Riding the rails in China is an experience that I am not quite used too. It is a little different from trains in Europe, where everyone gets a seat or bed and one can usually obtain tickets the day of travel. In China, if you want a sleeping berth, you usually have to get your tickets several days or more in advance, which makes keeping an open itinerary a little difficult at times. There have been a few times where I wasn't able to obtain a ticket on the train I wanted and had to adjust how and when I traveled to different places.

One can also purchase a standing room only ticket on Chinese trains, which seems to be a very normal thing to do, as it is very cheap. However, this causes the sitting cars to be jam packed with people in their seats and people milling about in the aisles and in the ends of the carriages. If a seat is not taken, then someone will take it, until the rightful owner of the seat comes to claim it. This made it a little confusing for me when someone was almost always in my seat. Luckily, they will generally move right away, once I show them my ticket. You don't have this problem when getting a sleeping berth, however. And since most of my trips are long distances and overnight trips, I usually get a sleeping berth.

My first Chinese train experience was after Beijing, when I headed to Pingyao. It was only a few hours away, so I had booked a seat. However, I didn't give myself enough time to get to the train station and I missed the train! I gave myself an hour to get there, which should have been enough time, since the metro went directly to the Beijing West station, but I was still cutting it a little close. I followed the metro map and made a few transfers, but when I got to the station that was supposed to transfer to the line with the train station on it, I found that there was no transfer! Every map, I looked at, had the transfer on it, but nothing at the actual station! There was a sign for the train station, but it pointed to the exit, so I had to take a cab the last stretch to the station. And then when I got to the station, it was very confusing. There were several levels and the signs were not very good, so it took me a while to figure out where to go. All this time, I was freaking out a little, because I knew that my train was leaving soon. I finally figured out where to go and ran down the terminal, but unfortunately I was exactly one minute late.

Dismayed, I walked back out of the terminal, trying to figure out what to do now. I decided that I might as well trying to exchange the ticket and try to get a train later that afternoon. Again, it took me a bit to figure out where to go, but I finally found the ticket counter. And I was able to change my ticket to a train leaving that afternoon. Unfortunately, it also meant that I had 6 hours to kill, not enough time to really do anything, because then I would have to stow my big bag somewhere and I wasn't really willing to miss another train, so I just hung around the train station. Luckily, they had an internet cafe and a McDonalds, which usually offers free Wifi. Unluckily, the internet cafe only let Chinese people use it and I couldn't get the McDonalds Wifi to work! Ugh!

Finally, I got on my train to Taiyuan and I found that I actually had a sleeper berth. It was only a 6 hour ride, but it was nice to relax. In my cabin was a really nice Chinese guy named Chen. He spoke a little English, so we talked a little and he me gave a bunch of food to eat. He even helped me out with figuring out what station I needed to get off at.

When I got to Tayuan, I then had to get a ticket to Pingyao, which was about 90 minutes away. Getting the ticket was fairly easy, as I had the people in my hostel in Beijing write down, in Chinese, exactly what I needed. However, I now had to wait for this train, as I had arrived at about 8:30pm, but my train to Pingyao wasn't leaving until 11:30pm. So, I sat in the resting area for a few hours, where I witnessed a few very interesting things. First of all, I had the usual stares from random Chinese people and then a girl sitting across from me was clearly having an argument with someone on her cell phone, which I tried very hard not to notice. She would later amuse herself by secretly taking pictures of me with her cell phone camera, until she realized that I knew what she was doing. She then shared them with me, but unfortunately she didn't speak any English. However, the weirdest thing was when a toddler was running around and then in the middle of the station, squatted and started peeing! The mother just looked on and didn't really do anything. Eventually, she would half-heartedly redirect the child in the direction of a trash can, which happened to be near me, so I had to quickly readjustment my backpack, so that toddler pee would not run against it! This is another fairly common thing among the Chinese. Infants and toddlers just seem to go to the bathroom anywhere and anytime they want. They don't usually have diapers and have special baby pants, where the backside is split for 'easy access'. I call them ass-less chaps for babies, since that is essentially what they are. Baby and toddler private parts are exposed everywhere and it not uncommon to be walking down the street, when suddenly a baby 'full moon' will come into view and so, unfortunately, I have seen far too much baby genitalia, in the last few weeks, then I would like.

I finally got on the train and I found that I didn't have a seat and had a standing-room only ticket. I thought there would only be a few others standing, but it turned out to be more than just a few. The carriage between cars and the hallway was packed full of people. Some people had tiny fold-up seats for themselves too, which makes me believe that this is the usual way that they travel. I found a place next to the attendants office, put down my backpack and used it as I seat as I huddled around my daypack. I had to adjust myself over and over again as people were going down the hallways to go to the bathroom or smoke or just find a better place to stand. It was crowded and uncomfortable and being the only Westerner in the carriage, I felt a little out of place. Fortunately, it wasn't a long train ride, only 90 minutes, but I certainly had enough! If I had less stuff with me, it probably wouldn't have been that bad, but I constantly felt like I was in the way and could never get into a comfortable position.

I finally arrive in Pingyao at 1am, tired from a long day of sitting around train stations and huddleing on trains. However, I still needed to find my hostel, which is not easy after dark and Pingyao is not a very large city, so everything was pretty much shut down for the night. I had directions to the hostel, but I wasn't exactly willing to be walking around that late at night, so I found a taxi, of sorts. It was more of a covered cart attached to a motorcycle, but Pingyao is a walled city and it's city gates are not all that wide, so it wasn't really unusual. I showed the driver the address and he said he knew where it was, so I got in and we were off. It didn't take very long, about 15 minutes, but we finally showed up in a dark alley with a sign above a door, that I could not read. The driver had to wake up the hotel owner by banging on the door. My instincts told me that this wasn't the right place, but it was one in the morning, I was tired and when the owner showed me the room, it looked very similar to the pictures I had seen of the hotel, at least from what I remembered. The owner didn't speak English, but he held up 3 fingers, which I took to mean 3 nights, which is what I booked. He then filled out a receipt for me and I paid for what I thought would be 3 nights and then I crashed for the night; exhausted. However, it turned out that my instincts were correct because this was not the place that I had booked at all!