The Train to Tai Yuan

30/05/02

We staggered onto the 6.30 am train to find that the standing room only carriage actually did have seats, but that they were all taken, with a mass of passengers standing all around them. The train had begun in Shanghai, and was packed with people going home for the holiday to visit family. The deal was that you paid for a standing ticket, but if someone got off and vacated their seat, you could sit down on it. This meant that the carriage was full of folk literally standing for a seat, politicking, deal making, cajoling those lucky enough to be sitting, but who were getting off before the train reached Tai Yuan. There were far too many people to each get a seat, however, and we were faced with a potential eleven-hour stand. Gina gulped and gasped like a fish caught on the hook then thrown onto the dock. She began to talk about how nice Qingdao sounded, couldn't we jump off at the next station and go there instead? Clive and I told her we were going to stick to our original plan. The plan we'd worked out months ago. The plan she'd insisted upon gatecrashing, after finding that her other travel arrangements had fallen through. She pulled a face and muttered under her breath.

At the next stop, Jinan, Gina suddenly put on her authoritative voice and said:

'RIGHT!'

We watched her fumble with her suitcase and push her way to the train doors. She turned to look at us.

'Are you coming?'

Clive and I looked at each other, faced with the choice of enjoying the holiday which we'd planned, and Gina had parachuted herself in upon, and leaving her on her own in a strange city in the middle of China, or going with her. Clive slowly shook his head. I nodded. We were staying. To our astonishment, Gina stepped down from the carriage and stomped off into the busy train station. Unaware of our domestic chagrin, the train pulled away on its inexorable route, and took Clive and I with it, Gina-less. She didn't even say goodbye. We're a bit worried about her. She's never been on her own in China before, and I think she's suffering from one of the longest culture shocks in the history of travel. But it was her choice, in the end.

After seven hours of standing with a little guy's elbow nestled into the base of my spine, it was announced that there were some hard sleeper bunks now available. I fought my way to the booth, upgraded our tickets and, at the next stop, Clive and I lugged our rucksacks along the platform, along the length of the train, and made it to carriage number 15 (from carriage number 5) just in time. The next four hours passed much more pleasantly. We talked to some Tai Yuan locals, including an intelligent graduate who was studying English and American literature in Shanghai, and a kind female English teacher who recommended to us the hotel we're staying in, the Railway Hotel, which is adequate, fairly cheap, although dingy in its brown, green and beige colours and a little mouldy-smelling.

The landscape of Shanxi province is fascinating and ancient in a dry, bleached-out way. It's called 'The Yellow Land' as, the further inland you get, the more parched the earth becomes, rivers drying up, mountains yellow and dusty, the newly-arrived sun beating down from a clear blue sky on a sickly, barren, desert opus of huge flat plateaus skirted by shimmering yellow-brown peaks. As the journey progressed, the narrow river that snaked desperately through the dirt gradually became narrower, shallower, until it eventually ended up a dry creek. The thin strips of paddy fields and cypress trees, built on irrigated banks with thin rivulets of water diverted towards them, wither and disappear. All that's left is stone and dust and sun. The train goes through numerous dark tunnels, blasted straight through the yellow mountains, with a huge honk of its horn. Thirty-odd black entrances into the unknown on our eleven hour trip.

Shanxi's economy is driven by coal. Every place glimpsed from the mucky window of our train- crumbling little towns and cities that looked like they needed a refreshing drink of cold water and then a good wash- were mining towns. I was told that the city of Datong is home to China's biggest coal mine, some 300,000 men working there, and that the town is so singularly reliant on its coal, the people's faces have taken on the colour of their money: black. This may have been middle-class snobbery from my travelling companions, most Chinese believing dark skin signifies rural backwardness. This stereotype is exacerbated by the fact that, as rural poverty (the farmers prohibited from owning the land they farm, which belongs to the government) increases in China, so does the population of migrant workers.

Tai Yuan is witnessing a huge influx of peasant farmers looking for jobs in the city, searching for that imagined yellow-brick road in 'The Yellow Land' that will take them away from their rural poverty and make them rich city-dwellers. Many parents work all the hours of the day in the city, to send money home to fund their children's education, the children being brought up by their grandparents. This migration is inter-provincial, many of the immigrants being from the northwest province of Xin Jiang, which is home to a large ethnic minority population, the people looking more like Uzbekistanis or Afghans than Han Chinese. These people are blamed by the Han Chinese for any crime from theft to murder. The graduate student with whom I was happily talking literature, shocked me with a sudden outburst of narrow-mindedness.

'You must be careful in Tai Yuan. There are many Xin Jiang people, and they are dangerous. They will take a knife and kill you for your shoes.'

'That happens in the UK and America too, you know, ' I countered. 'Especially if you're wearing the new Adidas or Nike. And don't you think some Han Chinese commit crimes too?'

This wasn't a very smart remark. It just made him angry.

'No! You do not understand. These people are poor and have no morals. They are low-quality people.'

He actually said that. Low-quality people. So, you take over your neighbour's land, exploit their resources, force them to toe the Party line, then brand them second-class citizens for their trouble. And all in the name of 'The People'. Old Karl Marx'll be turning in his grave. The literature student was talking of the Xin Jiang ethnic minority like some kind of untouchable caste. I mumbled some argument that in every country, every people, there were good and bad, and we mustn't generalise, but he was adamant, prefered to talk rather than listen, and never let up on the subject until eventually giving me some respite by going to the toilet. Clive had been listening to our conversation with some amusement and said, with an ironic twinkle in his eye:

'I bet he's a government spy. You know, the government has spies everywhere, and for some of them, their mission is to talk to foreigners and weed out the bad seeds. Watch what you say.'

The literature graduate came back from the toilet, and we eyed him suspiciously.

Instead of a seedy and dangerous Sodom or Gomorrah, however, we found in Tai Yuan a busy, rough-and-ready vibe, a mixture of well-dressed young people walking arm-in-arm from KFC to the nearest nightclub, and crowds of swarthy workers playing cards, Chinese chess, or just gossiping vehemently on the street corners. Scores of children were skipping and playing tag. The trees were in leaf, the night almost balmy, the city a work unfinished, beaten old dirt-encrusted buildings, like has-been boxers, going toe-to-toe with spanking new skyscrapers and department stores; like any other middle-sized city in this country, in fact.