National week is a week long holiday celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic of China. For my week off, I decided to travel with Crystal and Brendan, exchange students from New York. After the disastrous trip with UC students, I really wanted to travel in a small group and with people outside of the UC program.
Things started off well, even great! Crystal and Brendan took the planning very serious and before we left, they had created a fairly comprehensive itinerary of what would be doing over the next six days. However, there was just one piece of the puzzle missing, the transportation. We were unable to get bus tickets to Huangshan at the travel agency the day before we left, so we hedged our bets on being able to get tickets the day of our departure.
On our departure day, we were unable to get bus tickets, they were all sold out. And that was how our problems began. We bought bus tickets for the next day as insurance in case our plan B which was to get train tickets failed. The first ticket attendant that we went to told us all the train tickets to Huangshan were sold out. Dejected, we tried to think of a plan C because Crystal and I had too much pride to go back to Tonghe after we told everyone that we were leaving. Plan C was to get train tickets to a city close to Huangshan and then bus the rest of the way. We went to another ticket attendant this time and she proposed what at the time seemed an even better idea. The attendant told us to buy tickets to a station near Shanghai, and then instead of getting off, to just stay on till we reached Huangshan where the additional fare would be added upon exit. This was the sort of news we were hoping for.
We bought the tickets, which only cost 12 RMB (about $2) and took the subway to another train station. Somewhere along the way to the train station, we realized that we had purchased hard seats, the lowliest of tickets. I worried about this a little because I vaguely recalled that the train took twice as long as the bus which meant it would be a 16 hour ride. Of course, none of this mattered because we were too excited to be going.
Sitting in the Chinese hard seats was an experience in of itself. The whole car was cramped, dirty and worst of all wet, however, I got to see elements of Chinese society that I normally did not see and that was quite eye opening. Once again I saw that the people of China were quite kind people, as strangers immediately started bonding on the train and offered each other food. Far from the moral less people that I have been told inhabited every corner of China, what I saw on the train was heartwarming. Sadly, Crystal was too embarrassed to join in the conversation with strangers and many of the questions that I wanted her to translate were frustratingly left untranslated.
Sorry! Best picture I could pull off with Crystal's camera. Sort of shows how cramped everything is.
After some convincing I finally managed to force Crystal to translate the most important question of all, “how long does it take to get to Huangshan?” The answer turned out to be fifteen hours, and after hearing that, I immediately began to think of a plan D, or whatever alternate plan we were on at that point. After some thought, I suggested that we stop at Nanjing and spend a day or two there because there was no way that I could stand for fifteen hours. There was some debate over this plan, but after a few more hours of standing, everybody came onboard with the Nanjing idea.
And so began our national week adventures.
-muffinman
