Our receipt said Beijing West. The Chinese Internet train time-table said Beijing West. Even Lonely Planet said Beijing West, but the one source that didn't, and one would think the most important to verify beforehand (which we didn't) was our train ticket, and you guessed it, we ended up going to the wrong train station.
We arrived at Beijing West with 45 minutes to spare before our supposed departure. Upon attempting check-in, the clerk kept on telling us we were not getting in. After getting his supervisor who spoke some English, he informed us that we had gone to the wrong station, but the other station was only 45 minutes away. Unfortunately our train was leaving in 40 minutes.
Our sad departure from Beijing was inadvertently postponed. Lucky us.
We now had to go to the actual train station anyways to try and exchange our ticket, but since it was National Holiday week, getting that initial ticket took far more time than we had hoped and the outlook to get another seemed even more grim.
Someone had told us that during National Holiday, out of China's population of roughly 1.3 billion people, almost 1 billion travel to some extent during that week. So you can just imagine the strain on the transportation system.
Miraculously, we ended up getting 2 sleepers for the following night, but in an upgraded class, necessitating an inflated price. Surprisingly, we only had to pay the difference between the two tickets.
We then found a hostel just across the street from the train station and booked it immediately. I didn't want to miss it a second time.
After a day of killing time and aimless walking, we finally boarded our train to Pingyao in Shanxi province.
Pingyao is considered China's best-preserved ancient walled-city and even has the distinction of being a UNESCO world heritage site. Every guide-book raves about the beauty and level of preservation of this historic city, boasting over 2700 years of history.
We were quite excited.
Our train arrived at around 5am in the darkness of night, with the temperature hovering in the single digits and fog so thick you couldn't see the person in front of you.
Since it was National Holiday, I wasn't able to book a room, but luckily we hopped a ride with two Italian women to one of the hostels I had attempted to book, the lovely Harmony Guest House.
The owner of the hostel told us she did have one room left but it wouldn't be ready until later that day. For the time being, we could just rest on her couch. Nice lady.
As the sun rose and the fog lifted, the ancient charm of Pingyao began to emerge. However, so did the thousands of local tourists who also decided to visit Pingyao on National Holiday week.
The quaint cobblestone streets were so saturated with people that you could barely move let alone enjoy the sights and architecture that Pingyao had to offer.
China is one of the few countries that does not need to rely on foreign tourism to support itself: millions upon millions of Chinese tourists visit all of China's thousands of sites year-round and even more so on National Holiday. It didn't take us long to realize that it would be nearly impossible to enjoy many of China's fascinating dynastic relics or glorious natural reserves without scores of local tourists incessantly hocking up phlegm and spitting, while listening to glass-shattering voices over shitty megaphones explaining every nook and cranny to an uninterested Mandarin tour group.
After fighting through the endless crowds and thankfully finding a few less congested areas of the walled city, we decided to ease our stress with some 11:00am beers. As the two of us, both sporting v-neck t-shirts, beards and trendy shades; sipping on beers outside before noon, we quickly attracted the attention of the Chinese tourists. We probably had our picture taken a good 30 times from people either asking our permission directly or pretending to take a picture of the uninteresting bar we were sitting in front of, with their family members awkwardly standing near us as the patriarch urges them to inch ever closer.
Many seemed more excited to get a picture with us than the beautifully preserved city around them. I'm flattered but I don't get it!
Following our calming beers and a little rest, I decided to explore the eastern portion of the city closest to its Daoist temples. To visit anything in Pingyao requires a tourist ticket but it is a joint ticket and visiting anything including climbing the city wall requires you to buy it even if you don't want to visit the accompanying temples.
I didn't feel like visiting the crowded temples which would likely resemble the other temples we had visited, so instead, I climbed up the market tower which provided great views of the city and the sea of people that flowed along its major arteries.
That evening, Josh and I met Daniel, who was teaching English in China and joined him and his mother for a delicious meal of Shanxi cuisine. The highlight of the meal was unbelievable donkey soup accompanied by more donkey meat. That same menu also listed dog as a meal, but we didn't venture down that path.
As we were walking back to our hostel, we noticed Winnie, a Bavarian guy from Munich who had also stayed at Sanlitun hostel, having a drink at his hotel. We stopped in and had a few drinks with him before calling it a night.
The owner of the hostel had booked us a bus to Xi'an the following evening, our next destination. So during the day we wandered around a bit inside the city walls, but took some time to enjoy the tranquility and 72 watch-towers from outside the bustling former financial capital of the Qing dynasty.
To be honest, by Saturday, the second to last day of National Holiday week, the crowds were already much more manageable, at least by Chinese standards.
When we entered our bus, we were surprised to see it was a sleeper bus: essentially a giant mobile bunk-bed accommodating 25-30 people, each having their own bed, but with no upright method to sit.
We drove for around 2 hours of our supposed 6-hour ride before taking our first break. We were scheduled to arrive in Xi'an around midnight, so we were right on track. Around 30 minutes later the bus stopped again. We thought maybe there was a problem with the bus but no one spoke any English to explain what was going on. After waiting 2 hours, the other driver arrived shirtless, out-of-breath and noticeably upset. It appeared as though one of the drivers had left the other driver behind when we had made our first rest-stop and then left him to walk to meet up with us rather than going back to pick him up.
Now that we had both drivers back we could finish our journey. Yeah right. After only another 45 minutes, the bus pulled into a parking lot and turned off its engine. Another break? When I saw the driver put his jacket over his head and used his steering wheel as a pillow, I realized we were not going anywhere for a while. I tried to control my exasperation and rage and tried to get some sleep. The combination of 15 Chinese men snoring evokes the same sound and decibel level of a saw-mill. Combine that with repetitive, incessant shrill Chinese music with a refrain of off-key cymbals banging at irregular intervals, you have a recipe for insomnia.
I still must have fallen asleep at some point because I was awoken by the engine restarting. It was around dawn and we were finally speeding towards Xi'an. Our 6-hour bus ride had turned into a 13-hour exercise in futility and anger-management.
Getting off that bus was pure, unadulterated bliss!
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