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Since I had requested family quarters, we were eventually slotted
into a six-bunk room (40 ¥ pp/night, $4.84USD), #315, separated from
the hostel by a door. Apparently, we were in the hotel workers
dorms, and this four-story building was for everybody who could not
or would not pay the high fees of a five-star hotel, like next
door. No matter; through good fortune, a developed traveling
instinct, and sheer tenacity, we were finally able to shed our packs
onto their own racks and sack out for desperately needed sleep.
Except for me.
We had been able to get to Beijing, but we did not yet have a way
out. It was my thought that we would take the Trans-Mongolian to the
capital of Mongolia, Ulaan Baatar, stay two nights in a yurt,
continue onto Lake Baikal, take a hydrofoil uplake to Severobaikalsk,
where we would board the Trans-Siberian to Moscow. From there, after
enjoying a mid-day performance of the Moscow State Circus, we would
board the night-train onto St. Petersburg for a few days visit,
exiting Russia to Finland before the expiration of multiple-entry
visas. Despite my exhaustion, I could not sleep; I had parental
responsibilities!
I knew where
to go, and how to get there. I locked the door on my sleeping
offspring, went downstairs, and out into a bright mid-day. I
backtracked our steps on the crowded sidewalk alongside the broad
Giongrentiyuchang Bei Road, passing the Worker's Stadium again, but
this time I didn't veer off, and ultimately reached Dongsishitiao
Qiao. Even though I was enervated, I could tell a tremendous
discrepancy between the perceived distance on the tourist map and
the actual distance, and knew it was scale. Regardless of how far I
had to go, I knew what I had to do, entered the station, purchased
my ticket, and descended to the platform, where I boarded a train
going South to JianguoMen Station. After arriving at the station, I
quickly made my way up and out to face the Beijing Railway Station.
This massive
boxlike building is a recent construction, dating from the first
5-year plan, 1953-7, of the Chinese Communist Party under it's
leader, Chairman Mao. I clambered over a squat, iron fence
and walked into a ticketing area in the Westernmost part, finding it
filled with people in a dizzying array of lines, each designated for
terminus in cities far away, whether Hong Kong, Shanghai, Ningbo,
Tianjin, etc. I stood in a few of the queues, unable to decipher
exactly how to buy, much less speak my need for, tickets to Ulaan
Baatar and beyond.
I was, however, able to make a short acquaintance with a
missionary, bound for Fuzhou, perfectly fluent in English because
she was from London. It was delightful to speak with her, and she
was familiar with the class system of seating on board trains in
this previously-classless society. Being a missionary, she was
willing to compromise a reasonable ride to 1) save money and 2)meet
a deadline. I left her in a disorganized queue to look for the
“International Passenger Booking Office”, mentioned in the LP
guidebook. I went into an even more diminished side hall with a
small hand-marked sign bearing the same words in English, but found
it shuttered, with a truism written on page 253 in LP: “...Whether
or not you get a ticket here is pot luck...”
I returned to the ticketing windows to see the
missionary had moved back by several people. It appeared that the
passengers in front of her were actually holding places for multiple
family members, each of whom needed separate tickets and individual
discussions with the agent about their particular hard seat. Based
upon what we had read in LP, the hard seat, or even soft seat,
class, made the horrible T-6 class from Paris to Roma seem
luxurious by comparison! I knew it was unacceptable for either me or
my children. I had to find a better solution, and, skirting this
area, walked into the huge central structure of this station, the
Grand Hall.
Grand indeed, and very full, at that. People were
everywhere, most of whom were sitting about, waiting for a train to
arrive bringing even more people, or a departure, which, despite the
loss of passengers, improbably seemed to increase the human numbers
inside! Up high, a train ticker showed the arrival and departure of
trains. I could see a large stairwell ascending to a less-populated
second floor, and thought I might find something there. Once up into
decidedly more open space, I looked over the banister at the masses
below, writhing and undulating more like a ripple in a pond, knowing
that I had been a part of it a moment ago and will be again after
obtaining the requisite tickets. I entered the large rooms on this
floor, seeing that they were empty except for one, which was filled
with people attempting to squeeze through another door. A marquee
above it indicated that this was for train #19, which corresponded
to the train ticker “Shanghai” (written in both Chinese and English)
in the Grand Hall.
I went down a long hallway which had numerous, regularly
spaced, locked doors, each marked with track numbers. Looking
through a crack in the jamb of one of the doors, I could see trains
lined up below, but few people on any of the platforms. I realized
that I was in the right place; I just needed to find the correct
ticketing booth that was open. Going toward the stairwell, I spotted
an information desk with a woman patiently listening to a man
explain his predicament. As he began shoving a sheaf of papers into
her face, and hammering on the desk, she grew more disinterested in
him, looking away, at me. As her attention increasingly strayed, it
matched the growing crescendo of his insistent voice. Returning her
nonplussed look, I shrugged my shoulders and descended into the
masses , and while doing so, I spied a group of obvious travelers
crowding into a waiting room. I made my way to them, and, seeing a
Canadian flag patch sewn onto one of the backpacks, I introduced
myself.
“Traveling, eh? Where are you going, eh?”
“Oh, we are off to Ulaan Baatar. eh. It's Mongolian
Independence celebration these first two weeks of July you know, so
we booked early, eh.” the man beside the backpack told me.
“You make it sound like tickets are difficult to get.
How'dja get your's, eh?” I asked.
“We've been planning this for a year. You have to. And
there aren't any rooms left in UB, so we are going to stay in a yurt
away from town. Its not ideal, but we were lucky. Look, if your
interested in going, you better buy tickets soon. See that door over
there?” he said, pointing across this slightly less-packed lounge.
“Go in there to ask about travel. The guy speaks English and is real
helpful, eh!”
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