Carriage Eleven

My three American buddies became a speck in the rearview window of the taxi as the taxi driver and I hurtled toward the Beijing West Train Station. Behind me was a good holiday, one where Qin negotiated all of the travel details and I could be a sheep if I wanted to; ahead of me was the 28 hour train ride across eastern China—and a new case of ordinary terrors. I now had only myself to negotiate whatever mayhem might be between me and Beibei.

Although it wasn’t yet seven on a Saturday morning, the sidewalks were already packed with people wheeling suitcases around human beings stretched out on newspapers. It wasn’t entirely clear to me at first which of several cavernous buildings inhaling and exhaling people was my destination. Eventually, though, I was guided through the right set of turn stiles. Inside signs clearly identified which of several sub-stations I, a passenger on K819, should hang out in.  But from then on it wasn’t a problem of understanding the written signs; it was a problem of understanding the unwritten code that everyone else seemed to know. For example, we had assigned seats—so why were nearly 300 people pressing into each other in the northeast corner of the cavernous room forty minutes before blast-off? Once the doors were opened, there was no choice but to be moved by the human tide.

My last two train rides had been on hard sleepers, with two sets of triple bunk beds in each bay; this ride would be on a luxurious soft sleeper, with only two sets of double bunks. The fold down table between the bunks sported a white tablecloth and teapot; the beds had quilts in fresh cotton duvets. And people. A seventy-ish man sat across from me, smiling and mute, intently watching a five year old who was busily opening and closing every possible fixture—including the door, which he regularly locked. Two thirty-ish women and a three-year old came and went, unpacking and stashing all kinds of food and getting all settled. Where did all these bags come from? One thing was clear: four beds didn’t mean four passengers.

For a while I was the white elephant that everyone ignored, then gradually the questions came. Where was I from? What was I doing in China? How did I like China—and the food? And, inevitably, how old was I? Would I please take a biscuit?

For the first hundred miles, the scenery outside was as inspiring as the Illinois flatlands—corn and scrub and an occasional factory. Once in a while some deserted blocky buildings flashed into view—old collectives? Ghost towns. No matter—the action was here inside Carriage 11, where the three year old with helium fingertips swayed in time to the train muzak, playing her imaginary saxophone when so moved. Her pigtails were but an inch long and her baby teeth were smaller than the gum above. Her mother was calmly and proudly attentive—she rarely admonished the toddler who was never more than inches away, but with one firm hand might remove something or just move the child as if they were still one organism. Even when seemingly reading email on her smart phone, the mom’s radar was up. If, I, for example, struggled more than a nanosecond with a plastic food wrapper, the mom would reach over and open it for me.

Both children accepted being fed like little birds, sitting calmly and happily, mothers feeding them with chopsticks one peanut or noodle at a time, wiping their mouths with their free hands. Again, I found myself pondering the mother-child bond in China. These two mothers were not the least bit tiger-ish or draconian—both the moms and children seemed calm, content, alert, happy—but, again, mom and child seemed at times to function as a single organism, even the five-year old and his mom.

But is this so different from parenting elsewhere? I pondered, as I wobbled down the long aisle to the end of the car with the hot water tanks and toilets. The squat toilet on the last train had been easy enough to use—even though I could see my pee whizzing down to the train tracks below and I couldn’t find a waste basket for toilet paper.  But now I had a dilemma: Was it crazy to take all my earthly belongings with me every time I used the toilet—everything? Even in the night? Last time, I had friends to watch my backpack and laptop when I had to pee—now I’d get to introduce all my worldly goods to the squat toilet with a very wet floor. Was there a hook strong enough to hold my backpack up off the floor? Nobody else seemed to take anything other than toilet paper with them--so did I strike my roommates as paranoid? Perhaps. It turned out this the squat toilet not only had a good hook, but also a functioning drain—it didn’t just open to the tracks below. Emptying the closed drain was another matter. What I thought might be a flush button didn’t budge at first, and I'd just emptied a very full bladder.

Oh, well. I figured it out, and no other terrors awaited me on this trip. In our little set of bunks   conversation ebbed and flowed easily, children leaned on any spare body part--including mine, and soon there was just the hissing and groaning of the train coming to one depot after another through the night.

Morning came and with it the verdant terraced countryside with which I'm most familiar in southwestern China, largely unspoiled. I was grateful that train tracks and simple lanes and footpaths hadn't been completely supplanted by motorways and parking lots.