After spending nearly 12 hours fannying about between the borders of China and Russia, we eventually made it into China. It was now 2nd September 2010. We are now at Haerbin. I was too tired last night to write anything further in my diary, as it had been a long day of doing nothing. Yesterday, 1st September 2010 we had been in Russia, spending most of the time in a place called Zabaikalsk on the Russia/China border. We left the train for about 4 hours, and Dima and I wandered around the town. It's not a very interesting place, with highlights being a very clean, new and well looked after church, and a memorial garden with a tank, fountain and big slabs of red marble scattered with weeds. There was nothing much to see or do. Added to the mundane, uninspiring shabbiness of the local architecture was that the local people looked decidedly inbred. But a mixture Arabic/Russian inbred. Scary. Drug abuse apparently is rife. We made jokes about being Zabaikalsk mafia about how we could make lots of money exporting cheap heroin and poppies and importing cocaine and more beautiful girls to work as prostitutes. These jokes carried on for the next few days. It was surprising though that many of the shopkeepers could speak a little English, like they could say numbers and prices. I saw a boy of maybe 8, on a BMX, smoking a cigarette too.
Dima and I walked to see a monument of a war memorial and a tank from the Japan-Russia war in the 70s. Dima told me how he was a tank driver in the army for 2 years when he was about 17.
We then went to sit in a restaurant for a bit; me, Dima, Tanya, Alexi and Katya.
Dima and I then walked back to the station via a few shops. The others went on a walk to the other side of the town. I don't know why really. Up a hill there was nothing but fields. But it was through this severly run-down Soviet council estate. There was just a slope up hill, paving that looked like 100s of tanks had driven over, a few tower blocks and a few kids dressed in dirty and hole-peppered tracksuits. I spoke to this Danish couple later that evening about it and they said that they started to walk up there as someone had told them the view was lovely, but as they started up the road this battered old car pulled up next to them, this guy leaned over to the passenger side door, peered up to them and said to them that they shouldn't go up there.
While we were waiting at Zabaikalsk station, we also started talking to these two girls. They wanted to talk to me, but as I didn't understand Russian, I wasn't paying attention to them. Dima started talking to them, and it turned out they could speak a little bit of English. They were 21, and studying Chinese somewhere in China. I don't remember their names; one was called Natsha i think. They were both quite pretty.
It's not too surprising that doing nothing is often tiring. I do sometimes feel that. But sitting on a train for nearly 6 hours, walking about aimlessly around shops and a town that you don't want to be at or buy anything from. And then, after we get back on the train and travel for less than 20 minutes at 5mph, we stop for another few hours this time in China, at Manzhouli.
I met two proper English people for the first time this trip too! Duncan and Rachel. They're from Hampshire, but Duncan works in London for Lloyds. It was so good to finally speak to someone normally, and I think I got too excited - smiling and hyper but also majorly tired. We swapped stories about our experiences. They were on holiday here, and had recently got engaged. They used to live in Hammersmith. And they called the Moscow Metro the Tube, which was comforting, as I had also made that faux pas a few times in Moscow. They introduced me to a Danish couple; Soone and Ruth. They're quite funny and well-travelled. We talked a lot about Hong Kong and China. They also had friends in Nepal, which was their final destination.
Due to my modest amount of Chinese speaking abilities, I tried to bargain with the people in the shop in
Manzhouli. When we first arrived I asked a Chinese lady serving how much a mango was. She replied 25 yuan. I offered her 40 yuan for 2. She refused, and so I bought some necterines and walked away. I then went back with Soone a bit later, and tried to bargain for him, but it didn't work. He bought what he wanted and went away. I then asked the man serving how much for 2 mangoes. He gave them to me for 30 yuan for 2...
We got back to the train. Dima was resting, so I talked to Alexi and a Chinese guy that he was sharing cabins
with for a bit. We shared some food and talked about Chinese language, and cars. Alexi seems to be quite well educated, we talked about the structure of languages. English is an analytical language, while Russian is
structural. It means that in Russian, the order of words don't matter, so there are no regional language differences or accents like in Chinese or English.
So anyway on the 2nd September we arrived in Haerbin. Most of the passengers have now gone. Tanya, Alexi and Katya have gone. I talked with them for a while this morning, and drank some tea with them. There are only a few people on the train now. Dima is still here, and so are a few Chinese people.
We arrived in Beijing station at around 5:40am on the 3rd September after having about probably 2 hours sleep. Dima and I were the only people left in our carriage by now.
We left the train and made our way in a taxi to a hotel that Dima knew. We had decided to check into a hotel, have a wash, a bit of a sleep and then eat, do some shopping and collect the train tickets to Guangzhou.
We arrived somewhere in Beijing close to the station and walked to the hotel. It was starting to rain a bit. Beijing station as in the past was absolute chaos, even at 6 in the morning. There were people running everywhere and trying to sell things, and pimp tours and taxi rides and hotels and foot massages.
We made the 10 minute taxi journey, and got lost as Dima forgot where it was. We arrived at the hotel, only to find out that there were no rooms available. They gave us directions to another hotel close by though. We got to the next hotel and tried to get a room with two beds. All they had left was one room with a double bed. So we just got that one, as we were both extremely tired and didn't want to trek about looking for another hotel in the increasingly bad weather.
We checked in. One of the conditions on the price of the room was that it wasn't going to be cleaned til 8am....and it was only 6:30. We sat down and decided to go to get a coffee and something to eat, as Dima said that he knew a Starbucks close to the hotel, so we went to go out and look for it, and mince about until 8am when our room would be cleaned. We could then sleep and shower.
We walked out of the hotel and down the street a little bit. It was a banking district in Beijing it looked like. We got about 5 minutes from the hotel and it started to drizzle a bit with rain. We walked another 2 minutes and started to rain harder. We walked 5 more minutes and it started to bucket down. We speed-walked for a few more minutes, but it appeared we were lost. Then it seemed like a mini-monsoon started and we couldn't walk further. So we hid under a tree, but still got pretty wet, so took cover in this restaurant called Mosocw near to the tree. We stayed in the entrance for a bit and watched the torrential rain,but started to get restless when the rain didn't let up after 15 minutes. So I asked how far Starbucks was. Dima replied "about 100 or 200 metres". Foolishly I said "OK...we could run to it". "OK" Dima replied foolishly and sprinted out of the doorway, slipped over and skidded down a little slope to the pavement. I helped him up, but we were already dreanched. "No bother" he shouted, and started to run down the road. I followed him. We got 50 metres and I was absolutely soaking. My shirt was sticking to my chest underneath my water-marinated sweatshirt. This was while we were watched by Chinese people carrying umbrellas, on their way to work, engrossed by the sight of these two white people inappropriately clothed for tropical storms shouting and sprinting.
We ran past a cafe on the other side of the road and Dima just pointed and said "let's go in there", so we did. And as we were ordering, the rain stopped all of a sudden.
We left the cafe after eating, and went back to hotel. Our room was still being cleaned. I called to the maid cleaning the room how long she would be, but due to my tiredness instead of asking how long I asked her "how many more days she would be". And then to make matters worse I impatiently pointed to my watch. All she did was stop, look at me and giggle - obviously thinking I was joking - Chinese people don't get English sarcasm (they have a Chinese version of sarcasm). In Chinese, how you say the word "day" is quite similar to how you say an hour unit on a clock, so I inadvertantly confused my intended question of "what time will you finish" with "how many days are you going to take to finish". A simple mistake. See, I'm not that bad at Chinese.
Weirdly, the room that we had a window from the shower into the berdroom. It had strips of frosted glass and srips of normal glass, so you could pretty much see into the bathroom. Just the thought of how Dima negotiated the room rate kept jittering through my head. Was this a honey moon suite. It looked like it. Why would he want the honey moon suite?? Why would they give us the honey moon suite? 2 guys. Getting the honey moon suite. Surely not. Oh God. Had they put secret cameras in here? Extremely fatigue-addled thoughts like that. Funny to look back on though.
We showered and then laid down next to each other in the bed and tried to sleep. I was quite excited about being in China and going to see Rain soon, so I didn't sleep that much. And the thought of having the memory of me showering and sitting on a toilet naked, and glimpsing another man do the same things, and sleeping semi naked 1 foot away from a Russian guy who I'd only known for 3 days in what was probably a Chinese love hotel kept me eye-bleedingly awake too. Dima was probably thinking the same things as he didn't sleep either.
After a few hours of restless sleep, we both got up and got ready to go out and get the tickets.
That was quite an experience in itself. Dima took me to a place that I can only really describe as Russia Town, here in Beijing. I think it's actually called The Russian Quarter. Every shop sign was in Russian or Chinese. All the people we met spoke Russian, even though they were Chinese. We went to this building where his friend, Sasha worked. Basically just a huge buidling with small rooms full of fake designer clothes. This building was also full of Russians. Rich Russian women buying fake designer clothes, and spending 100s of US dollars. These could be sold in Russia for thousands. Dima gave me the example of a belt that was there. It cost 100 yuan. In Russia it sells for 700 yuan...a 600% markup!
And it wasn't just this one building. We visited another building which had exactly the same thing...just room after room after floor of Chinese Russians selling cheap things. We went to a Western Union as Dima needed to get some money. There were also a lot of Russians there, getting money. I had some roubles left - 4000, so I asked Dima if I could change them for yuan. Dima took me to this guy on a corner, surrounded by a few others, with a briefcase and a calculator. He then got out a wad of cash from his bag. He asked if I wanted dollars, yuan or something else. Dima tried to bargain with him, but the guy wouldn't have it, so Dima walked away and let me handle the transation. I didn't know what to do, so I just took what he was offering. It turned out to be 80 yuan off of the actual exchange rate. 8 GBP. Not too good. But I didn't mind or think about it too much. We also went to get something to eat. A buffet of entirely Russian food. The Chinese waiters and waitresses could all speak Russian it seemed.
We left the hotel and checked out and caught a taxi to Beijing West train station. It was about 4pm - our train to Guanzhou was at 6:18pm...plenty of time we thought. We drove out into the street, and then instantly my heart sank a little bit. It was rush hour. I remember rush hour 5 years ago in Beijing being absolutely horrenedous. And it was even worse, 5 years later. We sat in a traffic jam, at a red light for around 15 minutes.
We then cleared the red light by it going green - brove about 500 metres, then got stuck at anoither red light on the other side of Tian'anmen Square. This carried on twice more. Dima started to get a bit worried. It was now 5:15. After quite a bit of swearing in English and Russian, I aksed the taxi driver how far it was to the station, and he replied with the helpful "not too far. Just 'round the corner" (in Chinese of course). I realised the unhelpfulness of this, but I didn't know what to reply in Chinese, so I asked him "how many minutes do you think it will take?" and he just shrugged, pursed his lips and sucked some air through them like he was thinking of how much to charge me for a conservatory to be built and then shrugged again and said something like "This traffic is murder this time of night guv. It'll take as long as it takes". I conveyed this to Dima, who didn't like it at all, swore, and just said "let's get the metro". And started to open the car door. I urged him to wait while I looked at the metro map, but it didn't show Beijing West train station, but Dima was already paying and getting out of the car. I quickly scrabbled to collect my things and leave the taxi. I managed to get out and see Dima disappear into the station, glancing behind to me and motion as if saying "hurry the fuck up". I followed him down the steps where he was waiting for me. He said to me that he needs my help to get directions. I said "ok" and then turned round to put my bags down. I tunred back 5 seconds later to find him pointing as BEI JING XI on his ticket at some people behind the monitor of an x-ray machine. They spoke some English, but Dima spoke more and so didn't get much help. I joined in with a bit of Chinese, and it started to get pretty chaotic.
Luckily this girl overheard our coversation and started to talk to Dima. He directed her to me. She gave directions and helped me buy the ticket. She even gave me some rough time estimates. I thanked her so much. We went down to the platform and two trains pulled in. Dima had already got there and was looking quite lost. I tried to shepherd him over to one side, but didn't manage to in the throng of people, but we both noticed the girl that helped us, and she pointed to a train and the map, shouted our detsination and then looked worriedly at us like she had no faith that we would make it. It was now 5:35. And the entire journey, including a bus ride, would take about 25 to 30 minutes.
We got on the train in amongst the deluge of people, changed lines 2 stops later also in amongst a deluge of people and then a tidal wave of people almost helpfully floated us towards the exit. We raced up the steps and this Chinese girl halfway up the steps shouted something in English about how tired she was and how she had no energy to get up the rest of the steps. I looked across at her, smiled and said "keep trying!" and ran the top flight of steps with my bags. I looked back at her panting; still on the middle part of the stairs looking up to me as if she wanted help, and just smiled then followed Dima out to another taxi. We paid the taxi driver 20 yuan to drive through the backstreets to the station. We made it in 5 minutes, then ran to the train. We boarded the train, drenched in sweat, with about 10 minutes to spare but both elated that we made it. We decided that if we had stayed in the orginal taxi we would still be stuck in traffic, so it was good that we followed Dima's plan, even though it was quite a mission.
We arrived in Guangzhou after a good nights sleep on the train, in spite of being the only 2 white people in the train car. I also made friends with this student, Hao Pei Qi (or Nick) who was 18 and from Mongolia, on his way to Hainan, to go to school. A distance of over 3,000kms. He told me how has to get 2 trains and a boat then another train just to get to school! He's travelling there with his father. Nick talked to me for a while and the topic got round to food. As it was about 11am, I asked him where the dining car was on the train. He gave me directions, then said that he would accompany me and help me order. I said ok, and asked if he wanted to eat anything. I would pay. He politely refused, saying that soon he had to go back to his dad. He would jsut come with me, help me order, chat to me more, then leave. We got to the packed restaurant car, he managed to get us a seat on our own table, he ordered me some food each time apologising for not knowing the English words for the Chinese words that I couldn't say. Eventually the food arrived costing 70 yuan (even Chinese trains extorionately overprice their food....in a normal restaurant, the food would have cost about 30 yuan), and Nick offered to pay for it. More of a rhetorical offer though, as I declined his offer but he still paid.
We arrived in Guangzhou and from then on my remaining journey to Dongguan to meet Rain was uneventful. I did get briefly lost trying to find the entrance to Guangzhou station, my suitcase zip inexplicably broke on the way through the station concourse leaving a trail of dirty socks and batteries, and I also got to meet Dima's ex-wife.
Dima and I walked to see a monument of a war memorial and a tank from the Japan-Russia war in the 70s. Dima told me how he was a tank driver in the army for 2 years when he was about 17.
We then went to sit in a restaurant for a bit; me, Dima, Tanya, Alexi and Katya.
Dima and I then walked back to the station via a few shops. The others went on a walk to the other side of the town. I don't know why really. Up a hill there was nothing but fields. But it was through this severly run-down Soviet council estate. There was just a slope up hill, paving that looked like 100s of tanks had driven over, a few tower blocks and a few kids dressed in dirty and hole-peppered tracksuits. I spoke to this Danish couple later that evening about it and they said that they started to walk up there as someone had told them the view was lovely, but as they started up the road this battered old car pulled up next to them, this guy leaned over to the passenger side door, peered up to them and said to them that they shouldn't go up there.
While we were waiting at Zabaikalsk station, we also started talking to these two girls. They wanted to talk to me, but as I didn't understand Russian, I wasn't paying attention to them. Dima started talking to them, and it turned out they could speak a little bit of English. They were 21, and studying Chinese somewhere in China. I don't remember their names; one was called Natsha i think. They were both quite pretty.
It's not too surprising that doing nothing is often tiring. I do sometimes feel that. But sitting on a train for nearly 6 hours, walking about aimlessly around shops and a town that you don't want to be at or buy anything from. And then, after we get back on the train and travel for less than 20 minutes at 5mph, we stop for another few hours this time in China, at Manzhouli.
I met two proper English people for the first time this trip too! Duncan and Rachel. They're from Hampshire, but Duncan works in London for Lloyds. It was so good to finally speak to someone normally, and I think I got too excited - smiling and hyper but also majorly tired. We swapped stories about our experiences. They were on holiday here, and had recently got engaged. They used to live in Hammersmith. And they called the Moscow Metro the Tube, which was comforting, as I had also made that faux pas a few times in Moscow. They introduced me to a Danish couple; Soone and Ruth. They're quite funny and well-travelled. We talked a lot about Hong Kong and China. They also had friends in Nepal, which was their final destination.
Due to my modest amount of Chinese speaking abilities, I tried to bargain with the people in the shop in
Manzhouli. When we first arrived I asked a Chinese lady serving how much a mango was. She replied 25 yuan. I offered her 40 yuan for 2. She refused, and so I bought some necterines and walked away. I then went back with Soone a bit later, and tried to bargain for him, but it didn't work. He bought what he wanted and went away. I then asked the man serving how much for 2 mangoes. He gave them to me for 30 yuan for 2...
We got back to the train. Dima was resting, so I talked to Alexi and a Chinese guy that he was sharing cabins
with for a bit. We shared some food and talked about Chinese language, and cars. Alexi seems to be quite well educated, we talked about the structure of languages. English is an analytical language, while Russian is
structural. It means that in Russian, the order of words don't matter, so there are no regional language differences or accents like in Chinese or English.
So anyway on the 2nd September we arrived in Haerbin. Most of the passengers have now gone. Tanya, Alexi and Katya have gone. I talked with them for a while this morning, and drank some tea with them. There are only a few people on the train now. Dima is still here, and so are a few Chinese people.
We arrived in Beijing station at around 5:40am on the 3rd September after having about probably 2 hours sleep. Dima and I were the only people left in our carriage by now.
We left the train and made our way in a taxi to a hotel that Dima knew. We had decided to check into a hotel, have a wash, a bit of a sleep and then eat, do some shopping and collect the train tickets to Guangzhou.
We arrived somewhere in Beijing close to the station and walked to the hotel. It was starting to rain a bit. Beijing station as in the past was absolute chaos, even at 6 in the morning. There were people running everywhere and trying to sell things, and pimp tours and taxi rides and hotels and foot massages.
We made the 10 minute taxi journey, and got lost as Dima forgot where it was. We arrived at the hotel, only to find out that there were no rooms available. They gave us directions to another hotel close by though. We got to the next hotel and tried to get a room with two beds. All they had left was one room with a double bed. So we just got that one, as we were both extremely tired and didn't want to trek about looking for another hotel in the increasingly bad weather.
We checked in. One of the conditions on the price of the room was that it wasn't going to be cleaned til 8am....and it was only 6:30. We sat down and decided to go to get a coffee and something to eat, as Dima said that he knew a Starbucks close to the hotel, so we went to go out and look for it, and mince about until 8am when our room would be cleaned. We could then sleep and shower.
We walked out of the hotel and down the street a little bit. It was a banking district in Beijing it looked like. We got about 5 minutes from the hotel and it started to drizzle a bit with rain. We walked another 2 minutes and started to rain harder. We walked 5 more minutes and it started to bucket down. We speed-walked for a few more minutes, but it appeared we were lost. Then it seemed like a mini-monsoon started and we couldn't walk further. So we hid under a tree, but still got pretty wet, so took cover in this restaurant called Mosocw near to the tree. We stayed in the entrance for a bit and watched the torrential rain,but started to get restless when the rain didn't let up after 15 minutes. So I asked how far Starbucks was. Dima replied "about 100 or 200 metres". Foolishly I said "OK...we could run to it". "OK" Dima replied foolishly and sprinted out of the doorway, slipped over and skidded down a little slope to the pavement. I helped him up, but we were already dreanched. "No bother" he shouted, and started to run down the road. I followed him. We got 50 metres and I was absolutely soaking. My shirt was sticking to my chest underneath my water-marinated sweatshirt. This was while we were watched by Chinese people carrying umbrellas, on their way to work, engrossed by the sight of these two white people inappropriately clothed for tropical storms shouting and sprinting.
We ran past a cafe on the other side of the road and Dima just pointed and said "let's go in there", so we did. And as we were ordering, the rain stopped all of a sudden.
We left the cafe after eating, and went back to hotel. Our room was still being cleaned. I called to the maid cleaning the room how long she would be, but due to my tiredness instead of asking how long I asked her "how many more days she would be". And then to make matters worse I impatiently pointed to my watch. All she did was stop, look at me and giggle - obviously thinking I was joking - Chinese people don't get English sarcasm (they have a Chinese version of sarcasm). In Chinese, how you say the word "day" is quite similar to how you say an hour unit on a clock, so I inadvertantly confused my intended question of "what time will you finish" with "how many days are you going to take to finish". A simple mistake. See, I'm not that bad at Chinese.
Weirdly, the room that we had a window from the shower into the berdroom. It had strips of frosted glass and srips of normal glass, so you could pretty much see into the bathroom. Just the thought of how Dima negotiated the room rate kept jittering through my head. Was this a honey moon suite. It looked like it. Why would he want the honey moon suite?? Why would they give us the honey moon suite? 2 guys. Getting the honey moon suite. Surely not. Oh God. Had they put secret cameras in here? Extremely fatigue-addled thoughts like that. Funny to look back on though.
We showered and then laid down next to each other in the bed and tried to sleep. I was quite excited about being in China and going to see Rain soon, so I didn't sleep that much. And the thought of having the memory of me showering and sitting on a toilet naked, and glimpsing another man do the same things, and sleeping semi naked 1 foot away from a Russian guy who I'd only known for 3 days in what was probably a Chinese love hotel kept me eye-bleedingly awake too. Dima was probably thinking the same things as he didn't sleep either.
After a few hours of restless sleep, we both got up and got ready to go out and get the tickets.
That was quite an experience in itself. Dima took me to a place that I can only really describe as Russia Town, here in Beijing. I think it's actually called The Russian Quarter. Every shop sign was in Russian or Chinese. All the people we met spoke Russian, even though they were Chinese. We went to this building where his friend, Sasha worked. Basically just a huge buidling with small rooms full of fake designer clothes. This building was also full of Russians. Rich Russian women buying fake designer clothes, and spending 100s of US dollars. These could be sold in Russia for thousands. Dima gave me the example of a belt that was there. It cost 100 yuan. In Russia it sells for 700 yuan...a 600% markup!
And it wasn't just this one building. We visited another building which had exactly the same thing...just room after room after floor of Chinese Russians selling cheap things. We went to a Western Union as Dima needed to get some money. There were also a lot of Russians there, getting money. I had some roubles left - 4000, so I asked Dima if I could change them for yuan. Dima took me to this guy on a corner, surrounded by a few others, with a briefcase and a calculator. He then got out a wad of cash from his bag. He asked if I wanted dollars, yuan or something else. Dima tried to bargain with him, but the guy wouldn't have it, so Dima walked away and let me handle the transation. I didn't know what to do, so I just took what he was offering. It turned out to be 80 yuan off of the actual exchange rate. 8 GBP. Not too good. But I didn't mind or think about it too much. We also went to get something to eat. A buffet of entirely Russian food. The Chinese waiters and waitresses could all speak Russian it seemed.
We left the hotel and checked out and caught a taxi to Beijing West train station. It was about 4pm - our train to Guanzhou was at 6:18pm...plenty of time we thought. We drove out into the street, and then instantly my heart sank a little bit. It was rush hour. I remember rush hour 5 years ago in Beijing being absolutely horrenedous. And it was even worse, 5 years later. We sat in a traffic jam, at a red light for around 15 minutes.
We then cleared the red light by it going green - brove about 500 metres, then got stuck at anoither red light on the other side of Tian'anmen Square. This carried on twice more. Dima started to get a bit worried. It was now 5:15. After quite a bit of swearing in English and Russian, I aksed the taxi driver how far it was to the station, and he replied with the helpful "not too far. Just 'round the corner" (in Chinese of course). I realised the unhelpfulness of this, but I didn't know what to reply in Chinese, so I asked him "how many minutes do you think it will take?" and he just shrugged, pursed his lips and sucked some air through them like he was thinking of how much to charge me for a conservatory to be built and then shrugged again and said something like "This traffic is murder this time of night guv. It'll take as long as it takes". I conveyed this to Dima, who didn't like it at all, swore, and just said "let's get the metro". And started to open the car door. I urged him to wait while I looked at the metro map, but it didn't show Beijing West train station, but Dima was already paying and getting out of the car. I quickly scrabbled to collect my things and leave the taxi. I managed to get out and see Dima disappear into the station, glancing behind to me and motion as if saying "hurry the fuck up". I followed him down the steps where he was waiting for me. He said to me that he needs my help to get directions. I said "ok" and then turned round to put my bags down. I tunred back 5 seconds later to find him pointing as BEI JING XI on his ticket at some people behind the monitor of an x-ray machine. They spoke some English, but Dima spoke more and so didn't get much help. I joined in with a bit of Chinese, and it started to get pretty chaotic.
Luckily this girl overheard our coversation and started to talk to Dima. He directed her to me. She gave directions and helped me buy the ticket. She even gave me some rough time estimates. I thanked her so much. We went down to the platform and two trains pulled in. Dima had already got there and was looking quite lost. I tried to shepherd him over to one side, but didn't manage to in the throng of people, but we both noticed the girl that helped us, and she pointed to a train and the map, shouted our detsination and then looked worriedly at us like she had no faith that we would make it. It was now 5:35. And the entire journey, including a bus ride, would take about 25 to 30 minutes.
We got on the train in amongst the deluge of people, changed lines 2 stops later also in amongst a deluge of people and then a tidal wave of people almost helpfully floated us towards the exit. We raced up the steps and this Chinese girl halfway up the steps shouted something in English about how tired she was and how she had no energy to get up the rest of the steps. I looked across at her, smiled and said "keep trying!" and ran the top flight of steps with my bags. I looked back at her panting; still on the middle part of the stairs looking up to me as if she wanted help, and just smiled then followed Dima out to another taxi. We paid the taxi driver 20 yuan to drive through the backstreets to the station. We made it in 5 minutes, then ran to the train. We boarded the train, drenched in sweat, with about 10 minutes to spare but both elated that we made it. We decided that if we had stayed in the orginal taxi we would still be stuck in traffic, so it was good that we followed Dima's plan, even though it was quite a mission.
We arrived in Guangzhou after a good nights sleep on the train, in spite of being the only 2 white people in the train car. I also made friends with this student, Hao Pei Qi (or Nick) who was 18 and from Mongolia, on his way to Hainan, to go to school. A distance of over 3,000kms. He told me how has to get 2 trains and a boat then another train just to get to school! He's travelling there with his father. Nick talked to me for a while and the topic got round to food. As it was about 11am, I asked him where the dining car was on the train. He gave me directions, then said that he would accompany me and help me order. I said ok, and asked if he wanted to eat anything. I would pay. He politely refused, saying that soon he had to go back to his dad. He would jsut come with me, help me order, chat to me more, then leave. We got to the packed restaurant car, he managed to get us a seat on our own table, he ordered me some food each time apologising for not knowing the English words for the Chinese words that I couldn't say. Eventually the food arrived costing 70 yuan (even Chinese trains extorionately overprice their food....in a normal restaurant, the food would have cost about 30 yuan), and Nick offered to pay for it. More of a rhetorical offer though, as I declined his offer but he still paid.
We arrived in Guangzhou and from then on my remaining journey to Dongguan to meet Rain was uneventful. I did get briefly lost trying to find the entrance to Guangzhou station, my suitcase zip inexplicably broke on the way through the station concourse leaving a trail of dirty socks and batteries, and I also got to meet Dima's ex-wife.
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