No train home

Back I am in freezing Nanjing. I can't believe that after a couple of weeks at -15C I'm complaining about the weather here, but imagine, we haven't had any plus degrees here in a few days. Which means my apartment is so hard to heat (since none of my neighbors heat, the floors and walls are frigging cold) that I have concentrated all efforts on the living room and are sleeping on the couch. It gets cozy there with my two heaters, but taking a shower in the morning requires strength, not just because my bathroom feels like a fridge, but also because it's hard to get the shampoo out of the bottle. It's not quite frozen but very viscous. I did, however, import some of Montreal's fantastic winter technology - shrink wrap for my bedroom window to create a second layer (where the frigging second window pane is missing!) and foam tape to fix that gaping hole between my door and door frame. I believe that's the main source of dust in my apartment, at least there was always a really strong air flow coming in - pretty much all outside air as my neighbors believe also the hallway should be ventilated well and always open the windows even at minus frigging 6 degrees! Actually I'm starting to wonder why my shampoo isn't frozen yet...

Anyways, I have been assured that this madness will end with the spring festival. The lunar calendar is supposedly pretty accurate for this region (it was true for the beginning of winter). So, only 6 more weeks to go. Sigh. At least I am escaping this weekend, I'm taking a train to Ganzhou, about 800km south of here, to attend a wedding. Yay! A real Chinese wedding! I'm so excited. (I have to watch what I'm saying because the groom might be reading this blog :) I bet he's way to busy at the moment with wedding preparations though) So, in order to not commit any cultural faux-pas, I asked around among my Chinese friends about the DOs and DON'Ts. Our Chinese teacher had already told to not wear red (that's the color of the bride), black or white (the latter both being funeral colors - the closest family members wear white, other people black) and in general no dark colors. Well, brilliant. That eliminates my entire wardrobe. And I couldn't bring myself to invest in a pink dress with bows and ribbons that, I'm sure, I would have had no trouble finding. So I used my trip to Montreal to dig out a green skirt (which used to belong to my mother and I have never worn so far) and got a purple shirt. Mh. We'll see how it goes. The problem is, all my sweaters are black anyways, so I'll either freeze or violate the dress code. But I already have the suspicion that I'm taking this way too seriously. So far I have witnessed pretty much all DON'Ts committed by at least one Chinese person (even the terrible "don't stick your chopsticks upside down in your rice bowl, it symbolizes a grave"). It seems, money is the universal language of wedding gifts everywhere and I think I will not venture into the trap of buying flowers. It would not be a good idea to take them on my 18 hour train ride anyway.

Yes, that's right - 18 hours! For 800km! This is the special slow train. It's incredible. China really has a well-functioning train system, especially between Nanjing-Shanghai or Shanghai-Beijing. But there are several kind of trains with wildly varying speeds. The K-train seems to be the slowest and the idea is that you can sleep in the train and wake up at your destination. Well, nice in principle, but 18hours?! How did I get myself into this adventure? By asking my Chinese friends what's the best way to get to Ganzhou and they all said "by train of course." Only later did I find out that there is actually a flight with one stopover that only takes 3 hours. And since I am a coward, I am taking the soft-sleeper car, which is not that much cheaper that a plane ticket. But ok, it's gonna be an adventure, I am kinda looking forward to it, but the greatest challenge was getting the tickets. Because buying train tickets in China is a science, no, more like alchemy. First, tickets go on sale 10 days before the departure date. Either you go to a ticket booth or travel agency somewhere and pay a little fee or you try to buy your ticket at the train station where there are huge lines and absolute chaos (if you want to get an idea of what I mean, watch "Last train home" that's running at Cinema du Parc right now - but I don't really recommend the movie. It's by the same director as "Up the Yangtze" and made exactly in the same "fake documentary" style, the characters are completely one-dimensional and all you get to see are a factory and a train that the migrant workers take home for the spring festival, I was very bored). Since I was in Montreal on the "ticket release day", I asked one of my students to buy the ticket to Ganzhou for me. That was no problem. Buying a return ticket, however, turned out to be more tricky. Because if you want to buy a ticket for a train that leaves from a different city (being Ganzhou in my case), you have to go to the train station. There is no other way (unless you travel in the same province). And there is a much smaller contingent of tickets. So to cut a long story short, my friend was not able to get me a return ticket. They were already sold out when he made it to the ticket window. They were also sold out in Ganzhou. So here I am with a ticket to Ganzhou but no return - no train home!

And I did what the cowardly Westerner does - I bought a plane ticket, instead of just going to Ganzhou and hoping to get hold of a returned ticket or taking the hard seat train and sharing with all sorts of... ehm... smells. The fast connection was sold out, so I am doing the silly thing of flying via Shanghai (again) - I'm getting to know that airport pretty well. I have to be back on Tuesday to teach, I would feel pretty irresponsible if I just hung out in Ganzhou and waited for the next available train back. And also... 6 hours flight instead of 18 hours train sounds like a good idea. But maybe I'll enjoy the overnight train so much I won't want to travel any other way :)

It's good to be back though, despite the cold. Man, I missed Chinese food! :) Montreal was nice as well, but I also realized that I am not ready to go home.