Suzhou and the Hard-Seat Train
I have to say I felt a little sad to leave Yangzhou; I really enjoyed our two weeks there. I am happy to be halfway through with my research though. Daniel and I went to Suzhou on Saturday, hoping to meet up with one of my Sewanee classmates, but it turns out he was in Shanghai for the weekend, so we missed each other. Ridiculous coincidence and poor planning. Anyway, we arrived in Suzhou (which is about an hour from Shanghai by train) Saturday evening. We set out for a restaurant close to the hotel that the travel book recommended; it was pretty easy to find, as it had "Lonely Planet" (the name of the guide book) pasted all over the front. Nooo, not touristy at all... But turns out Chinese people eat there too, and the food was good, so I didn't mind about the Lonely Planet thing. After dinner, we headed to the night market (also a guidebook suggestion) and wandered around for awhile. Suzhou is bigger than Yangzhou and has more historical and cultural spots (a.k.a. tourist attractions), and consequently, more waiguoren. It’s smoggy, but other than that a nice little city.
Sunday morning we went to the Garden of the Master of the Nets. No idea why it’s named that. Our group last summer went to this garden, and I had spent probably 45 minutes looking at watercolor paintings in a side wing—they were awesome. By China standards, they were expensive, however, and I didn’t buy one. And for an entire year I’ve wished I did buy one. So I finally paid a return visit, and bought a watercolor painting. It’s delightful. And Daniel was quite (unexpectedly) patient with my indecisiveness as I tried to choose which one I like the most.
After we finished with the Garden of the Master of the Nets, we wandered the surrounding streets, browsing through antique shops, silk shops, cigar shops, etc. (bet you can guess which one of us went in which kind of stores…) then back to the hotel to collect the luggage and head for the train station. As we got closer to the station in the taxi, I was getting more and more nervous. See, on Saturday when we arrived in Suzhou, I had left the luggage with Daniel and gone to the ticket office at the train station to get tickets to Shanghai for the next day. After a huge—albeit surprisingly orderly—line, it was my turn at the window.
Me: Two tickets for tomorrow afternoon to Shanghai.
Ticket woman: (irritated glance at the waiguoren who didn’t just book the tickets with the much-less-busy people at the hotel and accept the service charge) What time?
Me: Uh, after 2 p.m.
Ticket woman: The 2 p.m. train. 20 $RMB.
Me: (thinking that didn’t sound like enough money) Uh, I’d like soft-seat please.
Ticket woman: (thinking, get the heck out of my line, stupid waiguoren) Don’t have those. Only hard seats.
Me: (thinking, I give up.) Ok.
**Meeting up with Daniel** Me: Uh, got some bad news.
Trains in China have 4 classes of tickets: soft sleeper—the most luxurious and most expensive, with 4 bunks per enclosed cabin; hard sleeper—pretty nice, 6 bunks per open cabin; soft seat—nice for short distances, comparable to business class on a plane; and hard seat—cheap transportation for the masses. They usually overbook seats, so not everyone gets to sit down. No air-con or other niceties. Before Sunday, I’d only ever traveled soft seat, and was a little anxious about our upcoming hard seat adventure. I wasn’t worried about standing up or no air-con, as the trip from Suzhou to Shanghai is 45 minutes to an hour; mostly I was concerned because both Daniel and I have pretty big, and pretty heavy, suitcases. I mean, we did a pretty good job of packing economically, but when you’re going to a foreign country for 2 months there are just some things you think you really should pack. Plus there’s no way we could buy clothes here to fit us, unless we had them made.
Adventure it was; we were the only two white people in the waiting hall of well over 500 people. But I have to say, it was not bad at all. Certainly not as bad I thought it might be, and probably could have been. Other people had way more baggage than we did, usually in big plastic bags or cardboard boxes tied with plastic, sometimes 2 hung on each end of a long wooden pole. The weather was cool and some of the windows opened, so it wasn’t even hot. I was a little annoyed that the service-people with instant noodles and maps came through with their carts—the car was way too crowded for a cart full of instant noodles, and every time they came by the older gentleman standing in the aisle ended up either in my lap or the lap of the guy across the aisle. But it was typical China people-contact; no one got upset, you just did what had to be done to let the instant noodle cart past.
While our hard-seat adventure ended up just being cheap transportation, the hotel in Shanghai has supplied any adventure we missed. Half of the lobby, and the entire street in front of the hotel, like the 2 streets on either end of that street, are under construction. No roads, just mud, concrete bits, and a couple of construction trucks. There is a sidewalk, though, allowing the bikes and motorcycles to zip along happily. Our room isn’t bad, but coupled with the fact that it’s going to be a really long walk through a construction zone to get to the subway station, I think we’re going to need to find a new hotel. Job number one for tomorrow.
Daniel’s Wisdoms
1) "Egg Roll" and "Meat ball" are apparently very close in Chinese. Just eat noodles.
2) Don’t ride your mo-ped on un-finished roads, you might crash. (as witnessed by me, but I helped the Chinese girl out)
3) Smog kills, and it makes your snot black. Now I know the reason for the white masks!!
4) Sometimes not speaking Chinese is a blessing, like when hotel hawkers attack you outside of the train station.
5) If you want to get to know the Chinese people well travel hard-seat on the train. Otherwise, soft-seat is the way to go. (Actually is wasn’t as bad as I had expected.)
Sunday morning we went to the Garden of the Master of the Nets. No idea why it’s named that. Our group last summer went to this garden, and I had spent probably 45 minutes looking at watercolor paintings in a side wing—they were awesome. By China standards, they were expensive, however, and I didn’t buy one. And for an entire year I’ve wished I did buy one. So I finally paid a return visit, and bought a watercolor painting. It’s delightful. And Daniel was quite (unexpectedly) patient with my indecisiveness as I tried to choose which one I like the most.
After we finished with the Garden of the Master of the Nets, we wandered the surrounding streets, browsing through antique shops, silk shops, cigar shops, etc. (bet you can guess which one of us went in which kind of stores…) then back to the hotel to collect the luggage and head for the train station. As we got closer to the station in the taxi, I was getting more and more nervous. See, on Saturday when we arrived in Suzhou, I had left the luggage with Daniel and gone to the ticket office at the train station to get tickets to Shanghai for the next day. After a huge—albeit surprisingly orderly—line, it was my turn at the window.
Me: Two tickets for tomorrow afternoon to Shanghai.
Ticket woman: (irritated glance at the waiguoren who didn’t just book the tickets with the much-less-busy people at the hotel and accept the service charge) What time?
Me: Uh, after 2 p.m.
Ticket woman: The 2 p.m. train. 20 $RMB.
Me: (thinking that didn’t sound like enough money) Uh, I’d like soft-seat please.
Ticket woman: (thinking, get the heck out of my line, stupid waiguoren) Don’t have those. Only hard seats.
Me: (thinking, I give up.) Ok.
**Meeting up with Daniel** Me: Uh, got some bad news.
Trains in China have 4 classes of tickets: soft sleeper—the most luxurious and most expensive, with 4 bunks per enclosed cabin; hard sleeper—pretty nice, 6 bunks per open cabin; soft seat—nice for short distances, comparable to business class on a plane; and hard seat—cheap transportation for the masses. They usually overbook seats, so not everyone gets to sit down. No air-con or other niceties. Before Sunday, I’d only ever traveled soft seat, and was a little anxious about our upcoming hard seat adventure. I wasn’t worried about standing up or no air-con, as the trip from Suzhou to Shanghai is 45 minutes to an hour; mostly I was concerned because both Daniel and I have pretty big, and pretty heavy, suitcases. I mean, we did a pretty good job of packing economically, but when you’re going to a foreign country for 2 months there are just some things you think you really should pack. Plus there’s no way we could buy clothes here to fit us, unless we had them made.
Adventure it was; we were the only two white people in the waiting hall of well over 500 people. But I have to say, it was not bad at all. Certainly not as bad I thought it might be, and probably could have been. Other people had way more baggage than we did, usually in big plastic bags or cardboard boxes tied with plastic, sometimes 2 hung on each end of a long wooden pole. The weather was cool and some of the windows opened, so it wasn’t even hot. I was a little annoyed that the service-people with instant noodles and maps came through with their carts—the car was way too crowded for a cart full of instant noodles, and every time they came by the older gentleman standing in the aisle ended up either in my lap or the lap of the guy across the aisle. But it was typical China people-contact; no one got upset, you just did what had to be done to let the instant noodle cart past.
While our hard-seat adventure ended up just being cheap transportation, the hotel in Shanghai has supplied any adventure we missed. Half of the lobby, and the entire street in front of the hotel, like the 2 streets on either end of that street, are under construction. No roads, just mud, concrete bits, and a couple of construction trucks. There is a sidewalk, though, allowing the bikes and motorcycles to zip along happily. Our room isn’t bad, but coupled with the fact that it’s going to be a really long walk through a construction zone to get to the subway station, I think we’re going to need to find a new hotel. Job number one for tomorrow.
Daniel’s Wisdoms
1) "Egg Roll" and "Meat ball" are apparently very close in Chinese. Just eat noodles.
2) Don’t ride your mo-ped on un-finished roads, you might crash. (as witnessed by me, but I helped the Chinese girl out)
3) Smog kills, and it makes your snot black. Now I know the reason for the white masks!!
4) Sometimes not speaking Chinese is a blessing, like when hotel hawkers attack you outside of the train station.
5) If you want to get to know the Chinese people well travel hard-seat on the train. Otherwise, soft-seat is the way to go. (Actually is wasn’t as bad as I had expected.)
posted by Mike and Jean Anne at 7:03 AM
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