So here I am after taking bus 101 from Heilingjiang Zhongyiyao Daxue (H province acupuncture herbs uni) to train station, an hour or so in the soft seat (posh) waiting room and a great sleep on my top bunk - only 2 levels and a closed compartment with a couple and a man whose wife packed him off with bags of bing (pancakes), meat, drinks and pot noodles. We're all in our 40s and all on our smart phones!
After 2 big dinners - uni welcome and teacher Liu Ying's husband's banquet - I was happy to go to sleep at 8.30pm after a bag of peanuts and a couple of muffins. I dozed off happily as the other 3 were crunching into chickens feet and sundries.
I awoke to sunrise over dusty wasteland punctuated by industry and high rise.
Felt a bit overdressed in the longjohn queue for the Loo so now I've hung up my jeans and waiting for my co-compartments to finish snoring and rise again.
The woman in my compartment tried to pick out Chinese characters in her girlie magazine for me to learn, such as woman, love, mother. I spent a while in the neighboring compartment with the small children. Yuan yuan (14 months) was v cute a his dad lifted him up to pee through his slit trousers onto the carpet. The two year old in PJs pulled down was lifted up over the bin to pee!!! Hygiene practices are quite different here!
Yuan Yuan's dad is a high school headmaster born the same year as me, a fellow goat. Another teacher was off to Xiian for headmaster training - or so my mandarin and her Chinglish led me to believe. They escorted me to the right bus station and put me on a bus to Wenxian county. It should have taken 2 hours but the driver pulled over for an hour to watch an almighty traffic jam with cars facing the opposite direction trying to extricate themselves from the metallic tangle and huge lorries cutting diagonally across 4 lanes.
When we eventually got to Wenxian he wouldn't let me off the bus and kept saying 'Wait' as the bus pulled into the bus garage, he filled up with petrol and cleaners got on. Then he took me in his little van, stopping at his house before heading off in the dark along a dusty road! By this time I had invented 2 children and a husband looking after them back in london. Luckily my dying China mobile managed to last until I had rung and put him on the phone to my contact in Chenjiagou (Chen village) who told him where to drop me. She insisted that he took 30 yuan (£3) for the lift as he didn't want to charge me.
A boy then walked me to my room and the two Russian roommates followed out of the obscurity of their sword training. Luckily Svetlana not only speaks English but has a packet of loose leaf Earl Grey! The gods are smiling on me!
I recognized Adam (from Chen seminars in London) at breakfast which was far from ghastly as the Russians had made me fear. The international group of around 50 comprises, in terms of diminishing numbers, Japanese, Russian, American, Australian, 2 Brits and 1 of each of the following Bulgarian, Polish, Korean and Hong Kong.
Pic caption:
Chen taiji cat
Man in my compartment tearing off claw from chicken foot
Yuan Yuan and dad
Morning walk around Chen village
First sighting of Grandmaster ChenXiaoWang
Train guards - luckily they have police too as a fight broke out and a young man was locked in the guards room and as when they let him out he smashed the mirror and cut himself! I think he calmed down after that. Nothing like a bit of drama on the Harbin-Zhengzhou express!
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