On the Train

     People talk on trains in China. I remember this being very strange to me after living in Japan where people don't talk much at all in public. I think Vancouver lies somewhere in the middle of the talking spectrum between Japan and China. People are also quite friendly on trains in China. Some people sit in the seats that face each other around a small table each other, maybe slurping on some instant noodles they bought from the food cart going up and down the aisle of the train; some stand beneath the luggage rack, waiting to take someone's seat when they stand to go to the toilet or have a smoke between the cars, only to give the seat back when they return; or they'll lay newspaper on the floor, half in the aisle, and half under a row of seats, and lay down to sleep as much as they can before the next meal cart passes through the aisle.
  
    They seats that we bought were cheap, so they were also crowded. When we bought our tickets a few days prior, we wondered just how hard our "hard seats" were going to be. The train itself turned out to be much nicer than we expected. It was very clean, the seats were a decent size, they were also padded, and there were different kinds of music that played through speakers during most of the trip. What is meant by "hard seat," is that the seats don't recline -- instead, they're one piece of fixed hard plastic with a cushioned material over top. This is because the seats are placed back to back so that four seats will face each other around a small table. Janice and i had seats on one side of the table, and on the other were two Chinese men who would be our traveling companions for the next 20 or so hours.
    One of the first things that the guy across from me did when the train started to move, was put his feet up onto the side of my seat. When I looked at him, he nodded at me with a big smile on his face. "I guess so," I thought to myself. For the rest of the journey, they picked their noses, lift their shirts up over their bellies and pick the lint from inside their bellybuttons. They brought their own grocery bag full of shrink-wrapped meats -- usually some kind of sausage or chicken's feet, that they chewed with their mouths open and drank beer with big smiles on their faces. Then one of them used a toothpick to pick his teeth, which he also used to pick his ear and his bellybutton. When one of them would get up to go for a smoke between the cars, one of the standing passengers would come to sit in the seat while he was gone, but the other guy would shoo him away and stretch himself out across both the seats, and his legs would hang into the aisle where the food cart came and pushed his legs aside.
    The two of them spoke no English at all, so most of our communication was limited to nodding, smiling, and pointing at the things that interested us. I would point at his tea container on the table that was full of yellow and orange flowers -- every once in a while a steward would come and fill it up. He pointed at my book on the history of China. We'd smile and nod, and then return our eyes to the hazy landscape outside our window.
    Even though we were far from the major city centres, passing by villages made from brick or cratered concrete, into farm country where we often couldn't see much because there were tall trees and brush that grew alongside the track, still, there was always a haze of smog.
    Someone told me once that ten percent of California's air pollution comes from China.
    At one point during the ride, I had my camera out, taking pictures out the window, I turned to the two fellows across from us. I pointed at them and then gestured with my camera as i put it to my eye. The one on the right shook his head at me, but the other had an unsure grin on his face, sat himself strait, and then nodded his head quickly. Sitting there in his blue collared polo shirt, I snapped the shutter and now I'll never forget him.
    Afterward I turned the camera around to show him the image I got and both of them smiled. He was disappointed though, when he asked for a copy of the photo (he thought it was a Polaroid camera) and I couldn't give it to him. I tried to ask him if he had an email address, but this didn't register with him.

    Something I haven't mentioned yet is that the night before embarking on our 20 hour train ride, I got quite sick. I was up most of the night with my arms wrapped around the toilet and in the morning, i wasn't sure if I was able to transport my body to the station on time without having to expel some sort of bodily substance. Janice looked into buying plane tickets for the next day because if we didn't make our train, we'd be stuck in Shanghai for a few more days. At the last minute, I figured that I had finished purging everything from my body, and I said, lets go.
    On the train, I hadn't used the toilets yet, but I knew that even under the best of situations, I didn't want to have to stick my face into a public toilet. So for the 20 hour ride, I drank about 200 ml of water and ate about 4 sesame crackers. If nothing went in, then nothing could come out. I ended up making a short trip to the toilets at some point, but it wasn't anything that I couldn't stand up for. I was glad because the toilet was nothing more than a hole in the floor that opened out to the tracks outside. And there was a sink just outside the door, but a couple of people were sprawled across the counter and pressed into the basin.

    Despite feeling awful for most of the trip, the experience was very rewarding. Most of my traveling in Asia had been in planes or bullet trains, or even buses, where everybody sits facing forward. Aside from looking out the window at the passing landscape, there's not much to see other than the back of the seat in front of you. We would end up taking a sleeper train from Xi'an to Beijing, and then a flight from Beijing to Guangzhou. Although they were more comfortable, they were not very memorable.
    Walking around the streets of a city, or sitting in a restaurant or bar, our glimpses of people are very superficial and brief. When you sit on a train for 20 hours with someone, or with a family, you get to see them open up a lot with each other. Even sitting across for a person, watching them sleep, can be very intimate as their heads bob up and down and their eyes flickering beneath the eyelids. It's a side you don't often see as people push and shove through busy intersections or crowded subways.
    The two men across from us spoke no English, but there were other people in the train who spoke some. We received the odd, "hello" from somewhere on the train. It was usually someone curious to try a few words of English. Often mothers would encourage their sons to try some of the English that they had leared in school, but they were often shy. We would say hello to them, and we'd be all smiles, but they would hid behind their seats or jump into their mother's arms. I had some paper with me, so we took to drawing pictures with simple greetings and then passed them to some of the children around us. This seemed to win us a bit of celebrity amongst the people around us. People would turn their heads towards us as they passed the papers around, reading the small messages aloud and laughing. I remembered that i had printed some photos from Vancouver to show family in China, so I took them out and passed them around. At this point, even the older men who sat stone-faced, trying not to show interest, had to turn their heads and reach for the photos.
    Somewhere around this time we made friends with a man named Liu Ziyang, or Kyle Lau as was his self-professed 'English name.' He was a graduate student from somewhere in the west who was doing research for a professor on the coast. His English was pretty good and he said that he read a lot of English books, but i think our tastes were a bit different, because we didn't recognize any of the titles that we offered each other. I felt bad because at about the 15 hour mark, Janice and I were both pretty fatigued and our upright seats becoming torturous. Kyle wanted to talk, but our ability to communicate by this point was minimal. We did our best, and Kyle made sure that we got off at the correct station.

Lineups, Shanghai World Exhibition, and All That...

Buying our tickets

     A diligent reader of this blog will have remembered that i left off the last post with Janice and i trying to buy Expo tickets from the 24 hour convenience store beside our hostel, but finding it closed. The next morning, we woke early to pick up the tickets and then take a taxi to the exhibition grounds a few minutes away. Unfortunately, when we entered the shop that morning, the woman couldn't understand a word we said. We thought that "expo" would hav been one of those words that sounds the same in every language. We finally found a magazine with the expo on the cover, but when we showed it to her, she said that they were sold out.

Waiting to line up

    We figured that we'd be able to buy our tickets at the gates, so we took a taxi to the grounds. When we arrived, there were signs that pointed us to a building across from the gates. The ticket booths didn't open until 8am, another 30 minutes, but there was already a lineup that snaked its way through a roped off area in the building. There was no airconditioning and we had trouble finding the end of the line. Most of the Chinese people stepped in, over or under, the retractable belt barriers wherever they liked. When the ticket booths opened, there was a great surge forward of bodies, filling all empty spaces, and with most people jumping the line. Despite being hectic, and having a couple hundred people in front of us, the lineup only took us about 10 minutes.

Liming up

    Once we bought our tickets, we rushed across the street to wait in line at the gates. People in uniform directed us into small holding pens outside of the main buildings where the security checks and the main part of the lineup was. I don't know how many of these large security check buildings there were, but there was one on either side of the one that we waited outside of.
    Under the hot sun, we waited shoulder to shoulder with everyone else for 45 minutes. We made a few friends with some students in the lineup who asked to have their picture taken with Janice and then gave us one of their maps to the Expo grounds (we seemed to be the only people in line without one).
    We were eventually let into the building, which probably fit two thousand people -- all winding their way through retractible belt barriers to the security check at the end. It was a little cooler in here because they had installed sprinklers in the ceiling that periodically sprayed mist over everyone. And again, the lineup moved quite quickly -- within a few minutes, we had moved almost to the front of the line.
  

China Pavilion from afar

    Inside, the grounds were huge. The side that we entered, had a lot of corporate pavillions and across the river was where all of the national pavilions were located. There was a bus that took us through an underground tunnel to the other side, where when we arrived, we quickly realized that most exhibits had lineups of more than an hour. The event sees an average of 30,000 visitors every day, and even though this was a 'world exhibition,' encapsuling cultures from all over the world, the only people that visit the event, are Chinese people. Chinese people came from around the country to see the Expo. Everyone spoke Chinese. The only people that spoke English were the people working at pavillions hosted by English-speaking countries.

Inside the Morocco Pavilion

Inside the Morocco Pavilion

    Everywhere we looked, there were massive lineups of Chinese people. The organizers for the event did a fantastic job at managing crowds, but that's mostly what the event was about: managing crowds. Outside of each pavillion, people lined up in undercovered areas next to a building. Some buildings like Japan, we couldn't even get near because the lineup circled around the building several times. The grounds were divided up geographically, within Asian coutnries in one area, European in another, and then the Americas and Oceania. I think some of the African, Middle East, and India were grouped in with, or maybe beside the Asian ones. And in order for people to get from one area to the next without having to wind through buildings, or bypass the standing people barriers that trailed off from each one, they had built a pedestrian highway that was probably a good 50 meters wide and that ran the length of the grounds.

Mongolian Woodcrafts

    And of course, there was the  massive China pavillion that towered over the rest of the grounds and was virtually impossible to get into. I heard from friends that we would need to wait in line to make a reservation for a time in which we could begin to wait in line. In order to qualify for this reservation, I think we would have had to fill out a passbook by collecting stamps from other pavillions. We saw in many of the less-busy pavillions that we went to, people would run in with their passbooks in hand, collect their stamp, and then leave. The pavilions of countries like: Mongolia, North Korea, Brunai, Bangaladesh -- these places had short lineups that filed in and out within a few minutes.     We did get to see some great exhibits. The first pavillion we went into was Morocco. We were walking by, looking at the building and it's massive lineup, when a man in traditional Moroccon robes made eye contact with us and waved us over. As we approached him, he lifted the velvet rope and gestured towards the entrance.
    "Can we go in?" Janice tried to ask the man, but her words were cut short when I shoved her in the back, urging her to go in with a polite smile. Either we were allowed in, or the man had made a mistake and we weren't allowed in. Either way, i figured we play the part, and hurried us in.
    After walking around the Expo grounds for about an hour, having eaten a few kebobs from Pakistan, and some samosas from Sri Lanka, we were very curious as to what could be inside these massive structures that embodied very unique architectural designs. The different countries varied in what they presented in Shanghai: in the case of Bangaladesh, they featured mostly food from their country; Brunai, they shared their econimic development plans for the near future; North Korea, a fountain and books on the glorious Kim Jong Il; Thailand, dancing and martial arts. For the most part, each country basically provided a showcase of culture unique to each country.

Outside of South Korea

    Inside the palace-like building of Morocco, the first floor was dedicated to the shocasing of authentic artifacts from the country's historical culture. Within the many glass cases, we saw collections of pottery, jewleries, musical instruments, clothes, and weapons. This area all surrounded an inner courtyard with palm trees and small pools that glistened in blue. On the second floor was a Market-Bazar type exhibition, where different products and handicrafts were on display in small, shop-like spaces. Each display usually showed several kinds of textile, foods, or craft items as well as a video on how each item was made. My favorite were the spices -- not only were they rich in texture and colour, they smelled amazing.

This is as close as we got to Japan

    We also visited the Canada pavillion during mid-day when it began to rain. We had heard something about Canadian being able to get preferential treatment at the doors, so with our passports in hand, we approached one of our fellow Canadians. "Are these worth anything to you?" I asked, gesturing with our Canadian identification.
    "Sorry, but those are worth absolutely nothing," he said, and then opened the gate and let us into the building, where they welcomed us with Canadian flags and lapel pins.
    Inside, the first area featured a Cirque du Solei-inspired decor, with video screens broadcasting various elements of Canadian culture. The screens fit into themselves so that they could each display a single image within a large mosaic of images, or the could be blended together into a textured image of a totem pole. There was an emphahsis on the Winter Olympics and hockey in Canada, but also our cityscapes, landscapes, cuisine, and cultural events/personalities like the Gay Pride Parade and Bill Parsons. There were also small pools with projected images beneath them that people could send ripples through, and a bike tour of Canada -- where visitors could sit in an excercise bike and as they rode, a video screen took them on a coast to coast visual tour of the country.
    In the next room, There was a video presentation of various photo collages and some strange audio tracks over top. The visuals were intimate and unique, and they showed some cool scenes of Urban Canada. I think one of the images was a view of Downtown Vancouver and the North Shore as seen from Fraser Cemetary, with various people from the locale fading in and out of the panoramic.
    To finish the exhibit, there were a few paintings and photographic works on display, as well as a gift shop and restaurant where people from around the world could experience various Canadian cuisines. On the menu were things like: Bacon Cheese Burger with Fries, Fish and Chips, Waffles, and of course, Poutine.

    Later in the day, when the sun started to go down, all of the buildings began to light up, which added some very cool ambiance to the scene. The sun seemed to set for hours and i wished that i had brought a tripod to steady my camera while I balanced the architectual lighting with the dusk. I ended up having to settle with a little bit of high ISO noise and some motion blur. As it turned out, with all of the lights and the low-lying smog covering the area, the sky never seemed to get fully dark.

The largest building ever?

    This was about the time when a lot of people started to leave the grounds (probably to see the view along the Bundt) and when some of the lineups became manageable. One of the more interesting exhibitions that we saw in the evening was Chile.
    Inside of the Chilean building, the bulk of the showcase was encapsulated in a large wooden sphere where we walked through on several different levels. The exhibit featured a theme on technology, communication and our relationships with each other. There were tunnels and corridoors with beams of light that illuminated webcam portraits. In a room, the designers had taken all of the possession of one Chillean apartment and fastened everything to the ceiling, complete with coffee cups and fashion magazines on the coffee table. The idea was to provide alternate perspectives on our living spaces. Outside of the room was some kind of mirror and portrait view, where looking outside of the window had the effect of looking into an adjacent apartment building that stretched to infinity in all directions. Also, because Chile lies on almost the exact opposite side of the planet, they built a well-like-structure into the floor of the building that was supposed to metaphorically stretch through the centre of the earth to Chile. The well was sunk into the floor less than two meters, and in the bottom was a video screen and web cam that connected the pavillion to a bakery somewhere in Chile. The idea was that people could look through the centre of the Earth to the other side and talk to people face to face. Apparently, people in Chile give a lot of "thumbs-up" gestures and form small hearts with their thumb and index fingers.
    When Janice and i first planned on seeing the Expo, we were unsure of how many days we wanted to spend there. Even though we barely scratched the surface of the event, the one day was enough for us. We enjoyed seeing what a World's Fair offered in China, and the many cultures that were on display, but we only had so many weeks in China, and there's only so much that you can see in a glass box from the back of a lineup.

Saudi Arabia and India (notice the people standing below the palm trees).

Europe Area

Inside Canada

Inside Canada

Inside Canada

Inside Chile

Inside Chile

Looking at Chile

The ferry back

Hardware, train tickets, and how much can you fit on your scooter?

One of the first things that we knew we needed to do was to buy train tickets to X'ian. Tickets are often sold out a few days ahead of departure, and with the World Expo happening in Shanghai, we figured the number of people traveling to and from Shanghai might make it difficult for us to leave.
    According to our Lonely Planet guide book, we had two different options: there was the train station, was far enough away that we would either need to take a taxi or subway to get to, or there was a train ticket office that was somewhat in our neighborhood, and that would give us a chance to explore a bit of the city on foot.

    Our journey took us to a hardware district that was about an hour's walk away from our hostel (a bit further than it looked on the map). Each storefront in this area was packed from floor to ceiling with various wrenches, drills, piping, electrical wire, couplings, screws, nails, floorboard, window panes, door panels, siding, power tools, steel chains -- or whatever a resourceful Chinese man might need to jerry-rig a scooter to carry 10 times its own weight. If we walked by a plumbing store, we would walk by 3 more that were identical before we saw an electrical store. Most of the shopkeepers either talked animatedly into a cordless phone or played solitaire on the computer while the wife and kids sat on the floor, playing with some of the inventory.

    Walking through the city, it was interesting to see how the city organized it's space. Most areas were divided into large city blocks, where on the main city streets surrounding these blocks were small shops, and on the inside and upper levels of the block, were residences. Going into these large blocks, there were small alleyways that were often just wide enough for a small vehicle to travel down. Sometimes steel gates, or even guards blocked the entrances to these alleyways. It was clear -- even when there weren't steel gates, that these were private areas where we probably weren't welcome to take uninvited strolls. People would often be lounging outside of their front doors, or hanging laundry, or bathing their families with soap and water from a garden hose.

We learned very quickly that the Lonely Planet can only get you so far in China, as we ended up chasing places that appeared to have moved a block or two down the street, or across the street, or that simply didn't exist. In the case of the ticket office that we were trying to find, we eventually found it between two streets that supposedly did not exist, and it had closed an hour before the listed times in the book. This turned into even more of a disappointment when we ended up having to take a taxi to the train station, which turned out to be something of a madhouse.

Aside from being a massive structure with lineups pouring out of its very orifice, and having people strewn about the pavement outside with their luggage, sleeping on newspapers, there was virtually no English to be found. Taxis whipped in and out of the drop-off zone, where we took our first steps towards the station, and our first task was to figure out which line we needed and then how to ask for the tickets that we wanted. We ended up finding a series of small signs that led us across the street from the station. We looked into the building across the way, where we saw more lineups of people, but this time, in front of ticket windows there were large screens full of scrolling Chinese characters above them. We weren't sure if we were in the right place yet, but a girl in a red dress probably saw the looks on our faces and asked us in English if we needed help. She said that we were in the right place, but that the people here probably wouldn't speak any English and that there wouldn't be many tickets available. She suggested that we go online and buy plane tickets instead.
    Feeling quite unsure, so we waited in line anyway, while searching out the Chinese characters for the place that we wanted to go. The lady at the window seemed to understand us, and she even understood words like, "seat," and "sleeper," but they were repeated back to us as "no seat," and "no sleeper" for the day that we wanted to leave. "Only standing" was her suggestion. It was a 16 hour train, so we asked about the next day. Looking back, I think we were lucky to find our "hard seats" on the 20 hour train ride that left the day after we wanted.
    It was getting dark by the time we left the station, so we took a subway to the People's Square, which looked interesting on our map and wasn't too far from where we were staying. The subway was crowded, but efficient overall -- except for the security check that had metal detectors and that ran everyone's bags through an x-ray machine.
    We found a series of restaurants on our way home and had dinner at a place where everyone seemed too nice and eager to help us. Although we were used to people paying more attention to us in Japan because we were foreigners, in China, this attention often took the form of shameful excess. If we didn't have 3 or 4 servers around us, wide-eyed and grinning, they would be sure to gawk at us from across the room -- only to smile and nod profusely whenever we made eye-contact. But i guess it's to be appreciated.
    I seem to remember the food being good, but i usually end up ordering food that's too spicy for Janice and i think that this evening was no exception.
    On the way home, we stopped at the 24 hour convenience store beside our hostel to buy our tickets for the Expo the next day, but it had already closed its doors. (What? Open 24 hours and they were closed? Yeah).