On to the Mainland

After a few more days of dim sum and wandering the streets of HK I crossed the border to mainland China, taking an 8.5 hour train from Guangzhou (Guangdong Province) to Changsha (Hunan Province). The degree to which my Chinese had improved over the past year was evident in my ability to book my train ticket at one of the most crowded stations in China. After waiting in line with people pushing from all directions, I was able to partially decipher the giant board of Chinese characters displaying the train destinations, times, number of tickets left, etc. Somehow I was also able to communicate well enough with the desk clerk to book a soft sleeper bed on a train to Changsha leaving in the hour.

After almost missing the train due to not knowing where the hell it was leaving from, I clambered on much to the surprise of all the Chinese riders I pushed my way by. The people sleeping in the beds and berths next to me were even surprised by the wai guo ren (foreigner) invading their space. Surprise, however, soon gave way to curiosity and conversations in broken Mandarin on my part and limited English on theirs. Most of the train ride was spent answering two young kids' questions in English such as "What your favorite color?" or "Do you like Jackie Chan?" The rest was spent listening as a fellow train rider spoke to me in Mandarin at length while I either held my pride and pretended to understand or swallowed it and frantically looked up words in my unfortunately not electronic dictionary.

Fortunately, this all made the ride go by real quick and by 11:30pm I was in Changsha, met by my good buddy Xu and his parents who were so kind to pick me up from the station - a luxury I rarely experience while traveling. Xu also studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, although I didn't meet him until we were both conducting research in Laos under the same professor (although very different projects). His family went continually further in their kindness by letting me stay in their guest room, treating me to multiple meals, and driving Xu and I around the city to check out some of the sites, such as one of the oldest Confucian universities in the country and the school were Mao, the Great Helmsman, studied as a young man.

All around, a great start to my Chinese travels.