(Hong Kong – Shanghai)
Straight from a sleepless flight from Sydney to Hong Kong and on to the afternoon train into China seemed like a good idea at the time.
Leaving behind the “Falun Dafa Is Good” protesters, passengers to “the mainland” descend out of the SAR of Hong Kong past the lunchtime fast-food crowds to the shadowy depths of Kowloon’s Hung Hom station. Easing through the narrow customs and immigration counters, you find the T100B Express waiting inside its cage which separates the “departed” from Hong Kong commuters. The conductor motioned us towards the soft class sleeper: all lace tablecloths, fluffy coat hangers, lacy anti macassars, stainless steel thermos, armchairs, ensuite with free toothbrush and paste (but no soap), blank TV screen and potted plant. Behind each armchair was a small safe. A weary looking father and demanding 3 year old: “fresh” from a flight from Singapore, were my companions for the 20+ hours to Shanghai. His wife would enjoy child-free respite in the adjacent compartment.
Easing out of Hung Hom our short train travelled at the stop-start speed of the preceding commuter train to Lo Wu where we eased s-l-o-w-l-y over the border into Shenzen, China, passing a solitary PLA officer standing at strict attention on the short, steel border bridge. After crawling past the crowded border station we sped on smooth new tracks to Guangzhou East, being passed or regularly overtaken by flash white “CRH” bullet trains. During this time other passengers were pacing the train corridors along with attendants selling soft drinks, fresh oranges in bags of 10and instant tea of coffee-with-creamer sachets (just add water from your cabin’s thermos). In the half hour at Guangzhou East, our train of foreigners (whose passport numbers had been laboriously recorded by conductors in triplicate using see-through blue carbon paper) was fenced off and guarded by security men with dogs. A ssecond complete train (for local Chinese travellers) was shunted on to the rear of the dining car, and securely locked up from our carriages. Until we passed through Chinese customs and immigration in Shanghai in the morning, we were effectively “locked out” of China.
The long night ahead was looking potentially trying in the small cabin with a crying 3 year old. The several shared beers with three old Chinese men at my table in the dining car (no shared language, but you don’t argue with a fellow diner as he passes another open beer at you while simultaneously sucking the eyes from a stir fried fish head) helped the onset of sleep while the child whimpered then cried and cried and cried.
Overnight in a stuffy and swaying train with a squalling and tantruming Three Year Old From Hell defies rational description (following the sleepless night on the plane). The train stopped 4 times during the night and reversed direction. The Three Year Old From Hell stopped fewer times and was more consistent. I’d swapped to the (cheaper) top bunk to give Dad more child-wrangling room, but was tempted in the wee small hours to climb down a few times (the beer) and hope that my foot didn’t quite connect with the tear stained cherubic face… until fitful sleep arrived…
At 7.15 the train was barreling along towards Hanzou. Through the pervasive thick grey dawn coal smog a bleak factory sign proclaimed: “WELCOME TO WEI LONG”… We did not linger. Along the line were endlessconcrete tenements with brief breaks of grey and muddy farmland and the occasional duck pond. New buildings all had French chateau-style rounded towers with little faux-Renaissance spires and glistening rooftop hot water tanks and solar panels.
Brealkfast was “No Western Breakfast” so they served me a small Nescafe in a weak plastic cup that leaned and collapsed softly with the heat of the water. I pointed at the rice porridge and pickles that the locals were getting, several times, until it grudgingly came my way too: it was gooood! The bumptious American from Georgia (terminally giggling Chinese wife) pointed out that we were in Hangzhou which was famous for its pork.
Shanghai: Being jetlagged and train lagged after sleep deprivation with The Three Year Old From Hell added to the dubious joy of being unlocked and let out into China, into a security check in zero degrees. Following a fairly laid-back Customs chat we were released into a seething crowd and no apparent sign for Taxis. (I later found they were cunningly obscured downstairs in a basement at the far end of the station). A hailed cab with a “meter not working” taxi ripoff careened me through barrows and traffic and screeching trolleybuses to the pub.
But who cares: it’s Shanghai, and I wallowed for two days in Twentieth Century history of unequal treaties, foreign concession areas, the amazing and arrogant early Twentieth Century architecture of the Bund- completed just in time for the Japanese to arrive and to intern and punish the Europeans and to do far worse to the Chinese following their successful 1937 invasion. And out in the French Concession area - among the art deco apartment buildings, Russian Orthodox churches, synagogues, mansions of presumptuous Eurpoeans and rich Chinese businessman and gangsters - were the houses of Sun Yat-Sen and Zhou En-Lai and the current government’s printed handouts’ spin on national history.
Each morning in Shanghai’s old main shopping mall, and all over China, are impromptu groups of (mainly) older people with portable CD players , performing achingly slow tai-chi or – this is very special – ballroom dancing in streets and parks. We had a long yarn with Mr Chu, a retired steel engineer who had visited the Pilbara in WA before retiring. He had survived the Cultural Revolution through being sent on Re-education work as a peasant for only 4 months. He talked fairly frankly about the madness of what had happenedand the impact on his family. He now has a son and is quite content, although his wife does not enjoy ballroom dancing. So, Mr Chu and about 30 others meet each morning to dance in the streets around Nanjing Rd for two hours, allowing commuters to “cut in” before continuing on to work. And, as Mr Chu pointed out with a twinkle in the eye, there are many single ladies of various ages to waltz at dawn each day…
And across the river from the stolidly imperialist buildings of the Bund is the New Shanghai of Pudong: alarmingly glitzy phallic towers, rampant 10 storeyed neon-video advertising (blanketed by drizzle or eye-stinging smog) and the Maglev train to the airport at 340kph (30 kilometres in less than 8 minutes)… the new burgeoning China of Deng Ziao-Ping.
It’ll be fun (The Three Year Olds From Hell permitting).
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