Started off the day with dumplings for breakfast, brought to me in bed by Val. We became heartily sick of dumplings by over-indulging in them in the Chinese restaurants in Sarawak, but tried one here yesterday + instantly fell in love. The Malaysian variety generally had a rather sweet sauce, but these are savoury, really quite a rare treat when compared with all the sweet buns, cakes, + biscuits on offer. Were on the way out of the door to take a last couple of photos of the place when we ran into Guiseppini. The girl is destined to haunt us, since she too is taking the bus to Chengdu today. There were 7 Westies in all, being the ones I’ve mentioned already, the French girl, + Francois, a Frenchman, + another regular on the circuit. He annoys me more than most, being the archetypical been-there, done everything traveller, + one who, what’s more, is constantly whingeing about the price, not as a matter of principal, but as a bargaining ploy to obtain a better deal. Those sort of tactics, when the place is already both cheap + trusting, annoy me.
The bus journey was the usual exercise in tedium, made somewhat worse by the fact we all thought it was much shorter, 3 or 4 hrs, instead of the nearly 6 it turned out to be. We might have known, however, for the fare was about 6, and one yuan per hour has been pretty constant. Broke the journey just once along the way, to grab boiled eggs + buns, + stretch the legs.
Val + I didn’t really have any fixed plans when we arrived in Chengdu, but we joined the others + walked en masse to the tourist hotel a short walk away. A very impressive modern building, something in the hotel internationalese style, at least in the lobby, which is where most Chinese hotels seem to spend their money. It wasn’t as expensive as all that, + all the others checked in, but we decided to go down to the train station + see if we could get out of the place straight away – I don’t really know why, I think we were anxious to get on to the next town, Chongqing, as soon as possible, + make arrangements for the trip down the Yangtse River, by all accounts a time-consuming process. The station was in a right mess, in the process of being rebuilt, + it was a devil of a job finding the ticket office, but luckily a man who spoke English came to our rescue, guiding us to the right place – no simple matter. Val was clutching the piece of paper bearing my attempts at Chinese calligraphy, saying where it was we wanted to go, what train we wanted to go on, +, of course, that we were students, but it was all barely necessary. Our helper took over the communications at the window – the prime advantage of this was that we didn’t have to provide evidence of our student status. But the news wasn’t good, for we were told that the train was full. This we knew to be a nonsense – they sell hard-seat tickets until people pop out of the windows, but the woman was quite adamant, so there was little we could say.
So, the briefest of conferences, then it was back to the window to ask for the same ticket for tomorrow. No, not possible, we were told – not till 6 o’clock – it was now 5. Not long enough a wait to do anything with, so we said goodbye to our new friend, plonked ourselves down on our packs, + prepared to wait out the hour. We were then approached by yet another man wanting to practise his English, a teacher this time. We began with the usual pleasant inanities, but when he discovered we had attempted to buy a ticket for tonight, but had been unable to do so, he was puzzled (as indeed we had been.) But he then bustled about, questioning various members of staff, eventually returning with one of them. “Which ticket did we want?” I was inclined not to push our luck, but Val, being braver + cheekier, asked for a hard sleeper. Which, to our amazement, we got – usually such things take at least 3 days.
We had enough time, too, to rush back into the centre of town on the bus to have a meal – one of the attractions of Chengdu is its food, with 3 restaurants particularly recommended in the guide-book. We found one of them without too much trouble – I even had enough time to pop along + take a photograph of a big statue of Mao at the end of the avenue. Chengdu seemed an attractive city, with broad tree-lined avenues. The food, however, tho’ quite acceptable, was nothing very special, tho’ being in a rush, we weren’t really able to do it justice.
Back to the stn then, + on to the train, no trouble. So we found ourselves in the hard sleeper, feeling somewhat dazed at the transformation, yet even more so, elated at both our good fortune + the pleasant prospect of a comfortable night’s journey. I began a letter to Dave Trickett, anxious to relay our experiences to someone.
I suppose the upside of an oppressive bureaucratic regime is that from time to time one encounters people who are happy to help you through… and such was the case today. But otherwise a day without much to report, sitting on a bus, dealing with officialdom.
China is one of the few countries we visited then that we have been back to, five or six years ago in order to visit our son. Went to Chengdu, and the statue is still there, though now entirely overpowered by high-rise buildings.
