Came to the end of our ordeal at last with our arrival in Datong mid-morning. This should, I suppose, mean we feel liberated, free + joyful, but generally we are short-tempered + snappish, + this was no exception. I suppose it must be all those frustrations, inhibited while on the train, bursting out. Plus, of course, so often the arrival in a new town is but the beginning of a whole new series of problems to be faced. For the past x no of hours, one had to do nothing but sit + survive, but now one’s destiny is plonked smack back into one’s own hands, to do with it what you will. We had limited success, being able to re-validate our ticket for the evening train onto Beijing, but then ran up against the inevitable brick wall when we discovered the baggage check to be closed for lunch. This stuck us rather, for we had no intention of lugging our packs all around town, so while they ate their lunch, I stormed off to eat mine: some enormous + not very nice dumplings. When I had finished, they had too, so we were at last free to spend the afternoon exploring Datong.
One of the major attractions of the city is that it has one of the world’s last remaining factories for making steam locomotives. From time to time they do allow tours of the place, + tho’ it was a long shot, we thought we might as well try to get on one, so caught a bus out to the local big hotel, where they had a CITS office. No go, however – we were fobbed off with some tale, elaborated around a grain of truth. So we spent our time wandering around the city. It was wickedly hot, but we passed a pleasant-enough time, mostly ambling without particular aim, except that we were always heading back in the general direction of the stn.
The only real site that we visited was the 9 dragon wall, a large but faintly unimpressive mosaic screen. Otherwise it was pleasant simply to wander + take in the feel of a rather ordinary Chinese city. Val did take the opportunity to have her shoes mended. She met none of the problems that I had met in Lanzhou – there was no hassle about price, the work was cheap, + of a very, very high standard. There was, inevitably, a large crowd.
Back at the stn, we were distressed to find that our radio was not working, + more so when we discovered that the reasonably new batteries had leaked violently, + that the battery pack which fitted into the back had a connection snapped. Obviously, one of the problems had occurred first, + caused the other, but annoying as it is, there’s nothing we can do about it in China – we’ll just have to wait until Hong Kong.
As usual, I tried to change our tickets for hard sleeper once we were on the train – as usual, there were none available. We’ve certainly had serious second thoughts about whether giving up our sleeper to Beijing was a good idea, especially since we’ve got very little out of the northern loop – it’s been very nearly a waste of time.
It does appear that we have diverted to Datong for no very good reason, but one is not to know in advance, so sometimes one just have to take a punt and discover later whether it was worth it or not. Distressing to read about the radio, which has proved an absolute godsend. Of course, the internet now makes such technology redundant, but at the time…
