Beijing to Shanghai

On June 5 I tried to wake up early, but now that I'm writing this I can't remember what for. I think Lucas and I were going to go do something, probably the marketplace. Either way, I didn't wake up early and Lucas was hungover anyway. The night before I had gone to bed before everyone else and apparently Lucas, Li, one of the Aussies, and a couple Chinese girls went out and had a lot of Chinese vodka. Or rather, as Lucas tells it, they fed him a lot of Chinese vodka.
So I did some laundry and had a pretty slow day. The next day I was going to Shanghai, so I knew I had to get a train ticket and pack my things (staying in Beijing for a whole week meant I pretty much set up camp and my belongings were all disorganized). I tried to copy some photos from Li's camera to my flashdrive because he was leaving to go home, but it wasn't working. Lucas got them, though.

I had asked Li a few days earlier if he wanted to come to Shanghai with me and he said he needed to call his father to ask for money. As far as I could gather, Li's father is loaded and Li, being an only child, reaps the benefits gloriously. He is twenty-three and doesn't go to university and doesn't work. He is traveling for two years, then he will go to school or get a job. Or at least, I think that's the deal. Like I said, his vocabulary consists of about forty words- half of which are inappropriate. So when I asked Li if he wanted to come to Shanghai, he called his dad and his dad said, "No. You have to come home." Li said he would go home for a couple weeks, then it would be OK to leave again. He said that because his "daddy" only has one child, he misses him and needs to spend time with his parents every once in a while. Understandable.

Li's train home was at 3:00PM, and I went to the train station with him to say good-bye and to buy a ticket. The train station was absolutely chaotic. There were so many people and everyone was shouting and shoving. There was one window that advertised "English" so I waited in that "queue" if that's what you want to call it. It wasn't like any proper queue I've ever seen. People were just clumped together and pressed up against one another- not for lack of space, but because if there was a gap, even of just a few centimeters, someone else would cut in front. It was madness I tell you. I was waiting for window 16, with about ten to twelve people in front of me. Then the woman closed window 16 and told everyone to move to window 15 less than a meter to our left. One could easily get trampled in a situation like that! Luckily I was paying attention and saw her as she was closing the window, or else I would have ended up at the back of the line again. As it turned out, however, it didn't matter where I was in line because I didn't have my passport with me. I spent nearly an hour at the train station for nothing.

I went back to the hostel to get my passport, but the entrance to the subway was across the street from the exit. It took me a while to sort out that one. I tried to mime to a man that I wanted to enter the subway, but he basically told me no, that was the exit. I then pulled out my phone and used the English-Chinese dictionary app. I showed the man the word for "entrance" and then he got it and pointed me across the street. I arrived back at the hostel, grabbed my passport, and returned to the train station. Of course it was still chaotic, but I was more prepared for it this time.

I left the following morning for Shanghai. It's a good thing I left Peking Yard early because I managed to get on the wrong subway line and the detour cost me about thirty or forty minutes. The train to Shanghai was fine. I spent quite a lot of the eight hour ride drinking coffee in the restaurant car because a four-year-old girl in the seat behind me kept standing next to me in the aisle and staring. She would come up, cock her head slightly to the side, then giggle when I smiled or waved and run away. This went on for a while. She got brave and started speaking to me, but naturally I didn't know what she was saying. I showed her an Elmo app I have on my phone for my niece. It's a fake Skype call with Elmo. She thought that was funny. I thought she was cute.