Epic Journey

So my trip to Shanghai was... well....

I made it here, that's the first thing. I made one little mistake, though -- not buying a train ticket far enough in advance -- and my 9-hour high-speed train trip turned into a 15-hour slog.

Words of wisdom -- buy your train tickets well in advance, two or three days instead of the day before, like I tried to do. Once I got mei youed on that one, I got the next available ticket... on the night train, which left at 4:30 pm and got in at 6:30 am the next morning. No problem.

Except that all they had were hard seat tickets. It was shaping up to be both a long trip and an uncomfortable one. Which, frankly, it was. While I'd love to be able to regale you with a tale of a romantic jaunt through the Chinese countryside, with scenery and a stop where people were selling everything from food to livestock to herbal medicine through the windows of the train, culminating with a fight between myself and a gongfu master underneath the train and in a nearby barn (a la Chan Long in Legend of Drunken Master), alas, it was not to be.

Instead, I was in the aisle next to two other people on a five-foot wide seat, interrupted every ten minutes by the staff who were selling food and snacks, every five minutes by someone walking down the aisle and jostling me... and once at 1 am by someone in a uniform who walked down the aisle and asked people questions in a voice loud enough to wake the dead. I got the impression he was being a thug just for the sake of being a thug, though I could be wrong.

Before I go any further, I want to point out that this was ultimately more entertaining than upsetting or distressing. If I'd thought that this was representative of China, it might have been different -- but few people are at their best while traveling, and some people just become jerks when they put a uniform on.

Then there was a 45-minute delay at the last stop before Shanghai. So my 6:30 arrival time was nearly 7:30, and I only met Ole (the new friend I'm staying with) through the grace of his flat tire before he had to go to work.

But Shanghai is nice. It's very big, but easy to get around here. Bicycles are everywhere, and it's a very walkable city. Hard to find a taxi sometimes, but that's only relative to China -- I've never had to wait more than five minutes. And there are a TON of Westerners and Eurasians. A lot of people speak English, and Caucasian faces are so common that I don't get stared at. That was something that I had hardly noticed until I got to Shanghai -- being stared at was more noticeable, at least this far into the trip, by its absence.

Now, I'm planning my last two weeks... and Huangshan might be back on the schedule, since I've had it so highly recommended. I'll keep you updated!