My most recent post being about trains got me to thinking of some memorable travel experiences I’ve had by train in China.  On my first trip to China way back in 1994, I had a rather funny trip from Chengdu to Emeishan.  That’s not a very long trip, all within the province of Sichuan, and maybe taking around 4 hours or so.

Being that it was my first trip to China, and also the first trip for all of my traveling companions, we really didn’t know anything about buying tickets for trains.  I had been told it would be a good experience to travel the way locals did, so we got the cheapest seats.  When we boarded, we were surprised to find that we were on a wooden bench that stretched across the length of the car’s wall.  We were just assigned a car, and it was a free-for-all to see who got spots on the benches lining the wall.  Fortunately, we were some of the first passengers to board, and so were all 4 seated together along 1 bench.

As the trip went on, more and more passengers boarded.  And, the further it got away from the big city, the odder the things they carried aboard the train with them.  Mostly it was live animals, but the types of animals got stranger and stranger as we moved along.

The most disconcerting part of the trip, though, was not our fellow passengers or the things they carried aboard.  It was, rather, the little stream of sewage that flowed from the toilet down the center of the car.  Seeing many of our fellow passengers set their bulkier items right on the floor, despite this stream, was rather troubling too.  But not as bad as seeing the way their luggage formed a sort of dam, making the stream widen into a reservoir in our end of the car — a reservoir that began to threaten the small bit of space allotted for our feet.

For the most part, I dealt with the situation as I always do — by retreating into a book.  I was reading a Robert Ludlum book at the time (I don’t remember which one), and just let myself get lost in the story.  After a while, I realized someone had gotten up from the bench across from me and walked to where I was seated, and that he was now reading over my shoulder.  I looked at him, and he just looked up from my book and announced in Mandarin to everyone in the car, “It’s English!”

There were lots of things from that first trip to China that I remember, and will want to keep with me for a long time.  China has changed so rapidly over the years that a lot of what I experienced on that trip will eventually cease to be seen at all in the Middle Kingdom.  But somehow, I suspect this sort of train trip is still possible, if you know where to look.

(And if you really want to give it a try.)