When traveling one has, what I would term, “assets”. An asset is something that can help to get you out of a jam. For example: gas in your tank, a flashlight, maybe a blanket in your backseat. Another very important asset is battery life. Which is why writing this at the moment is so unwise. The battery on my computer is at 24% and claims another hour and a half. But it seemed important to actually write the blog about the Chinese slow train ON the Chinese slow train. So hopefully between myself and three sidekicks we'll be able to figure our way out of any jams sans computer.
The Chinese slow train has a distinct greyhound vibe. In the hard sleeper section each berth has six bunks, three on each wall. There are no doors to the berths, and on this train there are no walls between the berth and the aisle. There are maybe ten or fifteen berths per car. There's a lot of cars. The soft sleepers (ballin' class) are four to a berth, the berths have doors and it's a little classier inside of them from what I can tell. The toilet is Chinese squat style and empties directly onto the rails beneath. It stops a lot and sometimes you'll be sitting at a stop for thirty minutes or better. Either refueling or likely people not caring. Once you're going the ride is actually surprisingly smooth. Everyone on the train brings a bunch of food with them and the train smells strongly of traditional Chinese foods and stale cigarette smoke (there are smoking sections but nobody pays attention). The train is old and commie looking. There's a restaurant car but you don't have a choice of food, what they give you is pretty low quality and the drinks are warm. Once in a while a bullet train blazes past you going the other direction and you're like “damn, why can't I be on that train?”
Onto the interesting part. I haven't yet figured out who is lower, middle and upper class in China so this is what's getting me. The Greyhound is for the lowest segment of American society. People who are not only incredibly broke, but in some cases incredibly stupid too. A long distance bus fare is much more expensive than a plane ticket. But this might be different. There are some seriously broke people in China. Then there's the factory workers who I have been in the vicinity of but haven't been able to interact with. That's in the city. There are peasants as well, who I haven't even been able to see yet. The lion's share of the people on this train are in a higher tax bracket than any of them. But there are a good bit of dudes with their bellies hanging out, and at the moment I'm surrounded by people brazenly farting in a very close quarters situation. There were also some pretty serious jerks in the train station who had some sort of burlap sack situation in lieu of luggage.
There's a few different ways to look at this. It's possible that the people surrounding me are middle class, but the standards for middle class status are lower here. It's also possible that these people worked for quite a while to save up enough money for this trip. A better way to look at it is what do these people do for a living. I'm thinking hotel workers, McDonalds, maybe the low level managers are in the soft sleepers. Another thing to factor in is the concept of mobility. America is mobile in every sense of the term. Geographically as well as socially. Americans travel around America and move around America constantly. It's my understanding that the same is not true elsewhere. If trips from Nanjing to Tianjin are exceedingly rare, that means the people on this train likely have less money than if they were common.
What I'm really interested in though is that it seems possible that a Chinese slow train is a very egalitarian undertaking. The girl on the top bunk to my left is reasonably well dressed and polite. The dude two bunks beneath her gets up every so often to make weird sounds and scratches himself quite a bit. Well heeled people and people trying to act well heeled don't scratch themselves and fart when surrounded by five other people. If I go out to Kunming and Dali it will probably involve a bus. By the looks of this that should be reaaally interesting. Sadly, I end this entry no closer to grasping the nature of the Chinese slow train than when I began it. However, what I can say most authoritatively is that it is exactly like the Greyhound in that it's something I needed to experience, am glad I experienced, do not want to experience again yet get the distinct impression I will experience way more times that I care to.
Also, it's probably important to note that “slow train” is something I'm calling it solely because I remember hearing the term in either a Skynard or Allman Brothers song. Nobody else calls it that.
The Chinese slow train has a distinct greyhound vibe. In the hard sleeper section each berth has six bunks, three on each wall. There are no doors to the berths, and on this train there are no walls between the berth and the aisle. There are maybe ten or fifteen berths per car. There's a lot of cars. The soft sleepers (ballin' class) are four to a berth, the berths have doors and it's a little classier inside of them from what I can tell. The toilet is Chinese squat style and empties directly onto the rails beneath. It stops a lot and sometimes you'll be sitting at a stop for thirty minutes or better. Either refueling or likely people not caring. Once you're going the ride is actually surprisingly smooth. Everyone on the train brings a bunch of food with them and the train smells strongly of traditional Chinese foods and stale cigarette smoke (there are smoking sections but nobody pays attention). The train is old and commie looking. There's a restaurant car but you don't have a choice of food, what they give you is pretty low quality and the drinks are warm. Once in a while a bullet train blazes past you going the other direction and you're like “damn, why can't I be on that train?”
Onto the interesting part. I haven't yet figured out who is lower, middle and upper class in China so this is what's getting me. The Greyhound is for the lowest segment of American society. People who are not only incredibly broke, but in some cases incredibly stupid too. A long distance bus fare is much more expensive than a plane ticket. But this might be different. There are some seriously broke people in China. Then there's the factory workers who I have been in the vicinity of but haven't been able to interact with. That's in the city. There are peasants as well, who I haven't even been able to see yet. The lion's share of the people on this train are in a higher tax bracket than any of them. But there are a good bit of dudes with their bellies hanging out, and at the moment I'm surrounded by people brazenly farting in a very close quarters situation. There were also some pretty serious jerks in the train station who had some sort of burlap sack situation in lieu of luggage.
There's a few different ways to look at this. It's possible that the people surrounding me are middle class, but the standards for middle class status are lower here. It's also possible that these people worked for quite a while to save up enough money for this trip. A better way to look at it is what do these people do for a living. I'm thinking hotel workers, McDonalds, maybe the low level managers are in the soft sleepers. Another thing to factor in is the concept of mobility. America is mobile in every sense of the term. Geographically as well as socially. Americans travel around America and move around America constantly. It's my understanding that the same is not true elsewhere. If trips from Nanjing to Tianjin are exceedingly rare, that means the people on this train likely have less money than if they were common.
What I'm really interested in though is that it seems possible that a Chinese slow train is a very egalitarian undertaking. The girl on the top bunk to my left is reasonably well dressed and polite. The dude two bunks beneath her gets up every so often to make weird sounds and scratches himself quite a bit. Well heeled people and people trying to act well heeled don't scratch themselves and fart when surrounded by five other people. If I go out to Kunming and Dali it will probably involve a bus. By the looks of this that should be reaaally interesting. Sadly, I end this entry no closer to grasping the nature of the Chinese slow train than when I began it. However, what I can say most authoritatively is that it is exactly like the Greyhound in that it's something I needed to experience, am glad I experienced, do not want to experience again yet get the distinct impression I will experience way more times that I care to.
Also, it's probably important to note that “slow train” is something I'm calling it solely because I remember hearing the term in either a Skynard or Allman Brothers song. Nobody else calls it that.
Our ride.
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