Backpacking China pt 1
// October 20th, 2008 // Articles/Features
Continuing my 30 posts in 30 days challenge (I’m a few behind, but not totally failing) here is an expanded account of our recent backpacking trip in SE Asia. This past finds us on a night bus, during Chinese New Year and the worst weather in 50 years. It’s quite long, so I’ll break it up into a few parts….
We used to have this expression at Uni “failing to prepare, is preparing to fail” we used it so often it became beyond old. Still we would wheel it out for one last go when someone accidentally sat the wrong exam, or was stood next to the printer at 8:58am, two minutes before the deadline….Dude “failing to prepare, is preparing to fail” we’d say, enjoying that this time we weren’t the recipient of this pearl of belated wisdom.
The whole of our month backpacking in China we were that student stood nervously at the printer, failing in preparation. It’s always hot in china right? Yeah, I guess so. I’ve never heard anyone mention that it is cold. Ah, okay then, I’ll throw a hoodie in just in case though, it is January after all. So you can imagine our bemused surprise when after arriving in shorts and t-shirt, expecting to have just escaped a bitter European winter we instead plunged into an even colder Chinese one. Not just any winter, the worst weather in 50 years. We didn’t see the sun for 3.5 weeks of solid snow, in which it didn’t once get over 0°C. Did I also mention that Southern China has no heating? Architecturally, it’s designed to keep cool with very few doors or windows to spread the cool air in stifling summers, which you can imagine has the opposite effect in winter. Lucky we had one hoodie between us.
As if that wasn’t enough to challenge us, we also picked the month of the Chinese New Year. In our naivety we were excited about this. Assuming it would involve being invited to a BBQ, maybe a few drinks a little dance with a dragon or two under a shower of fireworks. The reality was a little less celebratory, instead we joined in on the largest human migration on earth, with an estimated 180million people, or three times the entire population of the UK moving across China to return (usually to the countryside) to their hometowns to celebrate with family. Worst weather in 50 years, a transport system at breaking point with 180 million people on the move, no make that 180,000,002 with two stupid backpackers (we did stumble upon a few dozen month over the month, but not much more) making our own haphazard pilgrimage from Shanghai to Beijing via Xi’an.
We actually managed to avoid the travel chaos fairly well, turning up a day after the train station riots that killed 5 people in Xi’an where 100,000 people stormed police and ran for the trains. When we were there the heaving masses where far less intimidating, a mere 30,000 people fighting over 10 trains, at the most. But there was one leg of our journey where we won the inconvenience lottery, and that was the nightbus journey from Tangkou to Wuhan.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a chicken in a chicken coop, you should ride a Chinese night-bus. A mere 20 euros will secure you a prime coop for 14 hours of fun. None of the freedom of free range here though, sonny.
It’s essentially a normal sized bus, split into three rows. Each row has 7 sets of top and bottom bunk beds with metal frames. Your legs go under the head of the person in front and the back of the bed archs upwards to create a pocket of space for the person behinds legs and feet to fit. Like human Meccano. In total about 45 of us are on the bus. The aisles are so narrow that I have trouble walking down them and I’m almost so thin I’m 2d. Fat people are not welcome on the night-bus, not that China seems to have any. I’m lying under a green standard issue night-bus duvet. The duvet smells of death, Chinese death (cigarettes and fatty food). When I say lying (lying flat), I am in fact lying (the world is flat). In England I’m only noticeably tall, because I’m even more noticeably thin; the two combined emphasising each other, which makes people want to buy me a warm meal. But in China I’m 2 inches or so below put in a cage and poke with sticks height. My height has caused no real problems in China until now. Climbing into the bunk I feel like that little folding guy in Oceans 11. Perhaps George Clooney will wake me up during the trip to take part in a heist at the mirage. The bunk’s not designed for anyone over the dizzy heights of 5ft 10. So lying with my legs straight is impossible. I got cramp just looking at the bunk. Climbing in well…let me see if I can just…that’s it…a little more….legs back tiny bit…..wrap them round my head….hip bones connected to my thigh bone…do the hokey kokey….success! Only the third least comfortable I’ve ever been in my whole life. To my right is a window (I’m in the right hand-row). I’m pretty sure it’s there for the amusement of people looking into to the bus at the passing freak show, than for ours looking out.
I don’t think we’re the most popular people on the bus. Perhaps because Annett has a psychological disorder that requires her to need the toilet two minutes after we waved goodbye to the last one. A clue should have been when I heard her practicing the mandarin word for toilet “cesou” repeatedly as she was getting into her bunk, before we’d even left the bus station, even though we only went to the toilet 10 minutes before we got on. The crew now look at us like we’re retarded, making such a big deal of signalling and verbalising exactly where the toilet was on the first pee break (the pee break only she requested, repeatedly) that I thought he was going to follow me, unzip and hold “it” for me, in case I missed.
The head of the crew is the driver, a Chinese version of John Wayne, and his crew of 4 helpers. He’s got the swagger and hat, but is missing the spiky star on the back of his heel, but I’ll forgive him. He looks like he and his crew have pounded rubber on these roads for centuries. We should be in safe hands, as Chinese roads are like nothing I’ve ever seen, “destruction derby” springs to mind. None of the crew speak any English so we were hoping what was to come would be simple and straightforward.
Three hours or so into the journey and all is as expected – me, Chinese John Wayne, 40 or so passengers, and my ranting German girlfriend on my left. “Chinese people are so disgusting” (lucky almost no-one in China speaks a word of English) she is shouting at the top of her voice, as the man in the bunk above spits into a carrier bag. Not a subtle spit, the full blown hock and release proudly sported by all Chinese people at 5 minute intervals. There’s a “better out than in” belief here in china so it’s totally okay to spit, burp and fart at will. Particularly spitting, they spit like we breathe, that hoocking sound will be the sounds track to this journey as it has been to the past two weeks. Unfortunately, he’s missed with his latest nasal deposit, and its dripping down the side of the carrier bag hung on the front right of his bunk. Now it’s dripping down the side of the bag and onto Annett’s bunk. The guy on her left is snoring loudly and with enough conviction to make me think he would snore through an Armageddon. I’ve already heard the woman behind me burp and fart numerous times. The person behind her is one of those “phone people”, they frequent public transport the world over, you know the sort – I must take this phone call or the world will end. No I’m far too important to not have the volume set at maximum. She’s taken more calls in the last hour than I receive in a year. All she ever seems to say is “ar” (add a Chinese accent for effect), either she’s friends with a lot of dentists or she has a slightly limited vocabulary. I have a slightly limited patience. In front is the road, what should be just another 11hrs or so of it, snaking through the Siberian like landscape resulting in us crossing a depressingly small chunk of China the colossus.
