Pingyao
[27-08-2000]
The Train Journey: Having succesfully negotiated our way out of the tea room without offending the proprietor, we managed to dump our stuff in the official left luggage area (mortuary stylee) and minced off around a Beijing Cuban Bar for a couple of hours getting pissed. The bar was called Havana, and the only other people in the crazy outside sofa type place was a TV crew and an indo-mexican-glaswegian-chinese rock band. Being discouraged from breathing by the Gloria Estefan music, we succeded in getting the staff to pump out `sensemillia, marijuana' while the interview was being shot. Chinese television promoting the use of Class B illegal substances? No. After some coffee at the dead posh SwissOtel (which cost as much as a small car) we returned to the station. It was dark, and the station had acquired an evil smelling crowd in our football pitch sized waiting room. And this was only waiting room no.7. Jo explained to me that this was the hard seat crowd, and they were queueing up to get seats as they all had unassigned tickets. Then Jo explained that we would be travelling like this on some parts of the journey. This made me panic a bit, but nothing that a sit down and Fanta couldn't sort out. It is hard to find anywhere that isn't 4 metres away from your nearest Fanta/Sedatives stall. We managed to get on the train and sort of did a tower of hanoi trick to get our bags snuggled up safely. The train has about 12-14 carriages, with about half sleeper sleeper and half sitty sitty (more about sino-english later). Each sleeper has about 10 compartments with triple bunks on each side of the compartment. I make that about 40,000 people on each train, or something similar. The bed's are naturally hard, and it was exceedingly hot for most of the evening, but having dug myself in with Jo, ready for a grueling 15 hour ride, we were woken up at 0700, 10 hrs after we had left, to be told that our stop was half an hour away. Nice! Pingyao, being something of a rural backwater, was well left alone in the Cultural Revolution so is full of Qing and Ming dynasty buildings and was used as the set for the film `Raise the Red Lantern.' Well that's what the Rough Guide says. It is very beautiful with 6kms of wall surrounding the old city. We got up to the top of the wall, and having found a very unbusiness-like bicycle hirer (i.e. she wounldn't haggle) decided to walk around the top. This was fine, although we should have realised that saying to each other "We're going to burn aren't we?" as we left the first watchtower was something of a premonition. Didn't burn too much (thanks to the nearby coal works doing a top job of thickening the atmosphere) but we did walk full square, only to return to the first watchtower on hands and knees, rasping to the drinks vendors for water. As an indication of the impression that this experience made on Ed, the only phrase of more than three words that he can readily remember is "Do you have a fridge?" Back at the hotel room, with traditional painted ceiling, floor level window looking out through the eaves, futon big enough for four laowai (`wise foreigner') along with traditional air-con and 16in TV, we slept for the rest of the afternoon, and most of the evening, so restful had the previous night on the train been. Cheeky bit of food, staring at Meekon style local kids and chit-chat with English speaking Chinese version of Lovejoy, we prepared ourselves for 12 hours of sleep (despite being woken up by the honking traffic at 5,6 & 7, the only time when our lovely pedestrianised street allowed traffic).
Ed: Has anyone seen Bladerunner? That is Blade-Runner, and not Bladder Runner, which is a film about an international organ donation courier, and it is the film which has lots of imposing dark buildings with lights and big bits and chinese written on them. Well Beijing Xi Zhan (Beijing West Station) is big, imposing, dark, with lights and some chinese on it, and it inside it exhubes (what? --ed) a sort of eighties stainless steel and neoness that so much of China has. We even thought it had the quality shite tea parlour/luggage room, which some old hag in a stained velour jumpsuit persuaded us was supposed to be the official left luggage room, even though we would have concluded that all Beijing Xi Zhan could afford was a nasty cupboard with the doors held on by twine.
Ping Yao
Jo: In Pingyao we very luckily got approached by the owner of the Hotel that we were aiming for. I had written the name down the previous afternoon in Havana, and due to the somewhat bizarre effect that Yanjing beer has on one's mental faculties, had apparently thought it a brilliant idea to try my hand at comedy calligraphy, and could not read a word. So anyway we got to the Paradise Hotel and got a room in a fantastic Qing dynasty building and went out for a wander.