Arriving

Well, I'm here.

After a tolerable flight across the Pacific, I'm back in Beijing for the fourth time in two years. The pollution is worse than I remember it, which is kind of disturbing because I didn't think it could get any worse. The city, of course, is still just as insane as I expected. Luckily this time I'm a little more comfortable wielding Chinese on the fly, so when the taxi driver couldn't find my hostel, I was able to jump out of the taxi and ask a hotel security guard for directions, and when the hostel receptionist started to make things complicated, I could talk my way through it without having to pull out my translator. I know these sound like pretty small issues, but for me the resolution of each of these issues was still a victory in my mind. They validated my progress in adapting to China and using Chinese. But the biggest validation - in terms of my Chinese progress - came today at the Beijing Train Station.

Backing up a bit: my friend Barney* and I have been planning to kick off our semesters with a trip to this place called Changbai Mountain. It's theoretically the origin point of the Korean people, which helps explain Barney's interest, and one of the most beautiful natural wonders of China, which explains mine. There are just two catches to travelling here: it's only open for a limited time in the warmest part of the year, and it's a logistical nightmare to reach. The limited time frame is due to the frigid temperatures reached along these mountains in the winter months. The nightmare is basically due to the fact that Changbai Mountain is located on the China-North Korea border, and also is currently in the middle of a typhoon's path. Don't worry, we delayed our plans a day to catch the mountain after the storm.

With those logistical issues in mind, Barney and I both did some research and decided to opt for the 24-hour train ride from Beijing to a city called Yanji, the capital of China's Korean Autonomous Prefecture, and then take a local bus for two hours down to the border town of Erdaobaihe, where our hostel is located. We'll be leaving at 1:10 pm tomorrow and arriving in Yanji at 1:07 pm the next day. If anyone has suggestions on how to avert boredom for 16 hours (providing we sleep for 8 of the 24), please leave them in the comment section below.  We have cards, DVDs, and Kindle books, and I guess each other, but 16 hours is still a long time.

Now in order to get the tickets we had to go down to the Beijing Train Station and procure them at the ticket office, a feat much easier said than done. Luckily, this website called huoche.com made things a lot easier before going, since I could look up every train in China based on where I wanted to go to/from, what the train number was, and what trains ran through each station.

Pro tip #1 Even if you think you know where you're going, and simply use the origin-->destination method to find the train that you think you need, click on the train number to see all the stations the train goes to. It might help you realize that the train you thought you needed to board actually goes to a town on the complete opposite end of China that happens to share a name with the town you want to go to. Not that anyone (like me) would ever come close to making this mistake, but it could happen (to me).

After some research along these lines, Barney and I decided we were going to take the K215 from Beijing to Yanji in one of the soft bed cabins. However, when we finally got to the train station and looked at the ticket availability board, all of the soft beds were gone; the train only had hard beds left. Given we couldn't afford to delay another day, we opted for the hard beds instead, even though they don't offer as much privacy. But really, anything is better than riding in a hard seat for 24 hours, which would have been our last option. With that decided, I got in line at a pretty solid looking ticket window, only to have the ticket agent go on break right before my turn at the window. Barney and I rushed to get in line at another window, and by that time I had written down exactly what kind of ticket we needed to get.

Pro tip #2 When buying train tickets in China using less-than-perfect Chinese, write down:

• the train number 
• the origin and destination stations
• hard or soft + seat or bed (硬 or 软 + 座 or 卧)
• (for beds) upper (上), middle (中), or lower (下) bunk 
• the number of tickets you need. 

Giving the written information to the ticket agent drastically speeds up the process, and it reduces the chance of miscommunication. While figuring out what kind of ticket to get had been somewhat difficult, actually buying the tickets was super easy.

Now Barney and I have two tickets to Yanji for tomorrow, and I've purchased my first Chinese train tickets without a native helping me every step of the way! 

And that, my friends, is validation.


*Name has been changed