My Month Long Travels Part 1

  Sorry I have not been posting as much as I should. I have been rather busy with life and other things, one being planning my Spring Festival Trip. It will consist of going to Xi'an to see the Terra Cotta Soldiers, other small towns, Harbin for the Ice Festival, Beijing to see the Great Wall, The Forbidden Palace, Tiananmen Square (that has the giant picture of Mao on the wall), then South Korea to see Seoul, the DMZ zone between North and South Korea, Busan and finally back to Changzhou just in time to start the next semester classes. I will be traveling with friends for some of the trip and by myself for others making my way around a large area of China.
  I started out yesterday heading to Xi'an on the slow train, which are similar to trains that we have in the United States, meaning it takes a long time to get across the country. Since Spring festival is the largest holiday celebrated in China that is the time when many people head back to see their families, it is like Christmas to the extreme. Since so many people do travel during this time a phrase has been coin of 'Spring Festival Migration' or 'Spring Festival Migrants.' These are people who go somewhere else to work and migrate back home every year for spring festival. It is during this time that schools are out for winter holiday so many families and college students return to their hometown to celebrate the holiday.
  Also, (mom skip to the next paragraph) during this time crime rates increase, for people need money to get back home so they steal it from other travelers. People who have not made very much money during the last year do not want to go home empty handed and have their family look down upon them so they will steal to make themselves look better in their families eyes. Getting robbed does not happen to everyone and if you are careful you will be fine but it is something that I have been told about by many other Chinese individuals. I have many many promise to be careful. Cities that are mostly for manufacturing will become empty during that time since everyone who was born outside of that city will leave to go home. I was told that Beijing will become emptier, we will see how many people are there when I arrive.
  With all the people moving the use of train travel increases leading to people being stuck places if they do not buy ticket early enough. This is almost what happened to me going to Xi'an. My school let me leave early so I could travel this distance with two Chinese friends but it was last minute so we did not have enough time to buy the fast train ticket so the slow train it was. However, all the sitting tickets were sold out so we had to stand part of the way. We transferred trains at one station so we could sit down the rest of the trip. I have taken long trips before but standing for seven hours is in a whole different ball park. Try standing in the same location and position for seven hours with people squeezing by you every fifteen or fewer minutes while trying to keep your luggage together while trying not to overheat, but not wanting to drink too much water so you do not have to use the train toilets. It was an experience.
  Heading towards the train to embark on our adventure is what the picture below shows.

    The train.

   This is getting on the train, for us it was standing room (below).

   Below you see people standing, they are not moving to their seat because they have just bought standing tickets, which means you just stand around the train until it come to your spot then you exit the train. The next three pictures are of people standing on the train. I ended up standing in front of the hot water area so many people squeezed by me to fill up their special keeping warm water bottles with hot water or added hot water to their instant noodle bowls. One time two people decided to make their instant noodles right when people were getting on the train so they were hindering everyone getting on the train and instead of moving to let people pass they just stood their until they filled up their noodles and water bottles. I was a little annoyed and was told that those people were just really rude. I now share their rudeness with you.

  This little girl in the picture was walking around going up to people with cellphones and kinda grabbing them to see what the person was doing on them. It turns out that she was wanting to listen to music on their phones. She went up to this one young man and did this and we thought that he was related to her because she was being so bossy to him but he had never meet her before in his life. She went to another young man and others standing around her that had their phone out. Below she is with the first young man listening to his music. I had her listen to my music for a little bit but she could not understand and did not want to listen any more. She was only six but she was not afraid of strangers, maybe overly friendly. She did say that she could not do anything with me because I was a stranger but them she said I was her friend so not a stranger anymore and she could talk to me, although I could not understand her. My friend, Alice, did most of the translating for me and was very patience when doing so. 

  Getting off the train in Xi'an around 8 in the morning.

  Outside the station with the many, many people.

  After the train station we headed for the hostel which is where I am at the moment. I was able to access WIFI so I could write this post. I am going to try to keep up with my posting during my travels so you do not get one insanely long post at the end of February upon my return to Changzhou. 

  Thank you to those reading and keeping up on my journey, I love reading your comments.