In a way the incongruousness of this backward uneducated behaviour and the crisp new ultra modern architecture shows that China is merely at the cusp of development, and that changes are happening so fast here. Many people seem to rush with a fear they might lose out on fleeting opportunities. It sometimes — well, often — degrades to queue jumping and general chaos.
I went to the main Shanghai train station to purchase a ticket to Beijing and was not prepared for the bedlam. The line ups were 20 to 30 deep, and a mad rush would ensue when a booth closed and another opened. The boards are all in Chinese, and the schedules are truly cryptic. I just stood there for half an hour looking like an idiot, trying to absorb the situation and figuring what I was supposed to do. The best person to ask for help in English in China is a teenager, and usually young girls are proud to practice their speech. I asked one and she thankfully directed me to a line up that had a bilingual teller. The queue moved very slowly, as there were people constantly elbowing their way at the front of the line and nothing was being done about it, the teller not really caring who they served. When I finally go to the front I had to spread my arms out but a man to my right still managed to stick his head in and got served first. I got mad and I shouted at him but people looked at me as if I was the one acting weird. This whole train ticket ordeal ended up taking a few hours and I was livid at the end of it, and it took a while to walk my temper off.
I finally got a chance to take the full bike rig out on my last day in Shanghai. I checked out of the hotel and loaded up the suitcase trailer. I was just getting used to pulling it when I was following a crazy old woman slowly plodding along and one of the trailer wheels caught the curb and flipped over with a loud crash. The woman stops as I right the trailer back and and she probably deduced I'm well off because of my shiny bike so she pretends that she hurt her arm in the accident. She verbally opens fire at me in Chinese pointing at her arm, so I just said "budong" (don't understand), shrugged and rode way. Unfortunately she catches up to me at the traffic light and tries to block my way forward and screeches, "Give me phone namba!". I make a manoeuver and turned right on the adjacent street and in my rear view mirror I can see her following me. Mid-block I spot a momentary lull on the busy 4 lane traffic and pull a U-turn to the bike lane on the other side. I catch a glimpse of her glowering face through the resuming traffic before shaking her off for good. The image of her and "give me phone namba!" bothered me for the rest of the day.
It was a day of errors that I hope not to live through again. The signs I followed led me to Shanghai South station, the opposite way to the main station that (I thought) I needed to go to. I cursed myself for the wasted effort and rechecked my bearings. The street names all sound the same to a newcomer: ChangNing crisscrossing with ChangZhou, LongHua turning into LongCau, Shanxi road is different from Shaanxi Road. After a stressful time riding through unruly traffic (still spooked by Namba Woman and trying to detour around the vicinity where I saw her), I got to the main train station, resolving never to tow the trailer in a busy Chinese city ever again. I deposit the trailer in the left luggage counter and biked around the city untethered until it was time for the evening train.
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| When space is tight: this man brought along his portable hoop and hung it on an overpass stairway |
In hindsight, maybe it would have been better to have not taken the bike and just backpacked, but it's still too early to tell. Cycling in Shanghai is a very utilitatian (and plebeian) thing to do, people with means simply avoid it. Also, leaving a nice bike locked on the street is risky, much like in New York City.
I return to the station at 7pm, more than enough time to pack the bike up in the suitcase and chill out for a bit before the 9:30pm departure. I look at the boards and can't find my train (I had memorized the characters for Beijing: 北京) so I go into the station and show my ticket only to find out again I am in the wrong station. The high-speed trains now leave at a new station out in the far west of the city. The day is turning out like an episode of the Amazing Race. I hire a taxi to take me there quickly.
The Hongqiao train station is so new it is not in my guidebook The toilet plumbing isn't even working yet. It is coupled with the domestic airport to make transfers easy, and everything inside is pristinely white and airline-like, including the sleek new trains that slide in and out from underneath.
I took my place in a crisp 4-bunk sleeping cabin and as the train leaves I have the room to myself. But this is China and it is the weekend, and a few short stops later the remaining spaces are occupied. I hardly slept because it got noisy.
Like Shanghai's Honquiao Station, Beijing's South Station is also new and relatively unadvertised, but exponentially farther from the hotel which I had booked because it was within walking distance from the older main station. I hired another taxi, as I had no good map of Beijing to navigate from. I gave the hotel details to the taxi driver written in Pinyin (Roman letters) and he wrinkled his brow. Luckily I wrote down the phone number as well and he calls on his cellphone to get proper instructions. The $5 cab fare was a bargain to get to the front door
I check in into the hotel and enter my room marvelling at how I got here despite a day of stupid errors. For the moment I am in a foul mood, exhausted and discouraged. So I walked up to the bathroom sink and tried my hand at spitting loudly just like they do here.
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| Model of the new Beijing South station where the high stepped trains now arrive |
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