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Never Say No or You'll Want to Say Die

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A 10-minute game of charades, a norm for travel in China, led us to understand that there were beds going in the hard sleeper section and for an extortionate sum, we could upgrade.

We’d only just boarded and it was all exciting and new, plus we’d saved wads of cash, so after a quick discussion, we declined. I soon lived to regret it.

One thing you could never say is that the journey was dull. Hector, wondering if we were the only backpackers braving our carriage, set off to explore. He took off his sweaty walking boots in favor of a pair of flimsy flip-flops, a freebie from a decent hotel in Hong Kong.

Ten minutes later, he came back in a rather less jovial mood, gazing sadly at his feet. I looked down and began to roar with laughter, despite my increasing despair as the heat rose and last night’s dodgy street food worked its way rapidly through my system and was now attempting to escape at every opportunity.

It seems that paper slippers are not recommended footwear in third class and they had disintegrated, leaving Hector’s feet bathed in a delightful mix of spilt drinks, spit and I wouldn’t care to guess what else.

I set about doing what I most enjoy about foreign travel—interaction with local people. Unfortunately, this is not an easy feat in China and much less in the cheap seats of a long train journey.

As I’ve said, I couldn’t communicate in their language so was delighted when a young man near me smiled and said, “Hello.”

“Hello!’” I replied with gusto.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m fine thanks,” I lied.

“What’s your name?”

“Lucy, what’s your name?”

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from England,” I told him, wondering why he didn’t want to answer my question.

He looked at me for a moment and said, ”Hello.”

“Erm, hello,” I replied, a little confused.

“How are you?” he asked me again.

“I’m very well, how are you?” I enquired.

“What’s your name?”

And so the conversation continued for some 10 minutes, until I made an excuse to get back in my sink. On sitting down, I felt a tug on my trousers and turned to see a grinning old woman.

“Hello!” she boomed at me.

“Hello,” I replied, smiling hesitantly.

“How are you?” she bellowed.

“I’m fine, how are you?”

“What is your name?” she asked, ignoring my question.

And on it went—a textbook conversation with a dozen passengers up and down the carriage, until my washbasin suddenly began to seem like the world’s cosiest seat. So much for interaction.

Once they’d all tired of practicing their English, I realized that I could no longer ignore the inevitable. I’d held off for around nine hours, but the Imodium had worn off and the vile toilet beckoned.

Rummaging my walking boots out of my bag—I wasn’t going to repeat Hector’s mistake— I gave in to my body and headed for the loo.

On opening the door, I almost fell over as the foul stench hit me in the face. I wasn’t expecting a flushing toilet, but had at least hoped for a hole leading to the ground below.

Instead of that, the toilet was basically a dent in the floor, with other people’s business slopping over the sides as the train rocked from side to side.

I stuck my head out of the window, took a deep breath and set about evacuating my bowels. Every so often, I had to repeat the process, my eyes watering as I gasped for fresh air out of the window.

After some minutes, I hurried back to my sink and swallowed half a packet of Imodium. I didn’t visit the toilet again on that train.

The thing is that if you travel in China, you need two things: patience and time.

Of course, it’s fun at first to spend 20 minutes gesticulating wildly, trying to do some simple transaction, while your phrasebook is being passed around half the town. But it soon gets a bit much when you have to perfect your charades match before ordering a beer.

You also can’t be in a rush because train tickets are like gold dust and you need to buy them a few days in advance. This was our fatal error.

We’d spent too long lounging around in a river in Yangshao, trying to teach Spanish to some eager locals. Suddenly, Mongolia’s Nadaam festival was upon us and it seemed such a waste to miss it by a few days.

To go there, we first had to get to Beijing to get visas for Russia. It was all very complicated, but basically meant that we had to leave Yangshao the following day to stand any chance of seeing some more of China without missing the festival.

So there we were on a smelly train, cramps in every muscle, having to move from our perch every couple of hours as a cleaner swept the carriage and asked us to move as he threw a large sack of rubbish out of the window.

I’d slept in fits and starts throughout the journey and taken up all of the space we’d managed to take for ourselves. This meant that Hector had spent nearly 30 hours standing—he didn’t want to wake me and the thought of sitting on the spit-soaked floor was less than appealing.

By morning, the carriage was getting more and more crowded, the temperature was rising and it was all getting a bit too much for me, when suddenly a miracle happened.

Just as I thought I could go on no longer and I would have to alight in some random town in central China, it blissfully began to rain.

If the other passengers didn’t find us odd before, they certainly did as I stuck my limbs out of the window one by one and whooped with joy as I gradually got soaked.

I kept whooping until we arrived unscathed in Luoyang, ready to visit the birthplace of Kung Fu.

The grubby, industrial city seemed more like the legendary El Dorado and never have I enjoyed a cheap hotel room or a shower so much. Of course, in retrospect the journey wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed and naturally it was the first story I told my friends on my return to England.

Where would the fun be if things always went according to plan? Perhaps saying no to that train guard wasn’t a mistake after all.

Lucy Corne is a freelance writer in the Canary Islands and has just written a guidebook on the islands. She has traveled extensively in South America and South Africa and has visited Mexico, Mongolia and China.

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