Day 11, 12, 13: China and Shanghai

backtrack blog...

due to some setbacks and a deadline to reach Hong Kong by March 24, we had to zip through the northern part of China by overnight bus and train.  the only things i can say about mainland China are landscapes seen and impressions felt through dirty windows.

overnight sleeper bus

dad sleeping

dinner stop.  where we had to scarf down dinner in 10 minutes.

China is huge.  and the people quite aggressive (at the stations at least).

the suburbs, there seems to be a lot of them, are a bit desolate.
yet big, brick, block buildings (BBBB) are always in construction...while the huge BBBB next door over still has empty and dirtied store spaces in them.  there's something sad about this situation, and maybe it's just me, but i sense a sort of longing or hope that the town will eventually flourish.

not the best example

the countryside though, seems a bit more natural.  natural not just in the sense that there's more green, but also in the fact that the amount/style of buildings, homes, vehicles, roads, and people seem to make more sense.  less BBBB's but homes/huts made of wood and cement with roofs shaped to fit the weather.  during daylight, men/women, old/young are farming, still using water buffaloes to plow their land, lugging crop in two baskets hung over their shoulders by a pole, and when it comes evening, you see them hanging out with family on their porches.

a quick 12-hour stop in Shanghai where we got tricked into getting an expensive taxi which took us to a train station far far away...when the actual station we needed to be at was right in front of where the bus had landed.  major chaos in getting to the correct (and original) departing station, not enough cash on hand upon purchasing the ticket, catching Reiko and Eri Masunaga at the airport for a quick "hello," getting "shampooed" at a local salon, walking down Yoen, and catching the direct train to Hong Kong at 6pm.  people really love to hang their clothes on trees and balconies here.

how the heck?

chair salesman (and woman)

school trip

line to get through the gate.  we had to learn the hard way, how to not let others cut in.

it was dad's decision not to travel by air, and as much as possible to use the cheapest transportation available.
our first bus ride was 17 hours, followed by a train ride - 20 hours.  it's quite boring at first, especially after the lights turn out and there's nothing you can really do other than to talk to yourself.  you get used to it though, and i realized i hadn't had the time (nor put in the effort) to hear my own voice for a long long time...was it in college?  i don't know.  but the time was quite valuable.
also, travelling by land puts you on the same ground as the landscape and people.  this seems to make everything more real.  the hours spent on the long long rides allow me feel the vastness of the land rather than seeing it on a map.  it may seem like a waste of time to not really doing anything, sometimes i get restless, but it's been worth it so far.
as we head south, dad notices something that i didn't even care to look at.
"the flowers are blooming."  and he was right.
as we traveled further south, it seemed like we were fast-forwarding time and hurrying ourselves into Spring. maybe human's have already invented the time machine :)

hard-sleeper (left is dad, right is old man)

and speaking of dad, we shared our hard-bed room on the train with a man and his parents.  the aggressiveness of the people in China is scary to me at times, but it's full of life force.  and i see strongly that they place so much importance on family and continuity of life.  it was so nice to see the man taking care of his 80+ year-old father who slept in the bed next to my dad's.