(By Now You’re Beginning to See that I Love Trains!)
My peaceful interlude on the Yangtze cruise was coming to an end and I was about to be thrown back into the hectic pace of an independent traveler. I had been up at midnight the night before for the transit through the locks and then up early in the morning to tour the Three Gorges Dam and Visitor Center. After the tour we returned to the ship, said our ‘goodbyes’ and disembarked from the MV Dragon at the dock near Yichang around noon on Saturday, June 5. Jerry, the cruise director, who had done everything but pilot the ship (if I hadn’t met the Captain, I would not have been so sure!), had arranged for several of us to take a bus together to Wuhan.
What happened next was like something out of a Keystone Cops movie. Between Yichang and Wuhan we changed buses several times, each time being reunited with other passengers from the cruise, who we hadn’t expected to see again, only to be separated again during another transfer. At one point, I got separated from the family who I had planned to travel with to Wuhan and we were all surprised when we found ourselves back together on the same bus again after another transfer. I had shared a table in the ship’s dining room with this wonderful family and they had suggested that I try to get a room at the same hotel where they were planning to stay in Wuhan. We never did figure out what was going on with all the bus transfers, but after a lot of laughs our bus did eventually make it to Wuhan. The driver then proceeded to drop passengers off at requested locations until there were only a few of us left. He then abruptly decided he had had enough and parked the bus and motioned for everyone to get off.
Yichang to Shanghai by Bus and Train, June 2010
We weren’t anywhere near our hotel and no amount of haggling from the other passengers could change the bus driver’s mind. As it turned out, we were near the train station, so I made a quick decision to forgo my stay in Wuhan and instead try to catch a night train to Shanghai. The head of the family I had planned to stay with was traveling with his wife, sister-in-law, niece and three daughters. Even though he now had to scramble to find a way to get his large entourage to the hotel, this nice man took time to hook me up with another couple who were going to the train station. He explained to them in Chinese that I wanted to get a ticket to Shanghai that night and they took me by the hand, hailed a taxi and stood with me in the long line at the train station to make sure I got the right ticket.
This was the manner with which I was treated throughout my trip to China and one of my most outstanding memories of the trip will always be the kind, wonderful people I met everywhere I went. The train left at 8:30 PM for the 15 hour trip across China ($58.00 for Soft Sleeper). I shared my compartment with two young businessmen and a woman traveling alone and by now I wasn’t surprised that by morning we would all be friends. During the long trip I walked up and down the long train, shooting some video footage to document the variety of accommodations available. When I arrived in Shanghai, I got a hotel near the center of the city and arranged to take the train to Nanjing the next day to visit the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum.
Inside the Night Train to Shanghai, June 2010
