Voice of Will: Traveling for the New Year

2006-01-21 - 10:38 p.m.
I am so tired. Exhaustion appears like someone who has had 6 cups of espresso right now.
I may have mentioned how Chinese Lunar New Year/Spring Festival is a very big deal right? I may not have explained it enough. Take fourth of july, thanksgiving, christmas, new years and roll them all into one holiday that lasts about a week. Ok? Alright. Now take people travling like it is thanksgiving and christmas, where everyone MUST get home for the holiday. Have you visualized that yet? Ok. Now make the number of people travelling the WHOLE population of the US. Are your eyes staring to water? Is blood starting to come out of your ears at this mind boggling visualization yet? No. Ok, now take away 1/2 of all the air flights, and 2/3 of all the rail traffic, and make the roads the consistency of a bad dirt road in a pouring rain.
That is spring festival in china. You may ask the whole population of the US seems a bit large. But consider this 30% of the chinese population will travel over 50 miles to see friends and family for the spring holiday. That is over 300 million people.

Right now in Zhengzhou there are 60,000 people who are camping at the train station trying to get train tickets. The ticket booths are refusing to sell any tickets because there are NO trains. The same thing is happening in Beijing. I wish I would have been informed of this before I snuck on a train to zhengzhou yesterday morning.

Yes you read that right. Yesterday, me and some friends go to the train station thinking "a week before spring festival, and a fweek after school got out, perfect time to travel." Well when we try to buy tickets, they tell us NO zhengzhou, and refuse to sell us tickets. Huh? so we go to the waiting area and ask if the train to zhengzhou is operating. They tell us yes they are getting on. Ok. So we get in the line and no one looks at a ticket.

Sweet. ONly one problem, you have to have a ticket to get OUT of the rail station on the other side. We decide we will deal with that problem when we get there.

the train pulls up, we get on, and there ARE NO SEATS anywhere. NOt just that, it is SRO (standing room only) in the aisles, and all the way out to the smoking platform (which is where you get on the train), and we are squished there. Ok. No problem. the train trip to ZZ is only an hour. No problem.
We go for about 15 minutes and the train comes to a slow stop. This is not a scheuled stop. By nwo we are talking to the people who in some countrys would be engaged to us because of their extreme closeness to us. We ask them (in chinese) what is happening. they reply "don't know, but this is common" We wait. and wait. and wait. after 30 minutes the train slowly starts back up, and goes at about 1/2 the normal speed. Ok. We go.... for about 15 more minutes, and we stop.

I look out the windows on the left and see a "parked" train with people on it. I look out on the right side of the train, and see another train pull up next to us in about 10 minutes and also STOP. Not good. Not good at all. we sit (actually, no place to sit, and the ground of the carrage is disgusing) for over an hour. They don't open the doors, and if the windows are open the temperature drops to under -5 Celcius.
Needless to say I was reallllllly wishing I had my spray on deodorant. Not for me, but for my new "friends". AFter an hour the train starts and gets back to full speed. YYYAAAAAYYYYY!!! and it goes until we get to the outskirts (not even 5 mintues from teh station) and we STOP. By now I am ready to kick open the door (I tried the handles already) and just jump the fence to take a taxi. noooooo. Another 35 minutes. So a simple easy 1 hour train trip took almost 4 hours.

We get off at the platform, and I make my way with a friend (drew) to a back exit I know of. And we get stopped by the chinese police and the station guards. (there weren't any there before.... no really) and they tell us that xinjiang is a 350 RMB train ride to buy a replacement ticket. We didn't come from xinjiang, but from xinzheng. but because the tones are wrong, they sound similar. xinjiang is a province in the far western part of china. We have to try not to get arrested for having no ticket, to not get ripped off with a ticket that is not from where we are at, and to get out of the station.

This is where I found out that there are 60,000 people there because one of my best chinese friends, and former student was trying to get to us, and couldn't. the guards were keeping people back 50 meters from the exits and the entrances, and using their clubs to make sure that happened.
Well we did manage to talk our way out, and went to where my friend was, and got it sorted out, but that was just the start. The day didn't get better.

It ended with us in a hostel for the night because the chinese are afraid of driving on icy roads (they should be, no snow plows) and taking a taxi back to SIAS the next day.
I will leave you with this thought. No snow plows, and a city of 6.5 million people. They physically dug the city out of the snow and ice. Apparently about 50,000 people work construction to clear the roads of snow and ice in the winter. How would you like that job? using a pick and a shovel in the freezing cold for less than $.30 an hour.

Will