The Train to Kaifeng

Luoyang train station was brutal. Guards strutted up and down, barking orders at us through loud-halers from a distance of two feet. We were herded into long, straight queues, shouted at if we so much as put one foot out of line, then marched onto the platform like captured animals.

Then all hell broke loose.

The train only stopped at the platform for six minutes. Although the three of us were near the front of our queue, it became a battle of life or death to get on the train. The guards with the loud-halers had disappeared, leaving everyone to fight it out. The line-ups disintegrated into a jostling mob, pushing and shoving around the doors of the carriages. As I pulled myself up the ladder I had to stick my elbows into two people who were scrambling up the side-rails to get on before me. Another guy was hanging on to my big backpack, wrenching at it, trying to pull me off the ladder, my shoulder blades burning with the weight. I turned and punched him. There seemed nothing else I could do.

I managed to get on the train but didn't make it to a carriage. Around twenty people, including Tam, Danuka and I, were crushed into the small space between the two carriages, unable to move, sweating and groaning and wriggling painfully. In Harbin I had seen pigs on the caged back of a truck, squashed in so tight the poor animals around the edges had been crushed to death. That's what it felt like. I couldn't, and tried not to, imagine staying like this all the way to Kaifeng.

A little boy was pinned against the wall, crying shrilly. His father was talking to him frantically, but couldn't get to him. The heat became intense. The guard, a pretty, petite young woman with full ruby lips, was fighting at the doorway with people still trying to get on, although there wasn't an inch of space for them. The crowd brandished their tickets angrily and tried to pull her out of the carriage. She was screaming, screaming at them to get off, get back, crying her eyes out. as they grabbed at her arms. I began to fear she'd lose her fight and bedlam would ensue in this asphyxiating space. Luckily, the train then pulled away. However, that left us with a different problem: five hours of this.

Someone nudged me and I looked round, expecting another confrontation. A man said, in perfect English:

'Hello. Can I help you?'

I must have done a double take, as he repeated the question.

'Can I help you?'

Help. Yes. Sounded good. But I couldn't see for the life of me how. By that time a couple of people on either side of our sardine can had popped through the sides to the carriages left and right, not so much by design but because of the sheer pressure pushing them against and through the doors. We had a miniscule amount of elbowroom. Summoning the last of the air left in my constricted lungs, I explained to him that if he could help us upgrade our tickets to, well, anything better than this, we would be eternally grateful. He shouted something to the little guard in Chinese. She produced a calculator, and told us the price of available hard sleepers. We'd been told at the station there were no hard sleepers left, but seemingly there was. I shoved some money at the girl, and she pocketed it, gesturing at us to follow her. Suddenly, she got her second wind, a surge of confidence. She carved out a way for us to get out of that confined space, and dragged us into the long line of carriages. I asked the guy to come with us, we'd pay, as a thank you, but he shook his head, smiling in wry, fatalistic fashion, comfort isn't for the likes of me y'know, and told us he'd be all right where he was.

It was a long, long walk through all those carriages with our heavy backpacks. People everywhere: whole families on one seat, old men hunkering down under tables, people lying on the luggage racks, more people strewn across the floor like spilled trash, with what looked like all their belongings, in massive red and white striped plastic bags, clogging up the aisles. The girl finally showed us to our bunks, in a carriage only half-full! I felt terrible for the poor people, especially our helpful friend, still stuck in that horrible sardine-can, when we now had this spacious carriage. I pushed the feelings of guilt down, deep down; I was becoming a survivor, a train warrior, a backpacking example of will to power. The girl smiled at our beleaguered but relieved expressions, and I quelled an urge to propose marriage.

We needed a drink. We left our rucksacks in the quiet carriage to look for the buffet car. We found it, near deserted, the only people in it policemen, guards and a crew of cooks dressed in dirty whites, playing cards. We sat down and ordered three cold beers. They looked at us contemptuously, said something in Chinese that we presumed to mean we shouldn't be there. We played our trump - the ignorant foreigner card - shrugged, looked confused, then one of the cooks got up, laughing, to bring us three bottles of cold beer. From being amongst the unluckiest passengers on the train, we were now by far the luckiest. We'd won the last hand, even if it had been rigged for us, as foreigners, in our favour. An image of the squashed little boy invaded my relief. Again, I squashed it down, squashed him down, as if it were me squashing him against the hot carriage wall, and still I sighed with relief. We had a bunk, a cold beer, and a buffet car. We'd survived.