My companions for this trip were my neighbors, Grisha, Anya and their son, Nik, 9. Grisha and Anya are Ukrainian piano teachers here on a three-year exchange. I’ve been teaching Nik English twice a week. In December they asked me to join them on a week-long trip to Sanya 三亚, on the southern tip of Hainan.

Hainan is roughly the same latitude as Hawai’i, with a very similar climate. Formerly a neglected part of China (criminals were once banished there), mainlanders realized it was prime vacation spot about 20 years ago, just because of its location. Now it’s the site of scores of hotels and resorts, including swanky places like Sheraton, Hilton and Ritz-Carlton properties.

And Russians. Lots of Russians. Some have settled there, like our tour agency owner, Tatiana , while most just come to bask in the sunshine and swim in the still-clean ocean. There are so many Russian tourists that menus are bilingual, and many shops boast bilingual signs.

Of course, there also many, many Chinese, even at the ultra-swanky places. (We could use the Sheraton’s beach, but not the facilities — officially — so I can speak authoritatively on this last point.)

By way of a preface, I’ll recount my travel adventures before we met to leave for Sanya. One of my friends in the senior class had asked me to visit her in Xiangtan, south of Changsha, during Spring Festival. So, since I had to go to Changsha to meet Grisha, Anya and Nik anyway, she invited me to spend the night in her home instead of the hotel I had already booked.

Naturally, I had no idea how to get to Denise’s home, although I had stayed there last April for a weekend. So, she offered to meet in at my motorcoach’s terminus and then guide me home.

But something happened, and she couldn’t meet me. No problem, she asked a friend who gave us directions on how to get from Changsha to Xiangtan.

Outdated directions, as it turned out. I was supposed to go to the train station (easy, I could walk there, but I took a taxi instead), then go to the bus station next to the train station and find the Xiangtan bus. Despite my careful investigation, all I found was the Changsha city-bus station, not the intercity south bus station.

Denise suggested I ask someone who spoke English for assistance. At the time I was standing next to a teenage girl and her parents, so I figured she was likely to know some English. They talked to Denise on the phone, hailed a cab, and told the driver to take me to the south bus station, a few kilometers away.

Not really next door to the train station.

Oh, well. Once at the right station, I bought a ticket for Xiangtan, got on board the bus, and waited for our departure. And waited. And waited.

After an hour, we finally pulled out of the station around 5, but not before the driver and conductor asked several passengers to get off the bus. These walked out of the station, past the terminal office, and onto the street. Once the driver submitted his paperwork to the terminal office, we then stopped to pick up these same passengers and then waited by the curb another 30 minutes for more to arrive.

[I think the plan here is for the driver to save transport taxes or fees for his company, by shedding some passengers, and passengers to (supposedly) save money. But I paid 13 RMB for my ticket and they paid 14, so I still remain puzzled. I went through a similar scenario when we returned to Jishou from Changsha in another week.]

Once we were finally moving, the trip took only an hour, and after a comical 15 minutes trying to find each other in a crowded bus station, Denise and I left for her home, where her parents had dinner waiting. I had a very pleasant stay, and had a chance to enjoy nice weather the following day.

Our flight to Sanya was scheduled (remember that word) to leave at 9 pm, so I was not rushed leaving Xiangtan. Denise and I left for Changsha later that afternoon, and we met Grisha’s family close to their hotel. Denise went home right away, declining my offers of both her taxi fare and bus fare, and the rest of us had a light supper before we left for the airport.

A friend offered to take us in his car to the airport. It was a sedan, and had plenty of room for all of us and our luggage, but he was concerned it was not comfortable enough. So we stopped by his office (the traffic police station, where he is an officer) to find a larger car. He couldn’t get one, was profusely apologetic, but eventually accepted our answers of “mei wen ti” — “it doesn’t matter” — and we were on our way again.

To wait – you guessed it — for another ridiculously delayed flight. It was a rerun of my experience in Shanghai Hongqiao airport. Ours was the last flight out of Changsha at 3 am. We arrived around 4:30 am, took a cab to our hotel, and rousted our gracious interpreter, Oksana, out of her bed to help us talk to the hotel operator, who we also rousted out of bed.

(Oksana — her Russian name — is a young Chinese woman from Harbin, in the northeast. She came to Sanya because she has a very marketable skill — she can speak Russian. Perhaps the tropical climate encouraged her, too.)

We slept the rest of the morning, then Oksana showed us around. Then we hit the beach.

Now, I’m used to the summer crowds at Jones Beach and Robert Moses park on Long Island, so it was blessed surprise to find the beach at Dadonghai was not jam packed with people, even for a holiday. The sand and the water were both clean (no trash), and the surf during the first half of the week was really calm — a joy to swim in.

It was cloudy during most of the week, which moderated the temperatures to the mid-20s (that’s the mid- to upper-70s in America-speak) and cut down on the UV radiation. So we didn’t turn into cooked lobsters until Friday. (I am still peeling. Jeez.) It rained only once midweek.

Besides Dadonghai, we also visited the Sheraton beach at Yalongwan to the east. Tatiana advised us that we could use the beach there for free, but not the Sheraton pools or beach chairs. We did anyway, and only once did a Sheraton employee chase us off the chairs. Since the Yalongwan beach was also not crowded, we were not really stealing any chairs from Sheraton guests. The swimming pools were also pretty empty.

The downside of coming after Spring Festival, when it is cold in most of the rest of China and when most Chinese are still hanging with their homies and not touring, are the higher prices. The Ritz-Carlton’s top priced suite was 2500 RMB, or about $367 a night, and the Sheraton’s topped out at 1700 RMB, or about $250 a night. By comparison, our hotel, with no scenic views or fancy accoutrements, was a bargain at 1960 RMB for 6 nights (about $48 a night). We are teachers, after all, not wealthy Russian businessmen.

The beach at Dadonghai was a few minutes’ walk away and Yalongwan was an hour’s ride on a city bus. While there were some pricey restaurants, we also found a cheap little dumpling shop, and of course there were plenty of supermarkets and convenience stores all around. So we could eat cheaply if we wanted to.

Our other excursion was to the hot springs at Sanya Pearl River Nantian Resort, about a half hour from Sanya city. We spent most of the day there, and by the end of it were all very, very relaxed. The entry fee there was about 140 RMB, roughly $20.

For various reasons, I left Sanya before my friends did, and for once my flight was not delayed. I arrived in Changsha on time, spent some time with a friend there, and waited for Grisha, Anya and Nik to arrive so we could return to Jishou together.

My plan was to catch my usual coach at 1 pm , but they assured me their friend had made all the arrangements for our return. I met them near the west bus station, and we piled into a car, which took us … to an entrance ramp on the ChangChang Expressway. Yes, we became one of those hapless passengers who meet the bus on its way to its destination! Their friend assured us that tickets normally would be 100 RMB (true), but because of the holiday they were now 140 RMB. By meeting the bus on the highway, we would save 40 RMB each.

After hearing this yarn, I knew he was probably scamming us, but it was too late to complain. My coach fare to Changsha immediately before and after New Year’s Day was the usual 90-100 RMB. I doubted it would jump to 140 two weeks later. Still, the whole arrangement was not really so awful. We paid 100 each, and although we had to wait on the roadside for an hour, we still met the 1 pm bus and still arrived in Jishou at the usual time. (Though I suspect their friend managed to make some money on the deal somehow.)

So, that’s the end of my Winter Holiday odyssey. Three weeks in the USA, visiting 3 states, one week in Jishou and Changsha, and another week in sunny Sanya. I will not reveal how much money I spent. Suffice it to say I need to stay close to home for a few months to replenish my bank account.

On the one hand, I will be able to see my kids and my relatives again, after 17 months’ separation. On the other, I’ll be apart from my friends here in Jishou, who themselves will scatter to the four winds after exams end on the 20th.

Then, there’s the prospect of flying, which I used to enjoy and now regard as a necessary evil to get from one place to another. (Would someone please invent transfer booths**? Soon?)

My itinerary is as follows. Leave Jishou’s Xiangxi Minzu Hotel at 9:30 am Wednesday by motorcoach to Changsha. Stay overnight in Changsha. Leave the next morning by air to Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport, then transfer by shuttle bus to Pudong Airport for an afternoon flight to Chicago. From there, I’ll go to Indiana or Kentucky, depending on which child picks me up.

I’ll be in the USA for just three weeks. It seems a bit short, after 17 months’ absence, but my travel plans after I return to China dictated a curtailed US visit. My Ukrainian neighbors (two piano teachers plus their son) invited me to join them on a trip to Hainan, China’s version of Hawai’i, during the last week of February. The Chinese New Year is Feb. 13-14 this year, and the days before and after strain China’s transportation network, as people travel home to celebrate with their families.

Imagine Thanksgiving/Christmas travel peaks in the USA, but with significantly more people moving around. Get the picture?

My travel agent advised me that flying back close to Spring Festival would jack up the ticket price by 1000 RMB or more. The cheapest return date he could find was Feb. 8, so we settled on that date. That gives me 10 days to chill out in Changsha and Jishou with my friends before I can thaw out in Hainan.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. My immediate relations now live in three states, so I can spend roughly a week in each location, about the maximum I feel is appropriate. (My uncle Herb, who frequently violated his own maxim, once said that guests are like fish; they begin to stink after three days.) As an ex-pat, I am now in a curious state of “homelessness.” I have no domicile in the USA of my own to return to. Instead, my physical address is “care of” someone else, and I am a guest of whomever I stay with. Yes, my dear children/family/friends, I know you love me, but let’s be frank. Sooner or later, I would need to move on.

I expect my days in the US will be pretty busy. Besides visiting folks and satiating myself on pizza, pasta, decent bread and drinkable beer, I need to sort through the junk I left behind, pack some books to send to myself in China, shop for gifts for my Chinese peeps, take photos and write diaries for my QQ space, and catch up on American TV shows.

At this point, I have one foot in the USA and one in China. Having lived in Jishou for 17 months straight, I’ve become fond of this grubby little city in the middle of nowhere. I have made faculty and “townie” friends, so when my students inevitably graduate I won’t feel so bereft of companionship. There are now several restaurants I like to frequent, and I have sort of figured out where to go to buy things cheaply. In short, Jishou has become my new home, and for a variety of reasons I have decided to stay here longer.

Cases in point. I will probably spend Spring Festival week with two dear friends, a piano teacher from Changsha, and another a student whose grandparents live near the university. Other friends have also invited me to visit Xiangtan (near Changsha), and Fenghuang, Zhangjiajie and other places around Jishou. My Ukrainian friends, Anya, Grisha and Nik, will also be in Changsha after they return from Fujian. So the 10 days between the USA junket and the Hainan trip will be far from boring.

Hainan was once a sleepy little island in the South China Sea. Then someone realized its tropical climate was a lot like Hawai’i's or Phuket’s, and developed it as a vacation getaway. Now Chinese (and Russians, too, as Grisha tells me) have adopted it as their cold-weather retreat. We will stay in an apartment near the beach, at reasonably affordable rates — cheaper than hotel rates by far — for seven days. Expect lots of photos from me, assuming I can conveniently hook into the Internet there. (I’m debating whether to bring my laptop, or just use a nearby netbar. Laptop’s probably going to be easier.)

As they say, details to follow.
——————–
* Journey to the West is a tale well-known to Chinese; in it, four characters travel from China to India to recover sacred Buddhist texts. I have seen at least five different TV versions of it since arriving here.
** Larry Niven proposed transfer booths as part of his “Known Space” universe. For a pittance, one can enter a booth, punch in a destination and immediately appear in a booth far from your original destination. In Niven’s imagination, the first booths shared the same latitude; the next generation were able to correct for different angular momenta so transfer booth users would not be slammed into a wall on arrival.

Predictably, the outage happened while I was out of town and for the most part away from the World Wide Web. So, I had no idea anything was wrong until my buddy notified me by email. I sent a message to Planet Earth Hosting, and 24 hours later, the site was up, good as new.

The occasion for my trip out of town was the big car show in Changsha. Two of my former students were going — one to shop and one to wish — and asked me to join them.

So, Saturday morning I took the coach to Changsha. Also on board was a postgrad friend of mine and her friend. They were going to Changsha to shop and (for one of them) to sit for a qualifications exam. To my delight, the bus company has changed its normal stop — next to a swanky hotel — to a place practically next door to my usual — non-swanky — hotel. It makes catching the return bus a breeze now.

That Saturday, I shopping for some wee Christmas gifties with Tina, one of my former students from Jishou U. Her boyfriend was busy at work, and she was bored, so she squired me around the shopping district to find what I wanted. Meanwhile, she bought some stuff, too.

Maybe this kind of thing is available in the States. If it is, I missed it. So, excuse my ignorance. Here, there are shops where cell phone users can bling their phones with glitter, rhinestones and other such sparkly whatnot. After I got what I needed, we went to a little shop where a woman painstakingly glues bling on cell phones, computers and anything else with a hard, shiny surface. It took her about 45 minutes to customize Tina’s phone around the camera lens.

And yes, I waited patiently in the shop until it was finished. It’s too easy to get lost in some of those shopping malls in Changsha. And, by the way, they have Christmas shopping sales in China, too.

Tina then had to join her boyfriend for dinner, so I dumped my purchases in my room and headed for Carrefour (two blocks east) to buy some badly needed Western food items: spaghetti sauce, tomato paste and pasta, plus some snacks for the weekend.

Sunday morning, my other former student in Changsha, Isabella, called me. We met at her school, Hunan Normal U, and with her cousin took a circuitous bus ride to the car show north of the downtown.

Pretty girls and cars = car show

The last time I was a car show — or at least one that I can remember — was the 1971 International Car Show in Manhattan. My dad and I went, to ogle at the beautiful …. um … cars … yeah, that was it. That show had some concept cars as spice up the pantheon of production models. The Changsha event, while somewhat less glamorous, had Honda’s robot, Asimo, to add some pizzazz.

(I did not actually see Asimo there. The Honda exhibit was surrounded by a crowd at least eight people deep. I could only see the big TV screen showing a movie about Asimo.)

We have read about China’s new wealthy class of citizens, but seeing shiny new Jaguars, Porsches, Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and Ferraris — some with “Sold” signs in the windows — brings the point home more distinctly. No car dealer is going to haul prize merchandise to an exposition center for five days without the expectation of selling at least some of them.

I did not drive it home.

Isabella, her cuz and I stayed just a couple of hours. We were all just window shopping and I had a bus to catch at 3. Tina and her beau stayed to consider which auto they might eventually buy, perhaps with their wedding money next year. Isabella’s cousin wanted to eat Western food, so I suggested Houcaller — a steak place — which I knew was somewhere near my hotel. They got T-bones and I got sirloin plates, for about ¥40 apiece (about $6 — yeah, Americans, cry your eyes out).

Fortified with this filling meal, I boarded the bus for a mercifully uneventful five-hour ride home. The on-board movies were (a pirated copy of) of 2012 and a (probably also pirated) copycat film from Thailand, 2022: The Great Tsunami. These two completed a weekend of disaster movies for me. I’ll blog about that later.

Shaoshan (韶山), a county near Xiangtan, south of the provincial capital of Changsha (长沙), is the ancestral home of Mao Zedong’s family. Mao (毛泽东) was born and raised there, and spent his final decade there in a specially constructed compound for the founder and first Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. As you can probably guess, there are all kinds of touristy places to visit.

The area also lays claim to Mao’s successor, Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇), who hailed from Ningxiang county, near Changsha. Liu was at one point a darling of the great leader, then he fell out of favor during the Cultural Revolution, only to be posthumously rehabilitated as a national hero in the 1980s.

So, we visited museums dedicated to Liu and to Mao, the statue of Mao and a mountaintop garden dedicated to Mao. It was an “all Mao, all the time” weekend, with some unexpected features.

(It was a lot like any version of Windows.)

On Saturday night, our hotel lost power — for the entire night — just after we finished dinner. I am still not clear whether the entire neighborhood went dark, or if it was just our place. (Blue screen of death)

On Sunday afternoon, before we left for Jishou, our tour guide took us to hear a high pressure sales pitch for super-sharp, indestructible tungsten steel kitchen knives. It was like Vince, the Shamwow guy, but in Chinese — though our presenter was much better looking. (Pop-up windows and adware)

On Sunday night, our bus threw a U-joint on the expressway, stranding us for three hours while our driver and two roadside mechanics repaired the driveshaft. (Device driver malfunction)

Other than that, it was a great weekend.

But wait, there’s more!

Last Tuesday, my dean asked if I wanted to join the rest of the faculty on a weekend trip to Shaoshan. This meant it was free, so naturally I accepted. We were to leave early Saturday morning on board a school bus. (Not a Big Yellow, Americans. This is a rather comfy coach with reclining seats and a TV/DVD player … and some maintenance issues, as we discovered later.)

Eighteen of us, including five faculty children, left promptly at 7 am that Saturday, and arrived in Shaoshan in time for lunch. We picked up our tour guide, an energetic young woman in a robin’s egg blue winter coat, just before we stopped for lunch.

Now, I thought lunch was pretty good, but Frank, our assistant dean, said it reminded him of the food in the university eating hall — in other words, not so good. Maybe eating almost every day at the eating hall has ruined my palate, or maybe I just like free food, any kind of free food.

Anyways, from there we went to the Liu Shaoqi Memorial Park.

Liu Shaoqi

Most Chinese parks have an imposing entrance gate and a long, broad stone walkway to a central monument. In this case, the walk leads to a 7.1-meter-tall bronze statue of Liu, apparently deep in thought while holding a pipe. A bilingual plaque notes that the height of the statue corresponds to Liu’s age when he died and to the July 1 anniversary of the founding of the CPC.

Liu and Mao met in 1922, at a regional meeting of the CPC. The memorial hall includes bronze statues of the men meeting at that time, as well as statues, photographs and documents of Liu as a wartime leader and as an important architect of the fledgling Chinese government and economy of the mid-1940s. Many of Liu’s ideas were adopted in the 1970s when China “opened up” China, and are still in practice today.

The park also includes the earth-walled home of Liu, though it was not clear to me whether it is a reconstruction — Liu grew up in Ningxiang, not Shaoshan. Ostensibly, the 21-room house dates from 1871. In addition, a Soviet-made turboprop airplane that Liu used for official state business was installed in the park in 2003, leading me to wonder how they got the thing there. It’s about the size of a DC-9!

Liu Shaoqi's official aircraft

After touring Liu’s park, we headed for the ancestral farm home of Mao. Born Dec. 26, 1893, Mao grew up in Shaoshan, but left in 1910 for further education. He returned in 1921 to begin his involvement in the CPC.

Having walked through the Mao family home, complete with pig and cattle pens, but no livestock, we then left for dinner at our guesthouse in town and a good rest. Having spent the day walking in chilly weather, I was looking forward to a hot shower and warm air in a hotel room. Alas, it was not to be; around 8 pm, as I settled down to mark a pile of vocabulary tests, poof! the lights went out.

Tired as I was, I shelved plans to mark the tests and just went to sleep. I was warm enough under the blankets that I didn’t miss the forced-air heat.

So, the next morning, after breakfast at the hotel (here I agreed with Frank — the food was … eh), we visited the Statue Square of Mao Zedong, where our college leaders left a wreath of flowers at the base of the statue.

Mao Zedong

Then we toured DiShui Dong (“Dripping Water Cave,” but there is no cave — what?), where in the ’60s, the government built for the aging Mao his own countryside retreat, complete with an air raid shelter and an earthquake-proof situation room.

Well, I bet George Washington would have had them, too, if there were airplanes and earthquakes in post-colonial Virginia.

Come to think of it, imagine what our memorials to our Founding Fathers would have been like had photography been invented, say, around 1700 or so. Instead of a few choice paintings, we would see endless photos of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and their buddies standing, sitting, eating, smoking, talking, drinking, signing documents, addressing huge assemblies, riding their horses, sitting in carriages, and so on and so on. You get the idea — boring with a capital B.

I love history, but after about the 50th photo of Mao (or anyone, really), the whole documentation-of-every-waking-hour gets a little tedious. Throw in lots of important looking documents and the occasional video, and all-Mao, all-the-time wears thin pretty quickly.

Back in the day, such a flippant criticism of the great leader probably would have resulted in my immediate deportation. Now, while most Chinese respect Mao for the changes he enabled, they no longer worship him as a demigod. Three decades after his death, Mao is now respected as a mere mortal with flaws.

Lunchtime passed, with another passably good meal, then our energetic guide directed our driver to a building in Shaoshan where we were subjected to a sales pitch.

Those of you in the States who have unwisely agreed to a “free” visit to a timeshare place will recognize the scheme: Offer a free (or reduced price) stay at a resort in exchange for sitting through an excruciating, 45-minute sales pitch.

So, our chipper guide herded us into a small room in which there was a demo table, a mostly empty display case for electric shavers, and two posters extolling the virtues of their super-sharp, indestructible tungsten steel kitchen knives and cleavers. Our “Vince” was a young woman in her early twenties who was, for somewhat kitschy reasons, dressed unflatteringly in an outfit resembling the Red Army’s olive-drab uniform. She proceeded to launch into her sales pitch, complete with hammering an ordinary cleaver and the super-cleaver against a steel pipe and showing us how the super-cleaver still could cut a daikon radish effortlessly. She demonstrated a two-ended vegetable peeler, a chef’s knife, and a waterproof electric shaver (it works underwater! — just in case you want to shave while swimming). And she finished with the usual, “now what would you expect to pay for such fine products?”

Well, that’s what I guessed she said. Naturally, she addressed us only in Chinese, and I was not really interested in getting a translation. I could get the gist of it, having spent too many hours watching infomercials and visiting the Kentucky State Fair. In the end, only one of us bought a chef’s knife (80 yuan) and several us (me included) snagged the peelers (10 yuan each). A complete set of knives, with wooden knife block, would have been 380 yuan.

[I can almost guarantee that the same knives are probably being sold in the US for at least twice as much. I considered buying a set as a gift, but postage would have wiped out the savings and taking knives on an airplane nowadays is a risky affair. So I saved my money.]

By this time, it was about 3:00 and time for us to hit the road.

On the way to Shaoshan, I had noticed our bus made quite a bit of noise, but I figured it was an unbalanced wheel. The university’s buses are usually used only for short trips, so maybe the maintenance crews don’t fuss about rumbly noises.

But as we made our way back home, the rumbling got louder and louder. Twice, our driver pulled over, got out, and walked toward the back end of the bus. I had this sinking feeling that I knew what was causing the noise, because I had heard it before in my own cars.

Dum-da-da-dum {cue spooky music}: Impending universal joint failure. Oh, shit.

[A car talk moment: In ancient times, most cars had engines in the front that drove the wheels in the back. This arrangement required a tube called a driveshaft to connect the two parts. Since the engine doesn't move up and down, but the wheels do, the driveshaft has to have joints like hinges at each end. The "hinges" are at right angles to each other, to allow 360 degrees of movement -- a universal joint.

After long years/miles of service, U-joints get very loose and the parts they are attached to start to vibrate. If the U-joints are really worn out, the little bearings inside can work loose and jam the joint up, then the joint shatters and your vehicle is out of commission.]

By this time, we were on the Changsha-Changde Expressway (the ChangChang), tooling at about 60 mph and hearing an ever louder rumble coming from somewhere under the bus.

Rumble, RUMble, RUMBLE, RUMBLE! RUMBLE !! BANG! … silence.

We coasted onto the shoulder, and the driver got out. And we got out. Men, women and children set off in different directions to go pee, while the driver crawled under the back end of the bus. I looked up in my cell phone the Chinese word for “universal joint” and showed it to him. He said yes, and gave me the thumbs-up, impressed with my mechanical expertise.

A chicken joined us as we stood outside the bus in the chilly evening air. This poor hen apparently had fallen off a truck, and was wandering dazed on the shoulder. Since a low wall kept her from leaving the shoulder, she, with her limited chicken wisdom, decided the best route home was to cross a four-lane divided highway. We tried to convince her otherwise, but finally gave up the debate.

In answer to the timeless riddle, the chicken did not cross the road … entirely. She made it across one and half lanes before being flattened (with a disgusting popping noise) by a semi.

About a half-hour later, an emergency road crew came to effect repairs. Three men managed to get everything back in order after three hours, and we were back on our way. We finally pulled into campus at 12:30 am.

Sometimes, with free travel, you get what you pay for, but in the end it’s usually better than not going at all.

————
* I had always heard that, “May you live in interesting times,” was an ancient Chinese curse — “interesting” implying “too chaotic.” It turns out that it’s not Chinese at all. Some English-speaking dude came up with it.

Given my available funds, and time remaining before classes started here, I decided to fly in to China instead of taking the train. There are no direct flights from Hong Kong to Zhangjiajie, the nearest airport to Jishou. Those flights leave from Shenzhen, so I had to figure out how to get there.

Conveniently enough, there is a coach that departs every half hour from Hong Kong that takes you to a special transfer point. The immigration controls for both Hong Kong and China share the same building, which straddles the border. After leaving there, you board another coach that shuttles you to the airport.

Even more conveniently, for me, the ChinaLink Bus Company leaves from the Elements shopping mall right above a Hong Kong MTR stop (Kowloon station). So, all I needed to do was walk a half block from my hotel to the MTR station at Yau Ma Tei, transfer at Central station on Hong Kong Island (yes, you do not have to take the Star Ferry to cross Victoria Bay!), get off at Kowloon station, go up one floor and walk a short distance to ChinaLink’s depot across from Starbucks.

[My alternate plan was to take the MTR to the intercity rail station, take a train to Shenzhen's rail station, then buy a ticket to Jishou. I rejected this plan, because it would have required an overnight train. As things turned out, it would have made no difference.]

So, set out from the hotel around 11 am, pulling a 20-kg bag and carrying a 10-kg shoulder bag down the street to the Yau Ma Tei station. There are two flights of stairs from street level there to the station proper, so lugging all this gear was not all that pleasant, but doable. The fare to the Kowloon station is HK$4, or about 50 cents. I arrived at the ChinaLink depot in time to board the 12:30 out. Cost for the coach: HK$100, or about US$13.

Around 1 pm, we arrived at the transfer point. I had to fill out a departure card for Hong Kong immigration, which took a few minutes, and got my passport stamped quickly after that. At 1:12, I walked over a yellow line marking the boundary between Hong Kong control and Shenzhen control, walking into mainland China for the first time. Two Chinese immigration officers took their time carefully comparing my visage with my passport photo, now eight years old, eventually deciding that the guy in the picture must be the same one standing in front of them.

In 10 minutes, I was in another coach, which played a melange of soft rock from the US and China, bound for Shenzhen airport. (There’s something eerie about hearing Dan Fogelberg on a bus in China …)

[Shenzhen is a boom town. According to Internet sites, it was once a little cowtown on the Guangdong border with Hong Kong. In short order, the Chinese turned little Shenzhen into a teeming metropolis, with air, highway, bus, rail, and shipping connections, with high rise buildings going up everywhere and shipping containers stacked to the skies.

ThinkPads and iPods are assembled here. So are watches; Shenzhen is reputed to be the watch-making capital of the world. It is China's second-busiest port, after Shanghai. Hong Kong residents cross the border daily to shop here, since Chinese prices are far below Hong Kong's.]

At 2 pm, we arrived at the airport, where I loaded my bags onto another free (!) luggage cart to find the ticket desk of China Southern Airways. My intention was to buy a ticket to Zhangjiajie, arriving that night. One big problem: that flight, the ticket agent told me, doesn’t fly on Saturdays. I’d have to wait a day for the next scheduled flight.

Uffda. My choices were stay in Shenzhen overnight, then catch that flight, or continue on somewhere else. I knew Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, had several trains leaving for Jishou every day, so I decided moving was better than staying another night in a hotel. I bought an economy seat to Changsha, leaving at 3:10, for 860 yuan, or about US$125.

This flight, in an Airbus 320, took about 90 minutes. I arrived in Changsha, collected my luggage, and found the shuttle bus to central Changsha. Cost: 17 yuan, or about US$2.50. (As with all the coaches I had ridden so far, this one had comfortable, airline style seats, and air conditioning.) The terminus for this shuttle is the Civil Aviation Hotel.

By now, it was raining a fair lick, so most of us passengers waited inside the hotel lobby, or under its awnings outside, for the downpour to slacken a little. Once I ventured outside the safety of the hotel, I was mobbed by taxi drivers wanting my business. They were pretty insistent, but I knew from The Rough Guide to China that the train station is just a few blocks from the hotel. I’d rather walk in the rain, thanks.

Once I approached the station (an imposing building that looks like it should be a train terminal, with a big clock on top), an intrepid local pounced on me, offering to tote my heavy bag for 10 yuan. I figured, why not. He couldn’t go far lugging that monster on his shoulder. The two of us trudged through the crowds toward the terminal entrance.

Now this fellow either didn’t travel much in the train, or he assumed I already had a ticket, because we walked right past the ticket office. I’m used to US rail stations, where you buy your tickets in the same building as the trains stop. The Changsha ticket office is outside the actual terminal, in a shopping-center-like wing adjacent to the station. My porter and I went through the security checkpoint at the station entrance before we both finally realized that tickets are outside.

The ticket office was organized chaos. The Chinese are not real good at queuing up calmly and orderly. It’s more like everyone for himself. (City street traffic is like this, too.) I was able to pronounce “Jishou” (吉首 are the first Chinese characters I learned. You need to be able to read the departure board!) clearly enough for the woman at the ticket window to issue me a ticket. I did not successfully convey the idea that I wanted a sleeper, however. So, I got a soft seat for 82 yuan, or US$12.

Not ideal, but after sitting in an overly firm airline seat for 15 hours, I figured 8 hours in a train seat could not be much worse. I’m still debating that point with myself.

Departure time was 10:58, so I had a three-hour wait. Not too bad.

Imagine, however, if all the driving commuters and airline passengers in your hometown had to take the train instead. Add to that the busy schedule of the Chinese rail network, which boggles my imagination. Trains arrive and depart from Changsha every 20 to 30 minutes or so. I would wager, then, there were probably ten of thousands of people teeming inside the huge Changsha station while I waited for my train, the N566.

After some false starts, I finally found the correct waiting area for the N566. Changsha has four waiting areas, plus special waiting rooms for soldiers, women with babies, soft-bed passengers and VIPs. Waiting area 1 accommodated passengers for at least 15 trains. TVs along the wall had on some Bloomberg program, but no one was paying attention. There was just too much noise. Eventually, a large contingent of passengers boarded their train and I was able to snag a seat.

{I should point out, as if it were not obvious, that I was likely the only Caucasian in the waiting room. I ran into Aussies and Brits at the Shenzhen and Changsha airports, but I saw none in the rail depot.)

Two young men struck up a conversation with me. One, a college student, helped me locate a public phone so I could call ahead and tell my people in Jishou (吉首) what on earth I was doing, and he made sure that I understood I should wait for the red announcement boards to light up, so I would queue up at the right time. The announcements of train departures were basically useless to me, and not just because I can’t understand Chinese. Train attendants were using bullhorns that were barely audible over the din of the multitude.

Finally, boarding time arrived. Here again, the Chinese approach of “everyone for himself” in a line meant that all of these passengers were all trying to push their through a narrow gate at the same time. You cannot be polite or timid here; when in Rome, as they say.

I can’t say I blame them, actually. Boarding call is just 20 minutes before the train pulls out. If the train is made up of a dozen or more cars, you might (as I did) have a long walk. So everyone hustles to get on board. I suspect missing the train requires one to go back to the ticket office to get a new fare. I did not even want to contemplate that possibility.

It was nighttime, so there was no scenery to keep me awake. My fellow passengers in car 11 were just as worn out as I was, so conversation was pretty much not in the cards. No one was talking much, except for a group of five boisterous teens who didn’t crash for the night until nearly 2 am. So, we weary travelers trundled through the night at an average speed of 65 kph (40 mph). Not as quick as flying, but perhaps more interesting.

NEXT: I arrive (finally)