5.6 – 5.7, Hangzhou to Wuhan-Wuchang
The hard sleeper was something of an anticlimax. From the depths of my fevered imagination, I had conjured up images of long rows of narrow, splintering wooden planks, not far different from a slave ship of the 1800s. In fact, the compartment was sleek, clean, and comfortable; basically the same as a soft sleeper, except with a third tier of bunks near the ceiling. I won't assume that they're all like this, but I wouldn't exactly call it hard going.
I am the first one in; once I get settled, a laconic college student with highlights in his cartoonishly spiked haircut comes in, wordlessly climbs up to a top bunk, and promptly falls asleep.
He is followed by a pair of a type I have often seen travelling in China, especially around tourist hotspots and during holidays. They are, as I explained to Michael when we spotted one such couple atop Huang Shan, "Man-Child and Mother."
The phrase is loosely defined as a man in his mid-late twenties or early thirties, doughy and with a bad complexion, accompanied only by his aging mother, who is generally sporting a somewhat annoyed expression, and more often than not is giving every woman anywhere near her son's age a thoughtful, if not actually hopeful, look. The man-child is usually socially awkward, and avoids conversation and eye contact with everyone but his mom.
Basically, Buster and Lucille from Arrested Development.
These two are followed in turn by a perky, sexy-librarian type in her early twenties, who offers us some fruit from a grocery bag, then disappears to do whatever it is hot librarians do to prepare for a train ride. Organize their Dewey Decimal catalogues in the altogether, perhaps.
Meanwhile, ManBoyMom have struck up conversation with each other, and I'm just leaning back, scribbling in my journal and eavesdropping -- which, given their heavy accents and my poor language skills, proves fruitless.
Sexy librarian returns, and starts asking me questions; I hold my own for a few minutes, then have to confess that I'm from the States when I talk myself into the inevitable linguistic dead end.
We chat for a while, then Man-Child turns to me; much to my surprise, he's spent a year at UNC studying nutrition, and is actually quite friendly and nice. He serves as an occasional translator for sexy librarian -- who has by this point introduced herself as Ke Zhi Hui -- and me for a while. Having no English name, she asks me to give her one, so Alice it shall be. I briefly considered naming her Booya, because that would have been hilarious, but figured I'd play it safe, with UNC guy there to spill the beans. Soon after that, we all break off and go to sleep.
At about 5:30am, we're woken by the car attendant so she can swap our bunk cards back for our tickets. Everyone else goes back to sleep, but I'm getting antsy, so I stand in the compartment doorway and watch out the window as the sky goes from black to a milky grey, revealing villages, sodden fields, and hulking towers of steel girders, apartments and malls in the making.
After a while, I head back to my bunk, only to see a pair of lacy socks appear from above, wave back and forth uncertainly for a bit, then settle gratefully when I pull the foot pegs down. Zhi Hui appears, bids me a good morning, and disappears for a bit.
By now the rest of the train is waking up too, and the sky is rapidly going from a light grey to a dusky orange and blue. The mute scrambles down from his top bunk and vanishes, never to be seen again. I trade good mornings with UNC ManBoy and his mom, then they sink back into bed.
Zhi Hui returns and takes a seat across from me; after chatting for a while, she invites me over to the window seats outside the compartment, where we sit and talk while the sun comes up over alternating views of farmland, achingly idyllic scenes of village life, and the inevitable bleak industrial wasteland, garbage piles, and stagnant, filthy ponds.
When the attendant comes by to tell us we're approaching the station, Zhi Hui and I exchange numbers, and she agrees to help me get a ticket to Wudang Shan. This is fairly typical of most people I've asked for help in China; once they understand I'm not handicapped in some way or trying to pull their leg with this I'm-From-The-US nonsense, they're more than happy to go out of their way to help me on mine.
Exiting the train, we're swept along with a rushing mob down some stairs and into the terminal, where Zhi Hui pulls me over to an information desk. In response to her questions, a uniformed woman sullenly points us "over there."
Walking that way, we're quickly mobbed by touts, asking us where we're headed. At the first mention of Wudang Shan, one of them becomes excited, pulling at my sleeve and practically yelling at us. Zhi Hui seems to think it's fine -- hard to tell with this little man screaming in my ear -- so I follow his pointing finger and tail his even smaller friend to a waiting electric scooter, where I awkwardly climb into the bitch seat.
Zhi Hui waves goodbye, says to call her if I run into any trouble, and then we're off.
Slowly.
At just under 200 pounds, plus my sizeable pack, I am not the easiest load this electric scooter has had to bear. So, perched like some kind of enormous parasite on the back of the scooter, ludicrously clutching the miniscule driver, we wheeze and whine our way up the exit ramps, barely passing people moving at walking speed.
Once out on the level streets, the scooter fares a little better, and I am treated to a brief but harrowing (even at reduced speed) ride through Wuhan's morning rush hour.
Pulling up in front of a bus station, the man jumps off the scooter and leads me by the hand into the terminal. As requested, I hand him ¥160, whereupon he tells me to wait and disappears at a run.
Awesome.
Looking around, I figure even if he has cheated me, I do seem to be in a bus station, so I can probably get where I'm going from here.
As luck would have it, he comes sprinting back after a minute or two, and leads me -- by the hand, again -- to a waiting bus. I take a seat, ask the man sitting across the aisle if the bus goes to Wudang Shan, and he says he has no idea.
His hair looks a little windblown, and he has the slightly stunned attitude of someone who maybe just got whirled through rush-hour traffic on the back of a tiny scooter, so I decide not to press the issue.
Luckily, I do overhear someone say "four hours to Xiangfan," so at least I know I'm going in the right direction.
Maybe.