“Esteemed passenger friends, this concludes our broadcasts for the time being. It is now time for your afternoon rest. Please avoid disturbing the peace of the passengers next to you. We will continue our programme at 15:00….” droned the announcement on the paging system, followed by blissful, blissful silence. Out of more than 24 hours of train ride, only eleven hours were passed in silence: During our “night sleep” from 10pm to 7am, and during our “afternoon rest” from 1pm to 3pm. The remainder of the time, Big Sister on the speaker seems to feel it is her duty to keep us entertained; either by songs (mostly Chinese pop) or by various announcements. The favorite announcement seemed to be the one reminding us that it is against regulations to bring Dangerous Articles on to the train, followed by a very detailed list of what items are considered Dangerous Articles; as it appears, even lightbulbs can get very nasty in the proper conditions.

Long-distance trains are possibly the last bastion of “controlled life” in China (along with prisons and some government institutions). Your schedule is precisely dictated: ten o’clock is “lights off time”, and everybody goes to sleep. At seven o’clock the lights are turned back on and music starts pouring out from the overhead speakers, in case any “lazy birds” are having trouble getting up. Carts selling meal trays for breakfast, lunch and dinner pass in specific hours, and if you want to have a hot meal you should eat at that time (there usually also is a canteen carriage selling hot meals in restaurant-fashion, but often this canteen, too, only operates in “meal-hours”). Train attendants ceaselessly labour on maintaining various “regulations”: bags on the overhead department must not bulge over the side; curtains must be drawn in some times of the day, open wide in others; shoes placed under the bunks at night must be turned so that they are facing the corridor. All are “regulations” which have to be kept, and the personell are often ignorant of the logic which is supposed to lie behind them - when I asked a train attendent, as she was doing a night-round of the carriage and turning around all the pairs of shoes so that they face the corridor, why was she turning the shoes around, she count not give me a suitable answer. “Such are the regulations”, was all I could get out of her.

The Chinese passengers on the train can be roughly divided into two groups; Members of one group bring just a small amount of snacks on with them to the train and rely on the food sold on board the train. The members of the other group bring with them an amount of food suitable for feeding Anna Frank’s entire family for the whole duration of the war. If you’ve been reading all my posts carefully, you may remember me mentioning (in this post) that the Chinese like feeding their guests. Trains are no exception and people are likely to attempt to feed you - either from their own stocks or by actually buying you a meal tray from the passing cart.

People on the trains are an odd mixture of shy and nosy. In the beginning they will usually just sit silenty without talking to anybody. Once a conversation between two people begins, however, all the people within hearing distance will “butt in” and join the conversation. The scenario is very common: people are silent for the first few hours, getting more and more bored. At some point something snaps and one of them says something to the other, perhaps asking some question. A chain reaction ensues and after a few minutes there is already a heated six-person discussion on the best way to open a new business in Sichuan province.  If I am a part of the conversation, though, most of the content of the conversation (or at least its beginning) is known to me even before it started (you can read it here). Obviously I don’t like antisemitism, but I’ve never thought I’d develop such a hate towards prosemitism; it has reached the point that whenever I hear the phrase “Israelis are so smart” I have an urge to punch someone.

My cabin is a hard-sleeper cabin, the 2nd class out of four possible classes. There are bunks arranged in triplets one on top of each other, with a thin wall separating every group of six beds. Foldable chairs are also available on the corridor. It looks like this:

The “best” bunk is the bottom one (on which you can actually sit) and the “worst” is the top one. The ticket prices are set accordingly, with the bottom bunk ticket costing about 10% more than the top bunk. If you are of average height you cannot sit up on the top bunk without banging your head on the ceiling. If you do have the top bunk, be assured that this will occur many times during the ride. This problem is remedied on the “soft sleeper” (first class) cabins, in which the beds are arranged in spacious groups of twos instead of groups of threes, but that’s the main difference between them - other than the large price gap, of course. In addition to these there are also the “soft/hard seat” classes for the pour souls who will be sitting upright for the next 25 hours of train ride.

Big-city Chinese living the “fast life” often avoid taking these trains and prefer internal flights, as the extra day of travel is a wasted day of vacation. For people on a long journey through China, though, trains are a good way of relaxing and meeting new people - people who, like you, have absolutely nothing to do except sit in the cabin and chat with you.

The city of Kunming is known in China as the “Spring City”, attributed to it having pleasant weather all year round. Personally, I find it a bit hard to agree - I have been freezing my ass off for the past few days here. I will concede, however, that the weather here is currently much more pleasant than the weather in Siberia. Many seagulls seem to share these thoughts and every year, as winter approaches, migrate from Siberia to Kunming.

The seagulls hang out mainly near the lakes and are an attraction for tourists and locals alike. Next to each lake peddlars can be found selling bread to feed the pigeons, a popular pasttime activity.

Evening, end of September 2006, up in the mountains of the Yading nature reserve in Sichuan province. Hanging around in a simple lodge, in an altitude of more than 4000 meters, I suddenly heard my name called: “Ori, Ori, come quick!”. I rush towards the callers and they point at a couple approaching - pale skin, red hair, seems as if I’m not the only foreigner here anymore! But what are the Chinese so excited about? I learn the answer seconds later, when the girl opens her mouth and says: “Shalom”….  (for those of you who aren’t Israeli/Jewish - “shalom” means “hello” in Hebrew, the language spoken in Israel)

My countrymen and I swap a few pleasantaries, and they ask me whether or not I know that tonight is Rosh Hashana, the Israeli/Jewish new year. After I say that I didn’t remember, they tell me that they especially brought apples and honey (traditional jewish new-year food) up the mountain, and would I like to celebrate with them?

And so, despite my slim connection to Jewish customs, I ended up celebrating the new year after all - up on a mountain in China, with two Israelis and four Chinese friends (who were happy to join in on the fun). Coincidence? Fate?

…..

Evening, mid-December, 2006, sitting in a restaurant in Kunming. A friend and I are having dinner, when suddenly the lights go out. It seems that the restaurant is having some sort of an electrical failure. Waiters come over to the table and place two candles - one of them taller, on some sort of stand, and one of them shorter - on the table and light them. I sit there for a while, staring at the candles, when I suddenly realize: today is the first day of Hannukah… (again, for the Jewishly-impaired: the main custom in Hannukah, a Jewish holiday, is lighting candles on a special lamp. In the first day two candles are lit, one of them placed higher than the other)

I’m definitely not a religious person, but these coincidences are getting more and more suspicious….

As far as hygiene is concerned, the Chinese behaviour can be contradictory. From one point of view they can be seen as filthy: storeowners dumping garbage on the sidewalk in front of their store, diners having a meal with no qualms concerning spitting out bone pieces on the table or even on the floor. It seems that the only thing which prevents China from looking like one big garbage can is the large amount of service personell - in the previous examples, streetsweepers and waitresses - who keep cleaning up after the rest of the population.

In other aspects, Chinese hygiene habits can be more strict than their Western counterparts, the best example being food hygiene habits. Apart from fresh fruit, you would be hard-pressed finding food in the Chinese cuisine which hasn’t been fried, steamed, cooked, boiled or grilled. This includes vegetables and even drinks - despite the growing popularity of cold drinks (I blame western influence), most Chinese are still quite used to the idea of a nice hot cup of boiled water in mid-summer. All of these habits are basically geared towards making sure that the food is relatively sterile and free from germs.

Some time ago I was trying to teach a Chinese friend how to make western-styled pancakes (the result was pretty bad but I blame improper ingredients and the lack of a flat frying pan). Before starting to prepare the food we went to wash our hands, and I washed my hands as I usually do, a quick scrub with soap and water. “What are you doing”, scolded me my friend, “these hands are about to prepare food that we’re going to eat!”, after which she applied generous amounts of soap to my hands and vigorously scrubbed them for a while. The same friend, thirty minutes later, spread peppers all over the dirty floor before proceeding to go and wash them with water. More contradictions.

The Chinese are also sensitive to the cleanliness of their chopsticks. Most of the small eateries avoid these problems by providing one-time-use dispensable chopsticks made from bamboo. When the Chinese city folk go to the countryside, where dispensable utensils are uncommon, they can often be quite cautious as far as chopsticks are concerned; it was explained to me that germs can reside in the outer layers of the wood and that washing isn’t enough to remove them. In these situations, the Chinese will often dip the tips of the chopsticks in hot tea or soup to sterilize them before use.

This habit was taken even further by the residents of the Guangzhou (and, to a lesser extent, Cantonese in other parts of the province). When having a meal in a restaurant in Guangzhou , the first thing brought to the table is a pot of tea and a large basin. The diners fill their cups with tea from the pot and swish the tea around a bit so it touches all areas of the cup. The chopsticks are then held above the bowl and the tea is poured from the cups over the chopsticks and into the bowl to sterilize the chopsticks. Finally the tea is poured from the bowl into the basin in a turning motion, so that the tea touches all areas of the bowl in the process. The cup, the bowl and the chopsticks have been sterilized by the tea and all the tea is in the large basin - the waitresses then take away the basin and replentish the tea in the pot. The interesting thing about this Guangzhou washing habit is that it takes place regardless of how clean the dishes are in the first place - this ritual will be carried out even in the fanciest of restaurants.

Meeting a Malasian girl in some hostel made something a Malasian acquaintance once told me on the Internet spring to mind, and I asked to take a look at her passport. True to his word (and to the girl’s surprise), we found this page:

 
(click image to enlarge)

This is an entire page added exclusively for the following content:

This passport is valid for all countries except:

• Israel