qingdao and Jinan.  I sat across from a 13-year-old boy who was curious about me, but did not look upon me as a freak.  We played the card game War and shared some food.  When I put my head on the small table between us to rest, he very thoughtfully placed a clean newspaper for my head to rest on.  I was touched by one so young showing such caring for a stranger.  I didn’t think that would happen with an American teenager.

I’ve been writing this while under the gaze of Mao’s bigger than life portrait in Tiananmen Square.  He must have seen the thief who just stole Russell’s bag!! I was so engrossed in my writing, I didn’t notice that someone must have just walked by and taken it from among the bags I have around my feet.

Why am I sitting on the ground with my back against the little bridge and our belongings all around me?  I was so angry that a ticket to visit the gate behind me was so expensive for a foreigner compared to the cost to Chinese that I told the boys to go on ahead and I’d wait for them here.  Fortunately, Russell took his camera with him, but I’m sure he had other things in his small bag that he’ll miss.  Gone are the days in China when people didn’t steal.  Mao wouldn’t approve.

We stood sweating in a long line to visit Mao in his mausoleum.  What was remarkable to me is that this is the only place where I’ve seen Chinese line up in an absolutely straight line and stay completely silent.

We were almost cheated by a moneychanger near our hotel.  He had a strange way of counting the money out, and Richard didn’t trust him.  I trusted Richard’s intuition more than the moneychanger, so I found a more reliable “businessman.”