Eric's Beijing Diary

I'm riding the hard seat today--day train from Dali to Kunming. Travel in and out of Yunnan is at a primium this time of year. I couldn't manage to get a ticket from Kunming to Beijing until the 20th. I would like to have stayed an extra week, but I really need to be getting back. Lots of work to do in the lab. So I finally bought a ticket from Kunming to Shanghai. I will have to try to get a ticket from Shanghai to Beijing later--not sure how that is going to work.

There are four levels of train passage in China: hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper. Today, I am standing on the bottom rung. Sitting, actually, because I do have a regular assigned seat. Until now, I have always taken the soft sleeper, because my trips were overnight, and the cost difference between hard sleeper and soft sleeper is negligible for long runs. The terms "hard" and "soft" are not to be taken literally. The seats here are padded. Ever so slightly. But they are straight backed benches, not comfortable reclining seats like the soft seat section, which I have never ridden. The windows are all open. And they stay open when we go through a tunnel. This diesel exhaust is not nearly as noxious as the smoke from those old coal-fired steam locomotives when I was a kid, but it's a far cry from fresh air. I've really been spoiled by the soft sleeper section.

When I got on in Dali, my ticket showed a specific seat number on a specific car. But since then, many people have gotten on who seem to have no seat assignment. They're in the aisle. This section certainly isn't as quiet and restful as the soft sleeper, but the culture here is certainly more lively. Right now, though, it's packed to the gills. I am sitting across from a young lady named "Sophia." I she sat across from me for quite awhile before she said anything. When she did speak (after quite a bit of prompting from her mother), I was taken aback by her fluency. Of course, she did not think she was fluent--most Chinese young people speak English much better than they think they do--which is probably why it took her so long to begin speaking. Her mother really wanted her to speak with me, and insisted on buying my lunch. Sophia actually has a lot to say. I asked her about the area we have been traveling through. She mentioned something about the "Yungui Plateau."
This a little confusing to me. The "Yun" would be Yunnan, of course. And the "gui" is no doubt referring to Guizhou Province. I have never been to Guizhou Province, but Yunnan is about the furthest thing from a plateau that I can imagine. This area is very, very mountainous. We have gone through so many tunnels (and very long ones, I might add)that I have almost begun to feel that we are on a subway that occasionally surfaces.

Last night, was my last night in Dali. The guest house arranged a bus to take us to the Torch Festival. I have no idea what the history of this festival is--have to do some more research. But what it has become is basically a fire party. Everybody takes a torch--they appear to be made of heavy bamboo straws bound together. Then they take their torches to an open area and start playing--swinging them around, putting them in each other's faces, pretending to light each other's clothes on fire. Now groups of people take their burning torches together to make a large bonfire so they can take turns jumping through the fire. What it comes down to is an evening of wreckless, unsupervised, unrestrained playing with fire. There are vendors walking through the crowd, just as there are at any festival. But they are not selling candy. They are selling small bags of gunpowder for people to throw at each other's torches--sorta liven things up a little.

Kinda sad to be leaving Dali behind me. Dali and Lijiang both have an "old town." The old town of Lijiang is prettier than the old town of Dali, and better preserved. But Dali has the mountain and the lake, and it is a little less touristy. And it is very easy to live in Dali. It's hard to explain if you are not familiar with the currency exchange, but if I state the prices in dollar equivalents, you can get an idea:

Single room at Jim's Guest House Chocolate cake and coffee at Marley's Cafe Breakfast buffet at Guest House #5 Horse cart Pie and coffee at Marley's Cafe (they were out of cake) Single room at Guest House #5 Large bowl of Katsudon at the Sun Island Banana cake and coffee at Marley's cafe (really good) Motorcycle taxi Bai ethnic food banquet

$6.00 $1.25 $1.25 60 cents $1.25 $4.00 $1.75 $1.25 $1.25 $6.00

I certainly hope I can come back to Dali again. Maybe next summer.

Labels: Summer 2004