2006

You wait on line outside Beijing’s main train station. Wrong window. So you wait on a different line. Sorry, no. Try buying your tickets at a hotel, says the man at the ticket counter at the train station.

So Mister Chen took the subway to Beijing West, with written directions to the International Ticket Window on the second floor, and you can’t enter the train station without a ticket so Mister Chen played the foreigner all they way up to the information desk, who directed him downstairs to the ticket booth, where he waited on another line. “Where do you want to go?” the ticket agent asked. “Ulaanbaatar,” said Mister Chen. “Where do you want to go?” How do you say Ulaanbaatar in Chinese? “Mongolia.” “Where?” “The main city in Mongolia?” “Where do you want to go?”

So we went to the CITS agency at the Beijing International Hotel. It was located on the second floor, right where the signs said it would be. We filled out paperwork and show our passports when prompted.

In China, Ulaanbaatar is pronounced Ulaanbatwa.

There’s a large timetable above the main staircase in the Beijing Railway Station. It displays train numbers and destinations in Chinese and English, and then there is a number. Numbers one and two correspond to the two waiting rooms on the second floor.

Our train is a number three.

We ask unhelpful railroad employees. We run up and down and up the stairs.

Between the two waiting rooms is a corridor. A-ha.

Everyone is gathered by the stairs to the track. Everyone is bringing stuff. Giant suitcases and packing boxes resealed with duct tape, large plastic-fiber red blue and white checked bags full of gift food in fancy boxes and IKEA furniture on dollies. When the platform opens it’s us and them and the self-assembled Swedish furniture concepts competing for space as we squeeze down the staircase together to the track. And then for a moment the sky comes into view through the latticework of the station roof. The forest green passenger cars, every doorway manned by a lady standing ramrod straight and smiling in green skirts and coats and thigh-high boots, the Rockettes of the Mongolian plains, the cart attendants. Just for a moment the sky opens above you and those forest green passenger cars stretch forever into the distance belching white smoke, eager to start. And the bounce and jostle of the crowd closes in, returning you to the hard enough business of walking, of watching stairs and elbows.

Oriental rugs cover the floors along the hallway into the compartments. This is a Mongolian train. Our compartment’s walls are wood and the four bunks are swaddled in floral embroidery. The lady cart attendant appears with mugs of strawberry tea. Q: How do you know if you are on a Mongolian train? A: Is the lady car attendant shoveling coal in thigh-high black leather boots with stiletto heels? You are on a Mongolian train.

At 9:15am we pass through the Great Wall of China. In the afternoon dust fills the train like smoke. At 8:40pm the train stops at Erlian, the last stop in China. You can get out, and then the train disappears for two hours. It is freezing cold outside. Inside the station are plastic seats, a bathroom, clocks of the world (non-functional) and a convenience store. The convenience store is packed and people buy in bulk, cardboard flats of water and cookies to take with them to who knows where. Outside loudspeakers on telephone poles play a Mariachi recording of Taps.

It’s a night of interrupted sleep, Chinese immigration and Chinese customs, Mongolian immigration and Mongolian customs. In the morning the lady cart attendant asks 500 tugrik a person for yesterday’s tea.

…

MONGOLIAN TRAIN K23
ONE WAY TICKET SECOND CLASS SLEEPER 657RMB (APPROX $82.13)
DEPARTS BEIJING WEDNESDAY AND SATURDAY 7:40AM
ARRIVES ULAANBAATAR NEXT DAY 1:15PM
SUGGESTED ACTIVITY: Get tugrik ahead of time. The lady cart attendant exchange rate isn’t good.

I’ve heard it’s more expensive but easier to purchase train tickets from third party agencies. Which is what we tried to do, but we could never find the hotel that supposedly sold the train tickets, and the ticket office is just to the right of the train station past the public square filled with old men sitting on the rice sacks that hold their belongings. So we went to the ticket office. We got in line for the English ticket window, which was not so much a line, and the lady behind the counter did not speak English. We asked for tickets aboard a night train to Beijing. Hard sleeper? No. We got what they gave us.

The most expensive train from Shanghai to Beijing costs sixty United States dollars. This ticket buys passage to the soft seat waiting room, reached through the specially marked door at the front of the Shanghai train station, and there is a piano in it. In front of a staircase is a board of upcoming trains followed by numbers. These numbers do not correspond to the track number, like you might sit in the soft chairs of the waiting room for a half an hour thinking they do. This number is the floor that your actual waiting room is on. Okay. So we hustle up to the second floor waiting room where there aren’t any seats left, but there is a store selling cookies and beverages for inflated prices that are still cheaper than anything you could have imagined before arriving in China. That’s where we are when they announce the train, buying crackers with sugary lemon filling that are delicious, so I don’t know if there was an announcement but the mass of people in the waiting room converge on a single point, so we joined them there.

Sixty United States dollars buys you a bed in a four person cabin. The cabin also has a a vase with a fake flower in it, and a menu, and a magazine in Chinese, four bunks with sheets and pillows and an informational brochure. The Z trains are the fastest trains China has. It says that in the brochure. Five Z trains leave Shanghai between 6:45pm and 7:30pm. Three of these serve dinner, including ours. It is a sort of sausage half-calzone with pickled carrots, and it comes with a few pieces of plastic-wrapped bread in a paper bag. The vegans in the bunk across, with some help from Mister Chen, eventually manage to communicate something to the lady cart attendant. She eventually reappears with rice and vegetables from the restaurant car. The lady cart attendant does insists on repatriating their little bags of bread.

In the dining car you can order a 15RMB Tsingtsao and listen to the people who have ordered multiple bottles of wine with their dinner and are talking about senior management. On the fanciest means of conveyance between Shanghai and Beijing you do not just get the ambiance of a fake flower in a vase. You also get to travel with the fanciest people going from Shanghai and Beijing. Hell. You are the fanciest people going from Shanghai to Beijing.

…

CHINESE RAILWAYS’ Z6
ONE WAY TICKET SOFT SLEEPER 499RMB (ABOUT$63USD) (BOTTOM BUNK)
478RMB (ABOUT $61USD) (TOP BUNK)
DEPARTS SHANGHAI DAILY 7:14PM
ARRIVES BEIJING, CHINA NEXT DAY 7:12AM
SUGGESTED ACTIVITY: Shimmy down to the restaurant car while you can still afford it.
chinahighlights.com/china-trains/index.htm