In November I made a solo trip back to America. My father had died after a lingering bout with Parkinson's disease. I planned to attend the memorial service, visit family and friends, and what the heck - enjoy some of the Florida sunshine.
Things began to go awry at lunchtime. I had bought an airplane ticket from Shanghai to West Palm Beach some two months before, using a web site and a credit card. During the last two weeks, I had taught extra classes to make up for the two weeks I would miss. I taught my morning classes and came home, expecting to get in a little packing before my 2:00 class. I was planning to leave around noon tomorrow to catch a train to Shanghai. Almost everything was in order.
A Chinese teacher at the college also was going to Shanghai, and had volunteered to get me a train ticket, which is always a touchy business for me. Anne had explained to her the time my plane was scheduled to leave and that I needed lots of time to go from the train station to the airport to get settled in. The teacher knocked at our door. She was smiling and held tickets in her hand. "The train leaves Xiangtan at 6:45 tomorrow evening," she said. That seemed to be a little late; I asked what time it arrived in Shanghai. "Oh, at 9:50 in the morning." I could feel my voice rise as I blurted, "But my plane leaves at 9:30!"
China is just beginning to modernize its method of selling train tickets. In most of the country, it is still necessary to buy tickets at the very train station where you will depart. If you want to get tickets in advance - a reasonable precaution in China - you need to make an extra trip to the station. In a country where most local travel is done by bus or taxi, with multiple transfers, this can be quite inconvenient, especially if the train station is not in your hometown. Also, you can't buy a ticket more than two days in advance, creating a further impediment to long-range planning and any semblance of having the situation in hand.
It is often impossible to get the right accommodations. Sleeper berths are limited and, unless you board at the train's point of origin, you are lucky to get one. Likewise for "soft seats," which are lightly padded and have assigned seat numbers. The alternative is "hard seats." By all accounts, they are well named. You can usually buy a hard-seat ticket, but there is no guarantee that a seat will be available. The most that can be said in praise of a hard-seat ticket is that it's cheap and it gets you on the train. Many people stand for the entire trip. After a long holiday, I always ask my student who stood the longest on a train; so far, the record is 25 hours. Also, I've heard stories of robberies after the lights are turned out, and the hard-seat section is notorious for pickpockets.
Ticket lines at the stations are often crowded, and most people tell me I might have to wait for hours to see the ticket agent. To get around these problems, a freelance business has flourished. A person, usually a relative of an agent, approaches and offers to help you get the ticket you need, for a small service charge, of course. I've been told that it's illegal, but it fills a definite need and provides something approaching gainful employment for those extra relatives.
To our teacher-friend's credit, she gamely offered to go downtown and attempt to change the tickets. About two hours later she returned with another ticket for an earlier train. No sleepers were available, so she had gotten me a hard-seat ticket. "What time does the train get to Shanghai?" "6:30 in the morning." Meanwhile, our Chinese friend Craig had arrived to give us a Chinese lesson. "That may not be enough time," he cautioned me. "Shanghai is a very big city. The train station is probably in the center of downtown and the airport may be far out into the country. You will get there at the beginning of rush hour and might be stuck in traffic for several hours." We talked it over. Craig's "nightmare scenario" seemed all too plausible to me at the moment. We decided it was too risky; the bottom line was that I wanted to make sure I got on the plane. Today I would go by bus to Zhuzhou, where more trains were available, and somehow find an earlier train. I graciously thanked the teacher for her efforts and offered to pay for the 6:30 ticket, which I wouldn't be able to use. She practiced her arithmetic cost of ticket, plus 30 percent ticket-transfer fee, plus 40-yuan non-refundable station fee I smiled, thanked her again, and paid.
Anne helped me to pack a few things. There was no time to collect papers, make printouts, or send emails. I didn't want to miss the last afternoon bus to Zhuzhou, whenever that was. I grabbed a shower, gave my mustache a quick trim, dressed for warmer weather - only one layer of long underwear - said farewell, and caught a taxi for the bus station. I had that all-too-familiar feeling that I had left something behind. I bought a ticket, boarded the bus, and then remembered - my toilet articles were still on the counter. Should I go back? I might miss the last bus. I sat; the bus pulled out. Well, at least my mustache would be neat.
I couldn't stay awake during the one-hour trip. Not a good omen, I thought, if I need to stand in the hard-seat section for 17 hours. The bus arrived and I walked the two blocks to the train station. No one approached and offered their services, so I walked into the cavernous ticket office, like a cowboy bravely swinging open the saloon doors. Surprisingly, there were only about 10 people in line. As I waited my turn, several men approached me and offered to sell me their tickets to Guangzhou (12 hours in the wrong direction). "No want. Shanghai," I replied. It was the best Chinese I could muster. Another man offered me a ticket to Shanghai. I looked at it closely; the date was wrong. "Tomorrow," I scolded and handed back the ticket.
My turn had come at the ticket window. When the ticket lady realized I didn't understand her, she simply spoke louder. "Shanghai. Tonight. Hard sleeper," I said, stretching my vocabulary to the limit. "Mei you," she said. Pronounced "MAY yo," it means "not have." It's a standard reply in all places and all situations. "Soft seat?" "Mei you." She punched a few keys and pointed to her computer screen. It showed a soft-sleeper berth, the most posh and expensive accommodation. Too much money, I thought, but considering the hard-seat alternative, it seemed the best choice. I paid; the lady handed me a ticket and pointed at her watch. I checked the time on the ticket; the train was scheduled to leave in 10 minutes. I bustled up the steps and into the large waiting room. I felt relieved to see that the crowd was still there. Within five minutes the signal was given, and the rush began.
Train stations in China are not "handicapped friendly." As far as I know, there is no way to "check" your bags or rent a cart or hire a porter. In a typical station, the waiting room is at the top of several flights of stairs. To get to the platform from there, you usually have to go down, then up, and down again. If you manage to get the bags through the very narrow doorway and up the steps onto the train, there is an even-narrower passageway to negotiate. Crowds enhance the challenge. Imagine yourself as an immersed particle, in Brownian motion, being bounced this way and that by random collisions. The experience is provided daily, free of charge, by 1.2 billion Chinese. If you're fortunate enough to have a soft sleeper, there is plenty of room in the closed cabin and storage is not a problem. In hard sleeper, you may be lucky enough to have a bottom bunk, so you can store your bags on the floor underneath. Otherwise, it's way up high on a narrow rack in the passageway. God only knows how you cope with baggage in the hard-seat section, except that vigilance is a necessity.
Meanwhile, I was cozy and relaxed in my bottom soft-sleeper berth as I settled in for the night. I felt that heady wanderlust of my youth as I reflected that I was on the move in a strange land, with no children trailing behind, and with only two small bags to lay claim to. What would I do in Shanghai tomorrow? I dozed sporadically; it's hard for me to get much sleep on a train.
In the morning I woke up to flute music on the loudspeakers and the countryside of eastern China beyond my window. It was similar to my home area, but looked cleaner and more prosperous. (It seems I say that about every place I travel.) The hills were a little more mountainous, but there was the same mixture of hill and flat plains, fields and villages, rice and vegetables. The fall rice harvest was still in progress. In many fields, patches of rice had been blown over and flattened in recent rains. There were many small ponds for raising fish or ducks. The houses were narrow but tall, in the standard construction style of brick covered with stucco. Some were painted; some were faced with tile; some were just bare stucco. There were a few large vegetable enterprises. They made long greenhouses by bending bamboo sticks into a semicircle, then covering them with plastic sheeting.
The train pulled into the station at mid-morning. I had a whole day to spend in Shanghai. The streets were clean, the buses were cheap, and the city had a new subway system. Being a geographer, my first action was to buy a street map in a small bookstore near the station. I took a bus and wandered down by the river to see the tall tower that has become the city's symbol. The day was getting grayer and a chill wind picked up. I was feeling tired now and oddly out of sorts aimless and isolated in a big city. I vaguely wanted to meet someone who would give me a purpose for being in this place at this time, but no one rescued me from my mood. Finally I remembered my Chinese name, Le Tian; it meant optimistic and carefree. Okay, I thought, I'll be happy and joyful, regardless of what did or didn't come my way.
In the late afternoon I took a subway back to the train station, on the theory that it was the best place to find a way to the airport. Hmmm, no signs, no obvious help. I asked a few people; they all waved me out toward the taxis. While haggling with the taxi drivers about a price, a man gestured that he could get me to the airport. I nodded. He picked up my larger bag and started walking. I followed him for about five blocks in various directions. Finally he halted at a bus stop and pointed up at a sign. It was blue, and had an airplane on it. I paid him a few yuan, waited a few minutes, and boarded the bus to the airport. Traffic wasn't too heavy and we made it in about an hour.
The terminal building was new, spotlessly clean, and immense. About a thousand long, white, hollow pipes hung down from the ceiling in an attempt to create a striking visual effect against the blue ceiling. I wanted to pick up my ticket before deciding what to do next, so I found the Northwest counter. It was empty, very empty, long empty. I wandered around, asking questions; the best answer was that it wouldn't open until the next morning. I pondered whether to traipse around some more to find a hotel (expensive, with the problem of getting back in time in the morning) or camp out in the airport. I remembered the bottom line - don't miss that plane. For better or worse, I decided to stay. I found a quiet corner and settled onto the hard, metal seats. At midnight they turned off the main lights and the music. The airport was closed. In about an hour the security people found me and kindly asked me to move to the central area. Two other overnighters had likewise been corralled there. I dozed off and on until dawn, trying unsuccessfully to find a soft spot in my bags to use for a pillow. At 6:00 people started drifting in, even though the first flights didn't leave until 9:00. Some Northwesterners showed themselves; my ticket counter opened and I gave them my name. Yes, they had my reservation on the computer! I got my pass, paid the airport-construction fee, filled out a departure card, got my visa stamped, and waited another two hours at the gate.
Finally it was time to board, 450 people on a 747. The flight was scheduled to last 13 hours and cover 7,100 miles. We took off, quickly turned northeast across the Yellow Sea, crossed part of Japan (I think), and resolutely headed into the northern Pacific Ocean. Heading into the sun, the day was short. The food was good and they showed four movies before we landed in Detroit. We had taken off at 9:30 am on Saturday and arrived at 9:20 am on Saturday! Sunrise above the clouds was beautiful. Detroit was chilly and breezy, with light snow. America hadn't changed much while I had been away. I passed away 10 hours on the concourse before the evening flight to West Palm. I drank coffee and watched a football game in the bar. The Chinese have virtually no knowledge of or interest in American football, so it was a novel experience for me.
Finally it was time to board; the plane pushed back, lifted, soared, and in due course landed in balmy south Florida. I had traveled for 60 hours and covered 9,000 miles by foot, taxi, bus, train, and jet, with no more than short naps for rest. My brother Bernie was waiting for me at the airport. The air was warm and tropical as we drove on smooth roads landscaped with palm trees to his home in Jupiter Farms. I stayed with Bernie and his wife for three days, eating western food, watching football games, and following the coverage of the presidential-election drama. After all, I was in Palm Beach County, land of the chad and the butterfly ballot.
On Tuesday Bernie dropped me at the bus station and I rode west to Ft. Myers, on the Gulf of Mexico. The bus was large, new, air-conditioned, and mostly empty. My sister Freddie picked me up at the station and we drove home to my mother's place. She had fallen and broken her shoulder about two weeks before; fortunately Freddie was staying with her for the winter. We played cards, swapped stories, and cooked the food I knew as a child. I bought corn chips, hot sauce, several kinds of cheese, pickles, olives, figs, chocolate chips, and a few boxes of cereal. My mom gave me back the cast iron skillet that I had left with her when we left for China. She had given it to me many years before, saying that she had bought it when she first got married in 1940. I wanted something heavy and flat-bottomed for attempting to make pancakes, French toast, and fried potatoes (southern style) back in China. Thursday was Thanksgiving and we went to a communal feast at the clubhouse. As usual, our table was the last to be served. On Sunday we had the memorial service for my father. Our family, relatives, old friends from Maryland, and Florida friends came - about 60 in all. Afterwards we had a big dinner and a wild game of pinochle before everyone left.
I stayed another day and returned by bus to West Palm. This time I was picked up by Eric, a good friend before we had moved to China. I stayed with his family for several nights, trading news, visiting friends at my old work, and shopping for a few items that are hard to find in China: things like good wood glue, 5-minute epoxy, WD-40, deodorant, Band-Aids, Tylenol, some arts-&-crafts supplies, and beginner- reading books Along with the skillet, it filled a whole bag. One evening we went into the back yard to see a launch of the space shuttle. Ahh, Florida. Yet, most good things must end. Early on Saturday morning Eric took me to the airport to begin the long trip back to Hunan. He was on his way to count ballots for the weekend - for a Baha'i election, that is, not for president. They expected about 30,000 votes, all hand- written, with no candidates, no campaigning, no nominations, no contention, yet cast in a spirit of unity and with complete confidence in the outcome. Eric is sure it's the pattern of the future and, having seen the alternative on TV, who can argue.
Eric deposited me and my now three bags at the airport. I picked up my boarding passes and took a last whiff of the sweet Florida air before stepping on the plane. At Detroit I read and waited for the Shanghai flight. Everything was going so smoothly; surely I had forgotten something, or perhaps it would be a long flight back. Be happy and joyful, Le Tian I boarded the 747 and we took off at 4:00 on Saturday afternoon. We flew up the Michigan peninsula and over Mackinac Bridge and the area where lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron converge. The pilot announced we would be flying over Canada, the Arctic Ocean, the North Pole, Russia, and part of Mongolia on the way to China. Clouds built up beneath us and the sun slowly set into a bright magenta glow before we passed into night. Hours later I noticed that the sky was lightening. The sun was up again, but it was in the west. A half moon hung low on the southern horizon. We had caught up with the sun, and we would chase it for about four more hours before losing it completely. We were passing over northeastern Russia, I suppose. At first the landscape was tundra-like, with lots of flat ground, small lakes, and wide meandering streams. Except for the snow and ice, it looked quite similar to southern Florida from that height. The streams and lakes were ice-covered and appeared bright white against the darker, rougher land. I saw only one or two roads and no sign of habitation, except for a single, dull, red light in the distance. After a while the land rose and dried out a bit, showing classic dendritic drainage patterns with incised meanders, occasionally crossed by a lonely road or power-line cut. We crossed a large mountain range, all in white with sharp ridgelines. On the far side, foothills gave way to a large flat plain that stretched farther than I could see into the deepening dusk - Mongolia?
We landed on time in Shanghai at 7:40 pm. We had taken only four hours by sun time, but had crossed the dateline into Sunday. I waltzed through quarantine, immigration, and customs, collected my bags, and made my way to the shuttle bus to downtown. Only half an hour had passed. It looked like I could easily make the 11:30 p.m. train to Xiangtan. The bus plodded along on nearly empty freeways before dropping me at some unknown central location. I took a taxi the rest of the way to the train station and walked into the ticket office. Only a few people were in line. "The K181 tonight to Xiangtan, please, hard sleeper." "Mei you." "Soft sleeper?" "Mei you." "Anything at all?" "Mei you, tomorrow morning at 9:15." "Anything at all tonight?" "Tomorrow at 9:15." So, I bought a hard-sleeper ticket for the next morning and wandered slowly down to the soft-seat waiting area to settle in for a long night. I could have found a hotel nearby, but I was feeling stubborn and stingy. I wrote in my journal for a while and then pulled a book from my daypack - Promulgation of Universal Peace - 500 pages of very dense reading. That should hold me for a while. I remembered my father, who had once read 150 pages of a biography of Lincoln on a sightseeing trip to Washington D.C., when he got separated from the rest of us and waited at the car for hours while we blithely visited museums. At least the seats were soft tonight.
Morning eventually came. I bought a few snacks, went upstairs to the waiting room, boarded the train on schedule, and found my bunk (on the bottom). I slept most of the way back, and the train arrived at about 3 a.m. Large signs at the top of the platform welcomed me in Chinese and English to "Xiangtan - the home of Chairman Mao." The station was empty and silent, but outside a number of taxis still waited patiently. In a few minutes I was home. My key still worked in the lock, and a sleepy but cheerful voice greeted me. Anne told me she had called in and cancelled my classes for the day. Bless her soul.
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