Day One

I woke up at about 6:00, knowing I’d have to shower. I showered, finished packing and preparing, but I was out the door at 6:45. Luckily, I’m not the only one who runs late, and my suggestion of 6:45 had taken this in to account when suggesting a time to meet. The Tims came over to Adam’s place and locked up their stuff, Adam complained about waking up when it was still dark- I have to disagree with his opinion that it is no good to wake up before the sun does. I think it’s kind of fun seeing still sleeping people and watching the city wake up.

Like most of my journeys, the dawn only came while I was waiting for transport. The bus ride there had been sparse and quiet due to sleepiness; the train station was louder and had a little more energy. Everyone was waiting to get on their train- we had arrived in the waiting room an hour early, a mistake we would not repeat again. There was a lot of waiting in a cold seat, there was a lot of talking about where we were going. Finally, we boarded the train- somehow already in line- and we walked to the platform. We were near the back of the train and as we sat and the train took off I informed Adam that if we crashed, we were in the safest position in a crash as our backs were facing the front of the train.

His response was something I don’t care to repeat, but I imagine he didn’t want to think about crashing at all. That or he still wasn’t quite awake yet.

As we sat in our bottom half of the car, a woman came by. We thought she might be selling food, or tickets, but as she held up her hands, toys came alive with noise and lights. Airplanes and balls. The strangest things. I had not been expecting that.

Will enjoyed this ride, for he got to practice his Chinese a lot- in fact, I think this entire trip Will got to practice lots of Chinese. People were curious about us. Mostly the Tim with dreadlocks. Mostly him.

We arrived at Zhengzhou with 3 hours to spare, so we walked along the way to the main square with a double pagoda.

Poor dread Tim had a small rolling suitcase that he carried with him, but the rest of us had backpacks or a laptop bag. This is significant only because it was a lot worse for dread Tim to make any sort of trip. We still had time to kill, so we went up a skywalk, and then decided to go to the park, a big, open park that has everything from ping-pong to roller coasters. The ping-pong is free, as is entry to the park. The roller coasters are not.

We enjoyed the park, then went back to the train station where we hung out before heading to the Bullet Train.

Somehow, everyone but Tim (non-dreads) had made it in the same row. We continued to travel, then, and looking out the window was very interesting- mountains that looked like they had been strip-mined long ago, leaving strange shapes, or mountains that had been made into plateaus, graveyards in the middle of fields, deteriorated houses that had some use a long time ago, villages that looked ready to fall apart, villages that had all of the crop drying on the roof, no advertisements, everything smoggy, dusty, and deteriorating.

Occasionally we went through a tunnel and there was blackness instead. When we arrived at Xi’an, the final stop of the train, we meandered to the subway. The subway had a very strange character in it, a cartoon of the subway. It took me a few commercials to figure it out; luckily, the only thing that plays on the recently built subway is commercials for the subway itself.

When we left the subway, we were being guided by Tim (non-dreads), who had been to the hostel before. It was longer than I anticipated and I had discovered something else that slowed me down- blisters. In my desire to keep warm I had worn two pairs of socks; a foolish move that is much easier seen in retrospect than in the moment. But it didn’t matter; I had blisters and was looking forward to being somewhere where I was not kept in a chair for several hours.

Xi’an was… big. My first impression was that of a subway, of giant skyscrapers and streets so busy they needed bridges for the people to walk over them. I’ve been to busy cities before, but it always strikes me how big a place can be. Of course, to make it Chinese, it had some dust, food vendors everywhere, advertisement signs halfway through the sidewalk, and the same pattern of tile on the sidewalk. At least three cities have this pattern on the sidewalk. I must go to more cities to find this out.

We made it to the hostel, and were welcomed with welcoming tea. I don’t know much about other hostels, but this one was great. It forever spoiled me. We’d arranged for two private rooms (one of three and one of two), and inside our room were three beds: two doubles and one king. I took the king. I do not regret this decision.

Adam jumped around on the bed and remarked about how beautifully soft the beds were, and this is true; since coming to China, these beds were by far the softest. The bathroom was just spacious and cold. Very cold. Adam kept beers in there to keep them cool.

After we’d dropped off our stuff, we went around, just walking and exploring, hoping for a place to eat a 2-3pm lunch. We found a Muslim restaurant that served a thick bread in a soup, and it was delicious. I don’t know much about Muslims in China other than they have the most delicious food. That’s really the extent of my knowledge.

We hung out for the rest of the day at the hostel- there was a bar and restaurant. When the guys had their fill of pool, we went back to our giant room to watch a famous Australian movie named “Castle”. It reminded me a little bit of Napoleon Dynamite. But it was fun to watch with everyone, mostly because everyone is commenting and therefore my comments are socially acceptable.

Then we all went to bed. Trains make anyone sleepy, I suppose.