Tuesday, Aug 14, 2018
Beijing-Pingyao
In a Medieval Mode:
On cue, we awoke at 5.30 am, washed, packed up last minute items, picked up packed breakfast and left with Frank to find a taxi at the end of the road to take us to Beijing West Railway Station. By 6.10 am, we are in a cab and by 7.00 am, we are at the station which seemed like a million miles away. We had our tickets in our hands as we looked for the entrance to a massive station. It was our first introduction to the manner in which Rail China works, to the ways in which over a billion people are shepherded through the corridors of a travel network that works like clockwork with almost no delays or confusion. By the end of our travels in China, I wished so ardently that India would learn from this neighboring competitor how a country is run and what makes it work.
So here is the drill and we learned it pretty quickly. Huge electronic boards provide arrival and departure information as at any international airport. Each train has a number (no names as in India). Names might be romantic (The Taj Express, The Rajdhani, etc, but they are inefficient in conveying concise information to travelers). Train numbers and departure times appear on these electronic boards and are updated every few seconds. But in addition to this information, what appears on the boards are Waiting Room Numbers—which actually tell passengers, based on the number of their train, which Waiting Room to go to before they get to their platforms! This was a novel concept for us and one we have never seen in any other country in the world. For example, we were meant to get to Waiting Room Number 3–all clearly signposted in Chinese and English. En route, you pass by shops that sell travel food (noodles in buckets are ubiquitous—you add hot water and you have a meal), drinks, fresh fruit, gift boxes. Every Chinese traveler carries food on to trains—all neatly packaged. They each have their bucket, drink and fruit—dragon fruit is popular, as are oranges.
In the Waiting Room, if you are lucky, you will find a seat—usually they are all taken. The Waiting Room is a huge hall with hundreds of seats. Every so often, on more electronic boards, the number of your train will show up. As it comes closer to the time of departure, the number of your train will turn green—otherwise the numbers stay red—and the platform number will be announced. At the same time, the gates open—they are also controlled electronically although there is always a Railway official to supervise the comings and goings of all those millions who go through the turnstile. You show him your ticket as you go through the turnstile. From this point, you proceed to your platform, usually a floor below and reachable by an escalator (passengers usually have wheeled baggage). Your ticket has the car and seat number clearly printed on it. Car numbers are painted on the platforms—so you know where to stand if your train has not arrived yet (as happened at Xian) or you can get to your car by reading the electronic lit-up number at the door of each car. You get in (there are usually railway personnel to help you along), find your car and seat and settle down for the journey. Like I said, it runs like clockwork and we were continually impressed. Our departures were never late and we never experienced any confusion, despite the complete lack of linguistic communication.
As I said, since we picked up the last two seats on the train, Llew was in Car 6, I was in Car 12. It was a Through train—you could walk from one end to the other through cars that were spotlessly clean and beautifully organized with space at the front and back for baggage. Small backpacks were placed on overhead racks. When I found that a single man sat at the window of my row of three seats and that a young couple sat across the aisle from me on a two seater row, I asked the young man if he could speak English. He said, A Little. I then asked if he would request the man at the window to switch seats with my husband who was in Car 6. He did so and the man (an angel?) immediately agreed. I led him to Car 6 where he switched seats with Llew who was surprised and delighted that I had managed to orchestrate the switch for a long 4 hour journey in a high speed train.The third person had also arrived—a lovely woman who happened to have burned her leg really badly. She gave Llew the window, I sat in the middle and she sat in the aisle. Everyone was happy! I had pulled a small coup, given lack of proficiency in Chinese!
It was a very long journey to Pingyao, a place of which neither one of us had heard before we set out. Lonely Planet had extolled it as one of the Must See Places in China. It is a perfectly preserved medieval town made of grey stone (walls and roofs) that has seen no change in centuries. This is what China looked like when dynasties like the Qing and Ming were in power, the book said. I was eager to experience that side of the country too—parts of it that time forgot. I wanted to wander into a Chinese epic of the Middle Ages and lose myself in its ambience. At Pingyao, we did.
Almost 4 hours later, in a high speed train, with about 6 stops before ours, we arrived in Pingyao. Our train left Beijing at 8.10 and arrived in PIngyao at noon. Throughout our journey, the young man and his girl friend were incredibly helpful as they could interpret for us.They also had phones with internet connections (there are chargers but no internet on the train) and used them to help us plan our onward journeys—for we had learned, by this stage, that train tickets are not just available for the asking. For instance, we soon discovered that the train we wished to take that would leave Pingyao for Xian tomorrow, had not a single seat on it. Through their good offices, we also discovered that there was a 9.00 pm train leaving Pingyao tonight for Xian (our next destination) that would arrive at Xian tomorrow morning at 7.00 am. We could sleep on the train. As there are no other train tickets for Xian from Pingyao, it is a no brainer. We thought on our feet and decided to take that night train to Xian. We would buy tickets when we arrived at Pingyao. We also asked the young man to look for onward tickets from Xian to Luoyang for us—our next port of call. He told us that there was a train leaving Xian at 8.10 am day after tomorrow that will arrive in Luoyang at 10.15 am. We decided to buy those tickets at Pingyao as well. We had saved a day for Luoyang—so we’d stay right on track (pun unintended) that way. And so it was that without having internet connections ourselves, and without any ability to speak Chinese, we were able to garner the vital information we needed to go forward in our travels. Angels appeared everywhere to help us and we were deeply grateful for their assistance. We often felt like the couples on the realty show ‘Amazing Race’—for we were often thinking on our feet and moving on to Plan B at a moment’s notice. Were it not for the fact that we are seasoned international travelers, this sudden and frequent alteration in itinerary would have felt very scary. Phew!
Arrival in Pingyao:
At 12 noon, we arrived at Pingyao. There was no one to meet our train although Frank in Beijing had told us that he would phone our hotel and have someone meet us. Every other foreigner that alighted at Pingyao (and there were a handful of French tourists), had escorts who took them to waiting car and whizzed them away. The young man helped us again with his phone but the number I had for our hotel was wrong and no one knew where it was! We decided to get to the Ticket Office to take care of our onward journeys first. Here too the young couple helped us interpret for the ticket clerk.
Finally, after we had bought our tickets and weighed various options—whether to look for a Left Luggage place (which was non-existent) or not, we discovered the correct phone number for the hotel; but they said that they had no booking in our name. Since I had spent only $10 for that hotel, through Booking.com, we decided to write it off. We’d have to find another hotel. Knowing that we would be in Pingyao for just one day with train tickets to leave on the sleeper train that night for Xian, the young couple offered to take us to their hotel and to permit us to leave our luggage at the Reception there! We were so grateful, we did not even demur. They also shared their cab with us—a 20 yuan ride—but they do not take any money from us (saying it was pre-paid). We told them that we would like to take them out for lunch once they had checked into their hotel. They agree.
It was a very long ride—about 20 minutes to ‘Pingyao Ancient City’. But we saw the Old City walls soon—it is the city with the best preserved medieval walls in China that date from 1370, the time of the Ming dynasty. The entire Ancient City lies within these walls. Once inside, we were enchanted. It reminded me so much of Dubrovnik—except that Dubrovnik is nestled in the Adriatic Sea. Pingyao is a superbly planned city with North, South, East and West gates that contained watch towers. There are 72 watch towers in all, each containing a paragraph from Sunzi’s ‘The Art of War’. The walls can be scaled in the same way that Chriselle and I scaled those of Dubrovnik. It was exciting wheeling our bags through its cobbled streets —the main avenue of which is called Nan Dajie (where we spent most of our time) as we took in our first sights of its shops, houses (built in the hutong style, as was our Beijing hotel) and its ancient ambience. The couple found their hotel, checked in, secured our bags behind the Reception Desk (it was a modern hotel in an old building) and we set out to find a place for lunch. We told the Receptionist that we would be back at 7/00 pm for our 9.45 pm train.
Lunch in Pingyao:
The young man asked us what sort of food we would like to eat—we told him to choose as anything would be fine by us. He chose a place that he told us would have ‘staple food’—we realized soon that what he meant as ‘traditional food.’ Pingyao is located in the Shanxi region of China and has a very distinctive cuisine that centers on rice—broad rice noodles are a staple, as are peanuts and dried red chilies. We discovered at lunch time that the young man was called Baibing and that he was a director of commercial firms; he is from Shanxi originally—so he knows the cuisine well. His partner was called Joya and she was a film script writers. They chose the menu: thick rice noodles in a thin soy sauce; another tube-like broad rice noodle that resembled cannelloni with a bit of ham and scallions to flavor it. I choose a dish with peanuts that were well spiced with red chilies and we ordered pork with mushrooms. Everything was simply delicious. After lunch, for which we insisting on paying, they refused to take our money and treated us to the meal by saying ‘Welcome to China’. Unbelievable. And mortifying. Joya understood English well, but does not speak it. Baibing does. God knows what we would have done without them.
After lunch, we take pictures with them, exchange contact details, then bid them goodbye so that they can explore the town without feeling overwhelmed by our presence. We then explore the place on our own. We have only a few hours, but they are ample, as Pingyao is a small town and if one is not a student of Chinese history or architecture, it can be seen in a short time.
Exploring Pingyao:
There is a 3-day pass for 130 yuan valid for 22 sites, all historic, all associated with preservation of the architecture and the original buildings of the town. No tickets are sold for individual sites. So if you wish to see just one or two of the historic buildings in the one day that might be at your disposal, you cannot. It is all 22 or none at all! Built around the concept of the courtyard (like the Beijing hutongs), they are all very similar. Outside, they are very decorative but they are all in uniform grey brick and stone with pagoda-like roof lines and decorative accents—dragons, lions, etc.
The place was crowded—so many Western tourists and so many Chinese visitors had converged upon it. Streets are lined with shops selling traditional and ancient arts and crafts from calligraphy and lacquerware to antiques and Amber jewelry and tourists have a field day picking up souvenirs. Lots of restaurants offer local delicacies—rice noodles dominate here (not wheat), peanuts aplenty are seen with dark red dried chilies, eaten as a snack and used as an ingredient in the cooking. We roamed from street to street to take it all in but it was very hot and we were very tired after our Great Wall excursion of yesterday. I had aching calves. Tynonol and Moov made them better as the days go by but every muscle in the back of my legs were protesting. We took cool refuge in an upscale jewelry store selling handmade silver articles from bracelets to teapots. We took in the outside of the Rischeng Financial Market (the former bank). It is a Museum today and has a hundred rooms. Chinese banking began in this little town, in this modest, one-storyed house. We also strolled to the Confucius Temple—another highlight of the place. We loved the extensive ceramic tile work on the roof of the latter and on the decorative elements that features dragons and other exotic mythological animals.
Everwhere Pingyao looked very festive as store and house fronts are strung its bright red lanterns with trailing tails. In fact, entire streets were hung with these decorations that come into their own during the Chinese New Year. We were told that because this is the holiday season, the lanterns are decorating the place. At night, Pingyao must look stunning with the soft rosy glow of hundreds of these lamps brightening the streets. Sadly, we did not stay long enough to find out.
Journey to Xian:
By 5.00 pm, we were exhausted and decided to return to the station to sit in AC comfort until our 9.45 pm sleeper train to Xian. We picked up our bags and wheeled then out via a stinking back street—hoping to avoid the crush of tourists and the shops. We found the same taxi driver who dropped us off in the morning lurking at the entrance. He was extremely excited to see us again and welcomed us like long-lost friends. We toldhim to take us to Pingyao station. There we discovered that we were at the wrong one—we were at the High Speed Station (the one at which we had alighted in the morning) and should have been at the regular one which is much closer to the Old Town. We found the same taxi driver still waiting outside and he took us to the right place—another 20 yuan later. Such mishaps became part of our daily routine in China: how were we to know that each town had two stations—a modern hi-tech one with sleek hi-speed trains and an old one (serving local trains). We did not realize that the trains has different names and that our tickets indicated the difference. We made he same mistake, a few days later, in Hangzhou!
Once at the right station, we found the coolest spot in which to cool our heels for the next couple of hours. Knowing how much my calves ached, Llew left his case with me and decided to look for something to eat outside the station; but he returned in 20 minutes having drawn a blank. There is nothing out here, he said. It is a very industrial zone. I found it hard to believe that there were no eateries close to a railway station and I decided to try my luck. Just a few meters away, I found a string of roadside restaurants with very earthy food served at pavement tables packed with patrons. Without speaking, using only actions, gestures and sounds, I managed to purchase two bowls of thin rice noodles with peanuts, celery and carrots in a spicy thin sauce that cost me almost nothing—perhaps one of the cheapest meals we have ever eaten while traveling. The sauce flavored the noodles and made for a very good if very modest dinner which we ate at the station while awaiting the boarding time for our train.
At 9.30 pm, our slow night train arrived to take us to Xian. It came on time and we made our way into it, deeply excited at the prospect of spending a night in a Chinese train. It took me back to childhood journeys over the Indian sub-continent with my family when we would have a four-sleeper coupe to ourselves and when we imagined we were in our own private castle or on a ship cruising through the world. The Chinese train is very similar to the ones I remembered from my Indian childhoods. We have a four-sleeper coupe with lower bunks—two young Chinese guys were on the upper ones. They greeted us when we entered but then minded their own business. The train slow-creaked and shuddered its way all along keeping us awak for at least a couple of hours—until we both took Zolfresh, a mild sleeping pill that lulled us to sleep.
When we awoke it was 5.30 am—the train had arrived half an hour ahead of schedule. We were in Xian.
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