Day 12 - April 20 - A Solo Adventure Begins

This morning I was up early with an incomplete plan for a solo adventure – to see how far I could get in my hope to experience the fastest train in the world. Incomplete both because of the lack of time to plan and because there was little information available on the details for these trains that just opened for operation on December 28, 2009 and new stations that were just opened in January 2010.

Called the Wuguang Passenger Railway, the Chinese Government spent around $15 billion USD and 5 years completing the first 600 mile stretch of a high speed railway that has reduced travel time between Guangzhou and Wuhan from 11 hours to 3 hours. This is the first section of what will be in 2012 a 1300 mile high speed connection between Beijing in the north and Guangzhou in the south. The train has a “maximum in-service speed” of 244 mph and an average speed of 194 mph besting a record average of 173 mph by a train in France.

It was truly a day of adventure as I took (1) a bus to the Shenzhen airport, (2) the 7:45am bus to the Shenzhen Rail Station, (3) the 9:20am bullet train between Shenzhen and Guangzhou, (4) the Goungzhou subway/metro to an yet to be documented stop to catch a (5) connecting bus to the new and amazingly beautiful Guangzhou South Railway Station where I caught the 12:17pm high speed train to Wuhan. At each step I needed a ticket and sometimes directions – mostly done by pointing to Chinese characters on papers I had printed out from the internet. At every junction I was lucky to be helped by kind people who mostly spoke no english. I'd like to claim that I have perfected the “please help me” look – but the truth is that I just think there are an abundance of wonderfully helpful and kind Chinese who are willing to help this “foreigner.”

The day was full of fun encounters from a smiling 3 or 4 year old Chinese girl who took time for her chatter with her mom to recite her “A,B,C's” in english loud enough so I could appreciate – to some cleaning ladies at one station who just observed me searching my pockets for my briefly lost ticket I needed at an exit – and without one word offered me a clean spot to set my backpack and, noticing my flipping the huge China volume of the Lonely Planet guidebook, took the book and shook it upside down as a more efficient way. They celebrated with smiles and happy looks and obviously happy, but unknown Chinese words, when I finally found the ticket in a small Chinese language book that I had been studying on the train.

The easiest part of the journey was when I arrived at the beautiful, new Guangzhou station and was able to purchase my ticket for the high speed on an ATM-like machine that had an “english” button! Similarly, the train was as nice as the nicest airplanes I've ridden in – with helpful and thoughtful attendants.

The train didn't stop very many times, but the few stops it made were all at beautiful, new stations – as the entire route had been specifically built for these trains – with bridges and tunnels totaling 2/3rds of the entire length (a reported 684 bridges and 226 tunnels) – traversing beautiful country side. It remains surreal to have seen farmers still plowing with water buffalo while speeding by in the fastest train in the world.

Upon arrival at Wuhan (also a beautiful new station) – a city of 4.5 million – I proceeded to the ticket window to inquire about continuing onto Xi'an (home of the Terra Cotta soldiers). A kind woman behind me in line helped with her few words of english when the ticket seller understood no english – and I quickly determined that an onward journey required a change in train stations to another one across town and the Yangzi River (at rush hour). The woman gave me the bus number to get to a third rail station which I had determined was about a mile from the Lonely Planet recommended hostel. The bus trip took about an hour or more – and deposited me at another massive train station in the heart of the city – whereupon I guessed at my personal compass by seeing where the sun was setting and walked the mile to the hostel. Probably only those of you who have been in China can appreciate the fact that walking across streets in a Chinese city is incredibly dangerous as drivers here do not recognize any pedestrian rights and largely ignore all traffic signals and lane restrictions. Wuhan, like Shenzhen, is obviously a city of traffic lawlessness.

Thankfully the hostel had a room (squat toilet only) that I may have to share (no room mate has shown up yet as I write this (10:30pm). I briefly checked out the room and proceeded to the lounge to get internet access. There I happened to encounter a woman who upon exchanging the briefest of greetings and “what are you doing here” type conversation, she noted that she had gone to Reed College (in Portland) when I mentioned I was from the Portland area. Then she gleaned enough information from my description of my daughter working in Shenzhen to say that she had emailed with Staci because they happen to use the same blogging site and she was in China teaching english (but on individual contract rather than program). Another crazy moment to be talking to someone who knows Staci after a day of seeing but a scarce few non-Chinese in all my long travels.

Not exactly sure what tomorrow holds – I'm making this trip up as I go – which is partly required because of the very unusual way in which train seats have to be purchased when not planned several weeks ahead of time. A local museum has the “largest musical instrument” in the world here – so that might tempt me to stay another night – or I might try to head off to Xi'an. I'll probably let train availability help decide tomorrow. Right now I'm ready to crawl in after a fun-filled and exciting day of travel challenges.