9/5

9/5 6:56am CST

http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_5?authkey=Gv1sRgCPPPovr7-aGzZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIf3FEzhtJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaf8sYM-So
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yo8ZRyX1QI

Woke up on the train. We're probably an hour outside of Xi'an in Shaanxi, which I believe is Bo's hometown. That'd be only a quarter or so of the way to Lhasa, but still decent progress for one night's sleep.

Fortunately, there is an outlet on the train, so I can document everything en route. I forgot to mention that we got tickets on a bed car. Each room has 4 bunks in it. So some random teenager got the 4th bunk. Between his questionable background story and the natural suspicion with which Chinese treat strangers, I think my parents were pretty wary of him. He got off at Xi'an. We'll see if someone replaces him.

One thing'll I'll note about China -- bathrooms are dirty. In general, public and shared places are dirty. It's like no one cares to clean them. So even our friends' nice new apartment complex -- the lobby and outside areas were just filthy. The same is true of the train bathrooms. No one really respects the cleanliness of the space so it gets nasty fast. But, because everything is so dirty, you don't see many people loitering about, so there's not much graffiti. Between the smell of ammonia and some colorful remarks by bored stall sitters, I'd rather take the graffiti.

On the topic of water -- fresh drinking water is a precious thing in China. It's not something that a restaurant can readily serve for you. You could certainly get some bottled water, at a huge markup. But it's something you should bring with you. On the train, each car has a boiled water faucet, and each room has a pitcher that you fill up. The water comes out close to boiling, so you have to fill up at intervals and let it cool off before you can drink it. Even now, it is still customary to drink hot tea at restaurants and warm boiled water at home with meals. I can live with it, but I'm still pretty used to having drinking water at hand at all times.

Now we're riding through Shaanxi. It's a very hilly country. As we get out of the urban areas, all you are the insides of tunnels, and emerging from them, swollen streams and wet riverbeds. There's steep hills lining the countryside, and nestled between them, by the waters are small and extremely rustic villages. There's plenty of houses without windows even doors. The people seem to be making a living off of farming and mining. While the urban centers of China have made a marked improvement toward middle class, I don't think much has changed here. 50% of Chinese people are still farmers barely making a living selling their crops.

That said, the country side is extremely picturesque. There's fully green hills, terraced hills, dirt cliffs that look like they would collapse at the first hint of heavy rain. In a few spots, I even seen primitive dwellings dug out into the hillside. These would were probably occupied in modern times before Communism liberated and modernized the country. I suspect the view won't change much in the hours and hours until we hit the high plains. Just millions of average northernr Chinese leading a lifestyle that hasn't changed much in decades. And yet progress is still coming. You can see various projects being built up. The buttresses of new highways being poured from concrete, and earthen ramps leading to new developments on the hillsides. I'd like to see what happens to these places in another 10 years. I've got a few pictures and videos, but I don't know how representative they can be. It's best to remember that China is a big country, and that much of it is like this, and not like in the cities. Any scene you can picture, I probably saw -- a boy playing by himself on rocks in the middle of a turbid stream; a broken down 3-wheel truck on a dirt road; a few cows grazing on the slope of a hill; railworkers piling up bags of fertilizer to be shipped eastward; a peasant girl taking a piss just outside of her village; a stone-lined drainage ditch plunging down a hill at 70 degrees, leading rainwater into an irrigation canal; a cemetary not but 5 meters next to a small cornfield; a huge trashpit fire being tended by a few locals; a precarious wooden suspension bridge.
All of this linked together by the Chinese rail system. I can't imagine how things would be further out from the rail.

Apparently, the railroad through to Lhasa was only completed in 2006. The high elevation made it hard for the railworkers to maintain a decent pace of progress.

Another anecdote -- my dad still remembers his college student id: 776307. 1977 for his entering year, 63 for his submajor -- uranium geology, and 7 for his number in his class (everyone in a submajor is in the same 'class').

3:36pm
We get off for a 30 min break at the Lanzhou station. From the architecture and landscape, we've definitely moved further out west. I get some food, since the lunch in the dining car was so expensive (discussing it would be beneath me). One of the items I get is one of my fave hot dogs, the Shuanghui brand hot dog. It's just a very mild a familiar taste. I would say in between a regular American hot dog and a vienna sausage. We also got some cucumbers, which I'm not so hot on eating. We'll just wash them a lot with boiling water, I guess.

Now's a good time to talk about class. The meal I had on the dining car was only $4, but that comes out to a lot of money in China. On top of that, my family is comfortably ensconced in one of the soft bed cars. Obviously it's worth the extra cash for us to have something resembling privacy and being able to sleep on a bed. For a fraction of the price of our ticket, you could get to Lhasa in the same 46 hours in one of the hard-seat cars. Imagine living, eating, and sleeping for 2 days from the same spot. You'd have access to a nightmarish bathroom shared among 50 people, and, to save money, whatever food you brought with you to last the trip. Instant ramen is a gimmick quick meal for the average college student in America, but it's very nice convenience for the typical poor Chinese rail traveler. It's fairly compact and light, and all you need to do is fill up your mug at the boiling water faucet to prepare it. Of course, the poorest travelers wouldn't waste their money on instant ramen. Most of the cars in the train are hard- and soft-seat cars. I wish I could take a photo of how people are seated in those, but it'd be a bit rude to run back there and snap a shot.

8:26pm
An uneventful afternoon. Both my parents fell asleep, unable to cope with the jetlag. I was way ahead with my 4am sleep schedule from back home. I spent most of it reading and watching the scenery change a bit over the miles. The conductor came by to drop off what amounted to a liability waiver for passengers entering the 3000m+ elevation of the high plains. I puzzled out how to fill it out with my limited reading and writing capability. Hopefully I'll remember how to write Lhasa

From the cultural tutorial playing over the PA: "...Tibetans do not look kindly upon killing cats, frogs, turtles..." I guess the stereotypes are true about us Han Chinese. The tutorial also advises against drinking, as the high altitude is a conduit to getting incredibly wasted (as well as incredibly hung over the next day). The altitude sickness is getting preached a lot. With lots of old people on this train, I can't say I'm that worried about it. It ranks somewhat higher than seeing a Yeti on a mountain pass. Which according to Uncharted 2, can definitely happen. But I am curious where in the spectrum I'll fall. I'll just pretend the whole first day that I'm between rounds in kickboxing and try to gulp down recovery air.