The Train

To celebrate the long weekend I just had for Qing Ming Festival (that's Tomb Sweeping Day to you), some of my fellow teachers and I took a trip to the city of Nanjing. Nanjing is a pleasant medium sized city, located about 2 hours from Shanghai by train and known by most of the world for one of two reasons: it has twice been the proud capital of China, or because it was the sight of the horrific Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese invaders during World War II. The dreary part of it's history aside, Nanjing was a much calmer, greener and relaxed place than Shanghai - an ideal get away. However before going there was the important 'getting there' hurdle we needed to pass.

Train tickets for non-overnight journeys go on sale 5 days before the travel date. That means that anyone wishing to travel on the Saturday of the long weekend holiday needed to buy their tickets last Tuesday, including us. As Saturday was (1) the first day of a long weekend, and (2) a holiday where families are supposed to travel to the countryside graves of their ancestors in deference, we were rather terrified at the prospect of all of Shanghai trying to book tickets on our train. Arriving at a hotel near work around 12:30, we discovered a 50 minute long line at this ticket station (one of possibly over a hundred around the city). After the nerve-wracking wait (nothing like having your trip ruined because you couldn't buy a ticket), we had tickets in hand for noon, which was the earliest tickets left available! Whats more, we had to return two days later to buy our return trip (thankfully, and strangely, most Chinese people seemed geared towards traveling only 2 of the 3 days they had off). Finally, we had our tickets!

You know the guy who wrote the 1,000 places to see before you die book? Well he left out a big one - you must experience a Chinese railway station on a holiday. I'll agree Shanghai's probably doesn't compare to it's counterparts in India, but it's a sight to behold! Thousands of people streaming through 4 checkpoints to get onto their train sounds chaotic, but it's amazingly organized. After the first ticket check to get into the rail station, there is a baggage examination to make sure nobody is plotting something sinister. Having cleared that you must identify your train 'waiting room', of which there are 10, and you can only board your train from the correct room. They check your ticket getting into the waiting room, where you, well. Finally they'll call your train and a quarter of the people in the waiting area rush the gateway and begin a mad sprint (I kid you not, a wild, fiendishly blind sprint) for the platform and their seat. Settled into your seat, the train eventually pulls away from the station, and everyone with a seat gets a free bottle of water, yup free water. China, what a country!

Arriving in Nanjing results only in more confusion - if you though a throng of people was running around in the daylight of the Shanghai rail station, the underground corridors filled, as far as I could see, with short, little black haired Chinese people (literally, I'm a head taller than them I stood out like a lightning rod). The chaos was acute. You should try it.

Speaking of standing out like a lightning rod, I was the subject of countless photos of strangers this weekend. It seems to happen every time I venture outside of Shanghai. On my last day in Nanjing I noticed a Pizza Hut with a line out the door - for Pizza Hut! I decided I needed to take a picture, but was slightly embarrassed to take it directly, so I tried to look as casual as possible, while snapping photos of every nearby building before zooming in on the Hut. When Adrienne, my girlfriend noticed this, she pointed out my elaborate display was unnecessary, as literally dozens of Chinese had shamelessly and plainly taken my photo this weekend - it seems fair that I can snap one of them. So I did: