Dewey's China Trip: Stories: Railroad Trek

Crappy Hotel

On the evening of Sunday August 31, 2003 I come home to my crappy Beijing hotel room near Beijing Normal University's North gate to find that they have spent the day tearing the walls apart for repairs. There is broken wall material piled and strewn all over the floor so it is hard to walk around, and the bathroom is totally inaccessible. I tell the hotel employees that there is no way I am staying in the room like this, but they say there are no other free rooms. I tell them I will go elsewhere, but they say I can't; if I do they will still charge me for spending the night in the room anyway.

Forget it! I grab my stuff and leave, with all the hotel employees yelling and cursing at me. That's Beijing people for you; whereas everywhere else I've been in China the locals have almost all been very nice to me, oftentimes Beijing people are quite rude to foreigners. This is despite their ubiquitous billboards, placed two or more on every block, proclaiming “Beijingers are friends to all the world”. Anyway, I'm so pissed off that I forget to return my room key to those jerk hotel employees. I hate Beijing.

I find Xiujuan and she brings me to the hotel we had stayed in the night we returned from Inner Mongolia; I'd forgotten the location and was unable to find it again myself. This hotel is much nicer, but a bit more expensive at 200 RMB ($24.00 US) per night. Also, the quality is definitely not on par with a typical hotel in the United States; the rooms aren't as comfortable and they are somewhat dirty and shabby. If this was another part of China instead of stupid Beijing, this place would be dirt cheap.

Escaping Beijing

Xiujuan refuses to spend the night with me. It is sad staying alone in this place where I first kissed her two months before. So when I wake up the next morning, the day of Monday, September 1, I decide to go back to the desert of Inner Mongolia and bring back a bag of the sand that Xiujuan loved so much. Maybe this effort will melt her heart. I don't know about western girls, but Chinese girls love it when guys go to great efforts to do little nice things for them.

To make the effort greater I decide I might just walk to Inner Mongolia, or maybe ride a freight train or something adventurous like that. Anyway, I resolve not to get caught up in the chaos of the Beijing railway station, where unlike just about every other place in China you're unlikely to be able to buy a same day or even next day train ticket—and to buy a train ticket you have to wait in line forever. Stupid Beijing.

I pack all my stuff into my backpack and put it on. It's so heavy now that I have gifts and other accumulated junk from my trip in it. Well, I can't throw them out right? Due to the weight of the pack I decide I won't be doing much walking; I will ride freight trains and busses the whole way. I'm so depressed from losing Xiujuan that I feel like having some dangerous adventures.

Walking Westward

I walk out the gate of the hotel and turn right, heading down the street directly westward. According to my GPS, my destination, that spot where I camped with Xiujuan in the desert, is 550 kilometers (342 miles) away, and almost exactly west. At the first bus stop I come to I hop on the first bus that comes along. To my dismay the bus turns and heads north for quite a ways, but then it turns west and makes a lot of westward progress, all the way to the Summer Palace, the last stop. I get off and continue walking west for half an hour or so, until I see a westward heading bus that looks promising and hop on. I continue west, past Beijing Botanical Gardens, and further west still. I get off at the last stop again, the Fragrant Hills, a park in the Northwest corner of Beijing which I have never been to.

I continue walking west, but just come to mountains with no road through them. I know I won't make sufficient progress trying to hike west over rugged mountains thickly covered with murderous thorn bushes, so I head south on the roads again, my only option other than turning back, since there are mountains to the west and north. After an hour or so I am tired of walking with this huge pack, so I stop at a bus stop and hop on the first bus that comes along. The bus continues south for a while, and then, by lucky coincidence, turns and heads west for a long ways. Finally the conductor on the bus asks me where I am going. I reply that I don't know—I just want to go west. He tells me the bus isn't going to be heading west much longer, and that I should get off and board bus number 661. So I get off, and bus 661 comes in less than a minute. I hop on and ride west for a long ways. Then the bus turns south.

Finding a Railroad

I happen to see a westward heading railroad to the north, so I get off the bus and walk toward it. I'm actually walking along a small northward heading railroad spur to get there, the kind with only the occasional short train moving along very slowly. When I get to the westward heading railroad I climb up the embankment at the end of a long bridge and survey the surroundings. The tracks are heading due west, directly toward my destination.

Now, mostly thanks to the bus rides, I have only 536 kilometers (333 miles) to go. Great! However, to the west the railroad disappears under the mountains. I have my doubts as to whether I can safely walk through these railroad tunnels. When the train comes will there be room for both me and the train together? Will the wind generated by the train streaking through the tunnel knock me over? Will exhaust fumes from the locomotives suffocate me?

I walk west. Lots of trains go roaring by in the space of just a few minutes. I get to the first tunnel, a fairly short one. I find that inside the tunnels are cubbyholes spaced every 50 meters (164 feet) that you can hide in if the train comes while you're in the tunnel. Not bad; if you keep careful track of which cubbyhole is closest as you walk through the tunnel, you will never need to run farther than 25 meters (92 feet) when a train comes along.

I put on my Aurora LED headlamp, so I can see in the darkness where the nearest cubbyhole is, in case a train comes. The light is not as bright as I would like, but fortunately the cubbyhole entrances are painted white, so they are easy to see without much light. Also, inside the tunnels are white arrows every third of the way between cubbyholes, directing you ahead or back to the nearest one.

Right before I enter the very first tunnel a train rumbles through. Then I walk through, which takes only about five minutes because the first tunnel is short. I'm not too frightened to go through this tunnel because I can clearly see the other end from the very start, so I always know just how much further I have to go. As soon as I exit the other end, another train rumbles through. Great, I've just made it through my first tunnel!

After about three minutes of walking there is another tunnel. This one is longer, but I can still see the dot of light in the distance that is the other end, so I have confidence. Halfway through the tunnel I receive a text message on my cell phone from a friend, and then send her a reply. This is really weird; Chinese cell phones seem to work just fine underneath a mountain. US cell phones don't even get a good signal inside a freaking building.

I come out of the tunnel and pass a small railway station. The station employees tell me not to walk on the tracks, so I walk on the side until I have passed them by. I go through another very short tunnel and then immediately after that there is a long tunnel—one where I can't even see the other end at all.

I stop and wait, wondering what I should do. I don't have the nerve yet to enter a pitch-black tunnel without any idea how long it will be, only knowing that it has got to be pretty long. Maybe I'll be walking though the dark all day! A freight train rumbles by, heading east towards Beijing. One flat car has two small containers on it, with a nice protected space in between where a man is hitching a ride, seated comfortably on a pile of straw. He waves, and I wave back. I sure wish I could ride like that—my feet are killing me and I'm scared of tunnels—but none of the freight trains ever stop to give me a chance to hop on.

Old Track

Rather than walk through the pitch-black tunnel, I head down to an older track that doesn't have tunnels. Instead, it snakes this way and that, avoiding all the mountains instead of tunneling through them. It also doesn't have electric wires; the trains running on this track are all diesel, whereas the trains on the new track are all electric. This older track has very few trains: I walk on it all the rest of the afternoon and only see four.

By afternoon I have run out of water and am pretty hungry and thirsty and have sore feet. Fortunately I see an irrigation aqueduct near the tracks. However, the drop-off is too steep to climb down to it. Finally I find a place where I can climb down through those nasty thorn bushes lining the railroad tracks and filter some water for drinking. I fill my empty water bottles and make myself a lunch of cold oatmeal. Then I put my hiking boots into my pack and change into more comfortable Teva sandals. My tired, sweaty feet breathe a sigh of relief.

I continue onward. I find from the GPS that I'm not making much progress toward my goal. This is clearly due to the fact that this stupid old track weaves back and forth too much to avoid the mountains. One hour I'm walking south, the next north. The actual westward progress is small. Fortunately, late in the afternoon, the old track crosses back under the new one. I decide I'd rather walk due west and brave a few tunnels than waste my time weaving back and forth and making no progress; so I climb up unto the bridge, choosing the set of rails where the trains travel east—this way the trains will never be sneaking up on me from behind.

Bridges and Tunnels

It's all bridges and tunnels here. The railroad comes out of a tunnel, crosses a bridge over a valley, and goes back into a tunnel on the other side. Then it comes out of that tunnel and goes over the next bridge and the whole sequence repeats. I find that the bridges have spaces to get out of the way when the train comes, just like the tunnels. The bridges are much easier to walk than the tunnels; the ties are close together and have metal grates between them so you don't fall through. Unfortunately, bridges tend to be short and tunnels tend to be long.

I walk through dozens more tunnels that evening. I get used to entering tunnels without being able to see the end. Some that I walk though are almost three kilometers (two miles) long. I notice that on the entrance to every tunnel is painted the quanchang (total length) in meters, so I can always estimate approximately how long a tunnel will take to walk through. Also, the cubbyholes in the tunnels are numbered (unfortunately, counting up to the west instead of to the east) and I learn to estimate how many cubbyholes there will be, given the total length; thus I can usually guess how much further I have to walk when inside the tunnels.

I still hate going through tunnels though. It is nerve racking to have trains coming by every three to five minutes and having to quickly get out of the way. In the longer tunnels, the first sign of a train coming is often not light or sound, but the sudden air pressure increase felt in the ears as the train plunges into the tunnel, compressing the air ahead of it like a piston in a cylinder. Then the rumbling grows louder, the light brighter, and the air pressure steadily increases. By this time I'm (hopefully) already hiding in a cubbyhole waiting for the terrible beast to past. The sound gets louder and loader, forcing me to cover my ears with my hands, and then the train roars past at 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour, sometimes taking several minutes to pass. Then I leave the cubbyhole and enjoy the fierce wind that blows past until the train has completely left the tunnel ahead. The length of time until the wind subsides is another way to estimate the distance to the end of the tunnel, but only if the train is going your direction. The cooling and drying affect of the wind is great if I am hot, or wet from a recent rain-shower.

Sometimes in the middle of a tunnel I'll see a glimpse of light ahead, and get excited thinking that I am nearing the end. Oftentimes the light turns out to be nothing but a signal light. These signal lights turn red after a train passes, then after a minute or so switch to yellow, then green. I assume this is to maintain proper separation of trains and avoid collisions: when the engineer sees a yellow light, he knows a train is close ahead and slows down; when he sees a red light, he knows he'd better stop to avoid a collision. Coming across one of these ghostly signal lights in a tunnel always gives me an eerie feeling. If it's red or yellow, I feel relaxed—I know another train probably won't come by to rattle my nerves until the light turns green—but when the light is green, I get nervous; it usually means I can expect to have another train come through within the next few minutes—Chinese railroads are very busy.

Thunderstorm

Around dark there is thunder and lightning and it pours down rain. Fortunately I am close to a tunnel when it starts, and for the first time I actually appreciate being down under a mountain in the dark. It's actually better to walk though tunnels at night, because your eyes are already adjusted and ready, so you can see a lot better by the beam of your flashlight.

When I get to the other end half an hour later, it is really raining hard, so I wait in the tunnel entrance putting on my raingear, hoping a train won't come and force me out into the downpour unprotected. Then I continue walking onward in the dark and pouring rain, with nothing but big lonely, rugged mountains all around. I have a goal of getting my distance to destination down to 500 kilometers (311 miles) before I sleep, but the going is slow. Walking on the railroad tracks is not fast because the spacing between the concrete ties (or sleepers) is not ideal, and if you walk on the side then you're in the crushed rock (or ballast), which is very hard on the feet and still slow to walk on.

Upon passing through the next tunnel, I am disappointed to find that the westbound set of rails is suddenly nowhere to be seen; the two tunnels began at the same place, but don't end at the same place. All along I have been hoping that eventually a freight train going west will stop a minute, giving me a chance to hop on and hitch a ride, but now I have no chance because I am walking on the eastbound set of rails. Who knows where the westbound set are—for all I know they could be 10 kilometers, a mountain or two away, to the south. I know the distance must be fairly far anyway, because I never hear the sounds of the westbound trains anymore.

I keep plodding west monotonously, my brain completely empty of thought. In the tunnels I just keep chanting to myself the location of the nearest cubbyhole (behind, here, forward) for safety's sake, so that when the train comes I'll know exactly where to go without thinking. I chant this in Chinese; my brain doesn't work in English anymore since I never use English when speaking to Chinese people. Whenever I think to myself the thoughts are now always in Chinese. I'll even remember conversations I've had in the past with friends in the US in Chinese instead of their original English.

I pass a kilometer-long string of tank cars parked on a siding. All the writing on the cars is Russian. Interesting; maybe they are carrying Russian petroleum.

Camping on a Helmet

The GPS says 499 kilometers to my destination. It's really late, way past midnight, and I'm tired. There's a tunnel ahead, but I'm not willing to stumble through yet another evil black tube, not tonight. The track here is covered with a concrete and stone “helmet” to protect it from boulders falling down the cliff face above. A concrete stairway leads to the top of the helmet, so I climb up and lay my Therm-a-rest pad and sleeping bag out on the concrete, brush my teeth, and go to sleep, hoping no boulders will fall on me in the night.

I have four hours of sleep, which is constantly interrupted by the trains rumbling by underneath me. Now it is getting light out, revealing a misty morning. I eat oatmeal for breakfast, pack up my things, and set out, entering the next tunnel, which is thankfully less than a kilometer long.

Day Two

I pass a dam and the lake behind it. I am almost out of water again, so I think about filtering more water, but the lake water looks really filthy, so I don't. After another hour I am along a river again, although I don't know if it's the same one, what with all the tunnels keeping me blind to all but glimpses of the landscape. Pretty soon I find myself on the opposite side of the river, and the rails going in the opposite direction appear on the far side to the left; the two tracks have crossed over themselves—it's the second time it's happened. I think if I really want to I can climb down, wade the river, then climb up the other side and catch a westbound freight train. The thought is nice, but I don't think it is very likely to happen, considering I've never seen any of the eastbound trains on this side stop or even slow down for a moment.

I pass a small station. It is now about noon, so before the next tunnel I go down to the river to filter some water and eat some oatmeal. Then I continue on, into the tunnel.

To my surprise, this tunnel is brightly lit, so there is no need for a flashlight. This is the first time I've come upon a lit tunnel. How nice! Too bad all the tunnels aren't like this!

I see a man walking through the tunnel about 100 meters ahead of me. A train comes through and I get out of the way. Then I continue following behind the man ahead and finally catch up with him a little ways after the end of the tunnel.

It turns out to be an old man carrying a small backpack. His Mandarin is strongly accented, but I can still understand much of what he says. He is impressed that I've walked all the way from Beijing. However, he tells me that once he met a lost American wandering around out here who hadn't eaten for three days. This worries me a little, considering that I now only have one meal's worth of oatmeal left in my pack. However, there are jujube berries growing everywhere by the tracks, and although unripe, really nasty tasting, and full of worms, I figure in an emergency I could live on them.

Railway Workers

I walk with the old man for a few minutes, but he is too slow, so I leave him behind. I come to another railway tunnel that is also lighted, this time because it is full of railway workers. They have a machine that they roll along one rail. It makes various beeping sounds as they roll it along. The workers are also impressed that I'd walked all the way from Beijing. One of them tries on my pack to see how heavy it is, and is amazed by the weight. They say I should rest awhile, and I do, extremely exhausted. Then they say I should walk with them, but I know there is no way I'll be able to keep up with them in my tired state, so I take their first advice and rest for awhile, using my pack as a comfy seat as usual.

They say I shouldn't walk, I should catch a train instead. I point out that all the trains on this track are eastbound. They say I should cross the river and walk on the westbound track, which is now on the north side of the river yet again. So I cross the river and continue walking west, now with the trains coming at me from behind. I hang my socks, which are soaked from the river crossing, on the back of my pack to dry in the sun.

It's not that bad walking on the westbound track; trains after all are very loud, so you don't need to see them to know they're coming. I go through many more tunnels and then come out of a tunnel and on to a big bridge high over a green valley with a village and a newly paved, winding highway. The eastbound set of rails crosses under me, so it is again to my left. On the other side of the bridge it's back into a tunnel as usual.

Apples

On the other side of the next mountain, I find a small apple tree loaded up with fruit growing near the tracks. I put down my pack and manage just barely to climb up the steep embankment. I eat two large apples, which are not completely ripe but are good, considering how hungry I am; I have been wanting to save that last bowl of oatmeal for when I really get desperate.

As I climb and slide back down the embankment, a man crossing the tracks sees me and stops to say hi. Then I put the pack back on and plunge into the next tunnel. On the other side I pass two railway men in a shack. They invite me in for a rest and a chat. They are very excited to talk to an American and amazed that I've walked all the way here from Beijing.

Railway Station

They ask me how old I am, and I say 24. They think that I'm much too young to be traveling in a foreign country without my parents. They ask me if I am a runaway child, fleeing from my parents. I say of course not, but they don't appear to believe me.

They say walking though all these tunnels is dangerous and that there are many more ahead before the railroad passes out of the mountains. But of course I've already walked through about fifty tunnels and seen zillions of trains, and am still alive to tell about it. However, I am extremely tired from walking. The men suggest I walk another kilometer ahead to a small railway station where a passenger train will be stopping at 7:30 in the evening.

I take a break to plan my next move at the railway station in the village of Jiuzhuangwo. According to the kilometer-post, I am now 71 kilometers from Beijing. Who knows, maybe a freight train will stop here at the siding and I can ride it. That would be much more fun than riding a stupid, slow, smelly passenger train.

The station employees take a great interest in me and are quite hospitable. They give me hot water, so I have a meal of hot oatmeal for the first time. They also let me pick tasty tomatoes from their garden behind the station, and give me peaches, and more of the same wormy jujubes I had seen along the trail. Plus, they give me a large baozi, which consists of a filling of meat or vegetables surrounded by a layer of dough which is steamed until the dough becomes fluffy. I eat it while watching them gamble with some Chinese version of poker.

A very old man comes along who seems very interested to meet me. He sells bags of apples and jujubes to unsuspecting passengers on the trains that stop once or twice a day here. He gives me free bags, which I don't want but which he forces me to take. The apples are full of worms and the jujubes are even worse than the ones I picked myself along the tracks earlier in the day.

Guanting

I get some much-needed rest for the next four hours. Then I catch the train at 7:30 p.m. and for 2.5 RMB (30 cents US) ride it to the next station, which happens to be only eight kilometers (five miles) to the west, but somewhat out of the mountains, on flat ground. This is Guanting, a small town, which actually has a couple places to eat and sleep. There is no grocery store though, so I have no opportunity to buy new oatmeal.

This town doesn't really have much in the way of roads, mostly just dirt paths too narrow for cars and too rough for regular street bicycles. Thus motorbikes are main the mode of transportation here.

I turn on my phone; I've been keeping it off most of the time to save the batteries. I receive a message from Peipei in Shanghai. She's received the postcard I sent her from Deqin. Now she's suddenly being super nice to me, and saying I should come back to Shanghai to visit her. That's how Chinese girls are; you do a little sweet thing for them like send them a postcard and they never forget it. It's different from what I'm used to with arrogant American girls, and pretty nice.

I eat a meal of dumplings, and meet three weird young girls and a couple of guys who are quite curious to meet an American. They make me show them what American money looks like. They want me to give them some too, but they aren't willing to pay for it, so I give them a US dime. They each want one, but I only have one, so I give them each a Seattle postcard.

I sleep out sitting by the tracks, in the garbage and crap and filth, hoping a freight train will stop so I can hitch a ride. At 3:00 a.m. a train does stop, but it has nothing but empty open hopper cars, the kind used for coal; there's no place I can sit.

In the morning, after basically no sleep, I go and eat some fried dough cakes a vendor on the street is selling. I watch the baking process and am disgusted at the filth of the ingredients, utensils, and storage container—but I eat two cakes anyway because I am so hungry. One is a sweet kind with melted brown sugar in the middle, and the other is not sweet, with salty egg in the middle. I force them both down; the brown sugar kind is the least disgusting. I sit there for about an hour after eating and the man selling the cakes goes inside. I completely forget to pay him for the food and he never reminds me.

I watch the town's method of feeding a pig: They put a leash on the pig and lead him down the street to the town's central garbage pile. After the pig eats his fill, they lead him back. I find this pretty disgusting, so I don't want to eat Chinese pork anymore, but this is pretty tough to do, since pork is by far the most commonly consumed meat in China. Hopefully most pigs aren't fed in this way, only in filthy little backwards towns like this.

Dewey's China Trip: Stories: Railroad Trek

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