Train tickets

I definitely filled up a karma quota this evening!

Diana and I went to the central train station to buy tickets for Hong Kong. Spring festival is coming up and we're heading to 中山 (ZhongShan) to spend it with her parents. Before we reach her parents we're heading a few hours south to catch out the sites in Hong Kong and to cross a border ;) . I'm going to try to sneak in some surfing too.

Ok so now for the karma part. After we purchased our tickets I was approached by a middle eastern man whom asked if I spoke English. I responded yes and answered a few of the questions he had. He said OK to everything I told him, I pointed him to the correct window and then he went to stand in line. I needed to purchase a second ticket to Harbin so I also stood in line behind him by a few people. As he approached the window he asked a few questions and the responses weren't satisfactory so he left. I didn't hear the questions/answers but I assume they were something like "Do you have a ticket for here/there" and the answer was "no".

It was my turn at the ticket window and they, sadly, didn't have a ticket for me to Harbin. After I left the window the man approached me again. Apparently he didn't fully understand what happened at the window and all he wanted was a ticket to Guangzhou A.S.A.P. Also his English wasn't as good as I had originally thought. He English was like my Chinese. He said OK to everything even if he didn't really understand (I've been know to say hao, hao (OK) to things that we're probably selling my soul)

Diana and I spent about 20-25 minutes speaking with them trying to figure out where they wanted to go and HOW they want to get there. Explaining to them that a Chinese train has 2 different types of beds and 2 different types of chairs, additionally the beds have 3 different locations. All of these have different prices so its kinda important to know what you want especially with the craziness of a Chinese train station moreover one in Beijing! (its nuts).

So it took a while as the English level was definitely a barrier. Fortunately we had a notepad so I was able to write down things like times, days, etc. as well as using Diana's brilliant idea of drawing a chair and a bed so they understood the difference. I went to the ticket counter with them 4 different times asking about prices, the soonest train, etc. etc.

After the 3rd time to the ticket window I realized two things. The first is that they wanted out of Beijing A.S.A.P. The second was a bit of naivety on my part. Only the 20 minutes they made several gestures that to me indicated they wanted a seat and not a bed. What I realized is that they were trying to communicate that they were willing to stand! Standing never occurred to me as trains in the U.S simply do not allow standing let alone sell a ticket for standing room only.

The train to Guangzhou is 21 hours! That's the fast train.

I'll admit it. I was naive. It never occurred to me to purchase a train ticket for standing room on a 21+ hour train. I realize that trains in China, India and, apparently, the middle east sell these tickets but it didn't occur to me. I went back to the ticket window for a 4th time to ask for a standing only ticket. A phrase that wasn't in our phrase book.

This is where it gets interesting for all of us. They did sell tickets for standing room only but not at that train station. They had to go to a completely separate train station. Oh boy I had a hard time communicating the words "Wednesday" and "the day after tomorrow" as well as variants of those. Now I had to communicate that they could get to Guangzhou but they would have to go to a different train station to buy the tickets.

It took a good 10 minutes to communicate this but eventually we did. Diana wrote down a note that they could hand to the ticket window and then we walked them out to a Taxi. I, yes I, talked to the cab driver and told him where to take the guys as well as approximate prices. I translated this back to the men and sent them on their way.

I don't know what happened to them after that but I hope they made they made to Guangzhou(广州). I think the entire back-n-forth took about 40 minutes including a nice and long 5 minutes outside in the -7 (C) night.