- When the pushy salespeople at the Pearl Market asked Tania what she wanted (to buy), instead of saying she wanted a fake Kipling bag, she instead looked them dead in the eye and said “I want you to get your hands off of me.” Atta baby!!!! Saved me from spending a few months in a Chinese jail cell for beating up the guy selling antique Buddhas that were made four months ago.
- Even though some of our favorite people in the world are Vietnamese, we never want to be on a sleeper train with people from that country again. Let’s just say they’re early risers and are very gregarious.
For those of you who like this kind of detail…
Time for another bag day (travel days in which we need to carry our luggage through massive Asian crowds), but this time, it’s a tad different. Instead of flying on a comfortable plane or taking a quick bullet train a few hours away, we’re packing our tooth brushes a little closer since we’ll be sleeping on this train. Yup, it’s over-night hard sleeper train time from Beijing to Shanghai. 14 hours total.
Before we get to the train though…
Today we took a lovely stroll through the Temple of Heaven past the locals who were modern dancing, ballroom dancing, practicing tai chi, and singing karaoke. All in large groups, which is a common theme we’ve noticed in China. We talked into the echoing wall, but didn’t hear an echo, instead just looking like an asinine tourist talking into a cement wall. We walked through the cold, dense air amongst a forest of trees that would make Tim Burton blush. And we gazed on this eerie landscape as the softest music imaginable, which sounded more like someone tuning their acoustic guitar, played through sporadically-placed speakers that looked like artistic stands themselves. Very odd walk, but one we very much enjoyed, especially when comparing it to our subsequent stroll through the Pearl Market across the street.
The Pearl Market is a department store stacked with floors lined by small booths and pushy salesmen/women, offering fake versions of every product known to man. You want a fake Gucci purse? You got it. You want a fake pare of Nikis? Yup. You looking for an iPod-ish type of thing (that won’t work on your computer in the US)? You’re in the right place. We would have been completely turned off, especially by the sales people that were so insistent that they would grab your arm and try to drag you into their booth, but the quality of these knock-offs was incredible. They looked so real and appeared to be made of great quality, which is not surprising since most of these items are made in China to begin with. Tania settled for a green Kippling bag, which is a much safer option to travel with than her Angry Little Girl purse that she’s been carrying and protecting during the first few weeks of our trip. Oh, and she bought a kite for the kids. She bargained down from 180 yuan to 20 for the kite and reel. Nice one kits! I too was proud of my bartering skills since I got the saleswoman down from 320 to 50 for the bag. Go me!
But then it was back to the hotel to meet our group so we could taxi it over to the train station. Normally I’m happy to get to the airport plenty early to guarantee we’ll make our flight, but we may reconsider doing the same for over-night trains. When we got to the station, our group plunked its bags down onto the ground, in the middle of the walkway of waiting room 2, which just happened to be the size of a football stadium. The stench of humans crammed into a decrepit, marble-floored room for an hour and a half made the stench of a 66 person train car seem like a bunch of roses. After watching old men on their knees drag themselves from person to person along floors that you wouldn’t want to be barefoot on, bowing their forehead down to the ground at the person’s feet in the hopes of receiving a yuan or two (which actually worked, making the permanent dirt mark on their forehead worth it), we threw our bags on our backs and headed to our platform and onto car 5. After some finagling, Tania and I settled on two middle bunks (of three top to bottom) so that we could at least look across at each other throughout the night.
We’ll spare you the details, but the ride was much better than we envisioned. We got into Shanghai unharmed and decently rested. More on this western metropolis to come later…
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