This was the hardest and most stressful, long day yet. I am currently sitting in the conductors quarters on a 36 hour train from Beijing to Quongqing (though we are only on the train for two hours) until 11:45pm and the car is filled with smoke and our luggage is in the hallway and one of the doors to the train. I will get into details on how we got into this disaster as the day progressed.
Our day began on the boat still with a 6:30am (at least we got half an hour longer) nice music wake up call though we woke up earlier when dad knocked on the door all ready to go. So up we got as we weren't sleeping anymore. Again no breakfast for mom and I and we had to pack up all of our things and meet in the lobby at 7:30am to get off the boat for good… yeah!
As we left the boat we boarded the cable car again and rode to the top of the docks where we walked through the pee smelling boarding area and got onto asmall mini bus. We were going to the Three Gorges Great Dam key Water Conservancy Project (where we learned yesterday that about 50% percent of China’s power comes from this new controversial project). The bus took us directly to the dam area (about 40 minutes away) and then we had to get tickets to board another bus as the dam area is highly guarded and there were security check points that we had to go through. We had to put our bags on an x-ray machine and then had to walk through a body scanner/ metal detectors. There are no private cars allowed so everything is very regulated and of course there are video cameras everywhere. We get onto the appointed crowded pee smelling bus and go to our first stop at a garden area overlooking the massive 5 stage locks area- it takes large boats about 4 hours to pass through. We climbed a large concrete thing to a lookout point and it was quite crowded so we stayed for a bit and then made our waydown and walked around the "gardens" and then met our group to get onto another bus to take us to a spot lower down to quickly view the dam from closer and then we had to show our tickets again to board a completely different bus. This bus took us to the lower opposite side of the dam so wecould see the spillway and some gardens.
Everyone seemed obsessed with taking photos in front of the dam. The park was made to have some greenery around this area that was transformed into a concrete haven. I think it was their way of making up for displacing and forcing 1.3 million people to leave their homes with no choice of where they had to move to. Some people were moved to Beijing, Shanghai and others were moved closer to Yichang and other outlying areas.
Finally we left the dam area and got our mini bus from this past area and then took the pee smelling bus all the way back to Yichang (about an hour).
We had been told many different schedules of what we were doing and our motto has become TBD, because this is the most disorganized non-communicative trip we have ever been on. When other people arrange things for you and don’t tell you, it gets very frustrating.
In Yichang, the University had a lunch arranged for us at a hotel where a smoky wedding was occurring. It was interesting to walk right through the wedding to an upstairs room to have lunch. It was okay, by far not even close to the best meal, but we were a bit hungry as this was our first real meal since we got onto the boat that was somewhat edible. And on a complete tangent, none of our pants fit anymore- they are so large we don’t have to undo any buttons to take them off. I am rolling my jeans and mom is out of holes on her belt buckle, so we look a little funny.
After the lunch, we went back to our original hotel in Yichang where everyone had stored their luggage. We were then told we had about 5 hours to do something in the city and then meet up for dinner and then we were leaving at 7:30 to catch a 9pm train. The rest of our group wanted to go to a museum, but luckily it was closed or something was not right about it so we stayed near our hotel and walked around for a bit. We explored some of the alley’s and mom found some children’s books that we’ve been looking for so we can learn to write and say a few words in Chinese. Then everyone wanted to keep walking to some book stores and other places far away, but we decided to go into the department store instead on our own and look for some scarves, which when we finally found them were very expensive and we didn’t buy any. The department store is right next to their city central park so we decided to sit down on the corner of the grass for a little bit to relax. Their parks are strange here as people are not allowed to walk, sit, lie on the grass at all and there is a large fine if you go onto the grass. This park is like Central park in NYC so to not be able to go onto the grass seemed very odd to us. Everyone was sitting on the concrete right next to it. Also we were told that the grass in the park was imported from Japan as it was a special grass that stays green all year long. We sat in the park for about half an hour until we got too hot and until we didn’t want to be museum pieces anymore. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but everyone stares at us and we have coined the term “museum pieces” for when we are talking to each other and people are just staring. Literally, people just stop and stare and after a while it makes you uncomfortable.
We walked back to the hotel and found a cozy corner of the lounge on the first floor and sat down and drank tea and dad had coffee. We stayed there for about 3 hours until it was time for dinner. It was the nicest relaxing time we’ve had and we needed it before the evening. My blackberry stopped working a few hours earlier and my emails kept saying that they were being blocked, so we ended up calling Verizon from dad’s phone and after about 20 minutes on the phone with them, my phone was nicely fixed. Apparently, sometimes when you go abroad your phone suddenly stops working and this is exactly what happened to me. I’m glad it wasn’t anything more than that!
Dinner was at a restaurant around the street from the hotel where the mini bus stuffed with our luggage was waiting. There are 11 people in our group and everyone has one large suitcase and a carry-on… the three of us have 5 large bags plus our carry-on’s so the mini bus was stuffed to the rim and then all of us had to fit into the bus as well! After we finished our dinner, we boarded our bus and made the 40 minute ride to the large brand new train station. So new (it opened at the end of last year) that the elevators were not working and the escalators were broken. Now if you can picture the three of us with 5 large bags, 3 rolling carry-on’s and our backpacks/purses, you would imagine that going up 3 floors (and these are not your regular size floors as everything is much bigger here) would be quite challenging. After 8 people in our group, who all speak Chinese, couldn’t figure out where to go and how to get upstairs, we found someone who told us there was a ramp we could go up to get inside the station and almost a mile later- with one duffel on my back while rolling a suitcase, dad had a duffel on his back while rolling 2 suitcases and mom had all three little rolling carry-on’s, we made it to the first floor of the train station. Dad and I were dripping with sweat as these bags are not light. We had to put all of our luggage on a x-ray machine and then we found out we had to go up to the tracks which was on the next floor.. think 15 steps per level on the stairs and each floor has 6 levels- so about 60 steps to get to the next floor. The train station called some of their workers to help us with our luggage and they were wearing bright orange suits. They charged us 10 RMB for each bag they carried up (that’s almost $2). They only carried one of our suitcases up as dad and I got some exercise, but they carried a second suitcase the last 1Ž4 of the steps as they wouldn’t let me go anymore and took the suitcase out of my hands. So we ended up having to pay 20 RMB for 1 1Ž4 bags. I am still too frustrated to write more about that as I think one person in our group does not like us and hasmade our life a bit more difficult and has no respect for us. Everyone else in our group is very nice. No one could figure out where the gate was for the station as it was not clearly marked and then we found a tiny gate that looked like it was under our train number. So we piled all of our bags near that entrance and waited. We had about an hour before the train was supposed to arrive and we took turns watching the bags while we talked and recovered from being really sweaty. At about 9pm, we find out that the train has been delayed until 9:39pm. Finally as the time approaches, they open the gate to the train and because this is China everyone swarms in- no politeness, no respect, no manners. The people in the orange suits help us with 2 of our bags and we quickly try to take all the rest of our bags and find our car. We were supposed to be in car 12. We passed a car that said 11/12 on it but the group thought that there may be another entrance to 12, so we walked down to the 12 car and none of the doors worked. We started rushing at this point as the train was almost all boarded and we did not want to get left behind. So we rushed back to the 11/12 car… we were now 2 train cars away and as quickly as we could got onto the train and tried to figure out where to put our luggage. This was a sleeper train with hardly any room to walk down the sides. We kept thinking that things can't get any more dirty or worse ineach situation we end up in, but it keeps proving us wrong.
We slowly tried to take one or two bags each down to the 12 car, though we did not realize that we were not in the 12 car in the direction that we went. We got to a nicer area where there were 4 bunks to a room with a closing door and there were people in our seats, which were 7, 8 and 9. Then we were told that this was the 11 car and not the 12 car. By this point we were exhausted from trying to maneuver the bags and two passengers actually saw that and began to help us with our bags, one for each of them. It was very nice of them. I took one bag and walked through the group bathroom in the car to get to car 12. As soon as I walked into the car, I immediately thought that this cannot be right. There were at least 100 people in this car, 3 bunks high all the way down the car and every seat in the aisle taken. There was no way I was getting myself or any bags to our “beds”/ seats. I didn’t know what to do and everyone was talking/yelling/etc we assume the train was actually waiting for us to get on board and figure something out and then finally we started moving with all of us in limbo in the middle of two cars. I believe a conductor actually then told us we could leave our bags in the hallway of the dining car and so we walked 2 more cars in the opposite direction and placed our items in the hallway- we left a little pathway for people to go through. We asked if we could just sit in the dining car so we could watch our luggage, and a nasty woman said absolutely not, we could not sit there and she was pissed that we had put our luggage in “her” area. So mom and I decided we would stay with the luggage in the hallway, standing up for the 2 hour ride up the mountains and the other 3 in our group that we were with (including dad) would go back to the sleeper car where our real seats were. Not even 5 minutes later, and before mom and I even had a chance to settle ourselves, they returned back and said there was no way they were sitting in that car! So we all stood in the doorway and hallway for a few minutes and then mom and I thought, well maybe if we buy something we can sit in the dining car. So one of the Chinese in our party went and asked them in Chinese and she came back and said we could sit down out of the way and we have to almost be invisible. She said she told them that one of the people we were with was 80 years old and needed to sit down… he is not 80, but he looks old! They were not serving any food so we went into the car and found two tables (there were only 10 tables in the whole car) and sat down on the filthy seats, with food all over the tables and smoke surrounding us. It was so dirty and smelly, but we were sitting down rather than standing on the bumpy train. Once we got a tiny bit settled, I began writing this post. I was quickly interrupted though because we kept having to watch the luggage and I wanted to show mom the train car we were supposed to be sitting/lying down in. So I took her the two cars away, past the public bathrooms in the doorway of the cars and when we got there, it was pitch black. All of the lights had been turned out in the car and you could just see a few white eyeballs staring at you. It was so freaky and I’m soo glad we could not even fit in the car.
The train ride was 2 hours and through out the 2 hours, we came to realize that the dining car was actually the conductor’s rest, smoke, computer, eating area. So many conductors were coming in to hang out, smoke and stare at us. I was very glad when we were told that we were getting closer to Enshi as I was ready to get off the train and take a shower. As we got closer to the station, we tried to move some of our bags closer to the exit door, but no one knew which side of the train we were getting off at, so we did the best that we could. Many people were getting off at Enshi and we had a bit of a disorganized train of luggage to get it off the train as quickly as possible and we had to make sure that we didn’t forget anything. There were no signs at the train station that it was Enshi and we had to really look around to make sure we had gotten off at the correct stop. We did. And as the three of us were figuring out how to get the luggage up the 5 flights of stairs to street level, a swarm of at least 15 people came running up to us to greet us all. They were all affiliated with the hospital and the University here and the head of the hospital was there as well, whom dad really liked from his last visit to Enshi. It was so helpful- they all took a bag and up we went the many, many stairs. As soon as we exited the station, an ambulance drove up on the sidewalk and pulled in front of us. They used the ambulance to put everyone’s luggage in to take us to the hotel!! How cool is that!
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