The 910 to Xining, a Bus, a Visa, and the 903 to Golmud

I woke up early, happy to go to the complimentary breakfast buffet and sample a variety of Chinese food: steamed buns, various hot and cold vegetables, pickles and so on. As a solo traveller, or even two people, you rarely get a run of the cuisine like this, so I took advantage of the opportunity and dug in.

I took a stroll over to the PSB office, past frozen sidewalks and men calling out from their bicycle rickshaws offering their services to whoever might want them. One sees these itinerant workers, without a steady job, riding about or standing on corners with signs mentioning what sort of work they could perform. With the decommisioning of state enterprises, and the poverty of the countryside pushing people into the cities, there is a profusion of these men (and occasionally women as well) looking for work. The areas where they congregate are called "job-markets", and they aren't very different from what you see in US cities, particularly in California, where migrants stand on corners and find sporadic work as day laborers.

I found the PSB office, only to realize that it was Sunday, and the place was essentially closed. I spoke with a young guard, and he suggested I come back on Monday. A higher level man asked the guard what I wanted, assuming I didn't speak Chinese, and when the guard said I wanted a visa extension, he emitted a low snort that said to me "Not Very Likely". I talked a while longer with the guard, who was very keen on sports and listed a host of international sports figures, most of whom I had never heard of. I thanked him and walked out of the compound feeling a bit uncertain about what my next step should be.

I figured I should try to get money as well, since I was underfunded for the ride to Lhasa, especially if I was to pay for another night in the hotel and for a visa extension. As it turned out, I couldn't get money at the main branch of the Bank of China. "Try Xining, or Lhasa" they said. Thanks a million, I'm on a bicycle, so those places are a bit inconvenient for me right now. I walked out, figuring that my next move had been decided by circumstances: head to Xining for both a visa extension and money.

The train to Xining, the 910, left in the late afternoon, so I placed my things in the hotel's left luggage room, and said I'd be back in a day or two. I killed time wandering around near the train station, which was on the outskirts of town, far away from anything interesting. Buying the ticket was relatively easy: the stainless steel corral that was set up to combat the Chinese habit of jumping lines - or not even bother to form one - meant that someone managed to shove their money in the ticket agent's window a half dozen times before I got near. Unfortunately, the agent went on break, and another window opened with a mad rush to the front, and I found myself in the same place in line I had been 25 minutes before. Sigh.

I bought a hard-seat ticket - the cheapest class - because I figured it would be interesting to rub shoulders with the Chinese working-class. A 13 hour train ride ran me about $5. To kill time, I had noodles, shopped at a large market full of vegetables, snack food, bread, and the like, and then headed back to the station to sit and wait for the train to leave. I sat in the ticket hall watching a variety of people, some from Tibet heading east, some from Golmud or its environs, cram into the seats, or sit on their luggage, spitting sunflower seeds on the floor, blowing snot out of their noses at my feet, chainsmoking cigarette after cigarette，toddlers pissing on the floor. To kill time, I had noodles, shopped at a large market full of vegetables, snack food, bread, and the like, and then headed back to the station to sit and wait for the train to leave. Occasionally a railway official would come into an area and brusquely order everyone to clear out: sometimes this was so that the floor could be cleaned, sometimes it was for no apparent reason. The rail employee uniforms were modular: the outfit was the same, and then some red diamond shaped patch was pinned on the left arm, flopping around, describing what their duty was today, or this hour.

The call went out for the train, and a line of sorts, in places 8 or 9 abreast, formed, snaking through the hall. I passed through the gate eventually, and found myself on car number three, looking for seat number 20. The numbers started at the high end: 144. It was incredible to shove 144 people, more or less, into a single rail car. I passed Chinese dressed in the old blue caps and cheap suits, nearly every man shod in loafers. This was the China I had seen in 1997, the proletariat, or what was left of them, since state-run enterprises had been and continued to be dismantled at a rapid pace. I took my seat, a window seat at least, and looked at my fellow bench mates. "Hard-seat" is apt: the seats are merely benches, with the backs set at 90 degree angles from the seats, and about 2 feet between rows. This means that you can't help but put your knees into someone else's thighs. and the three-across-the-bench wasn't spacious either. Cigarette smoke clouded the air as we were treated to muzak on the train's PA system: favorites like "The Sounds of Silence", "You Could Get Lost Between the Moon and New York City", and "Take a Look at Me Now".

We pulled out at dark, and I watched out the window at the darkening sand and the flares from refineries burning off natural gas to the south of the city. Soon there was absolutely nothing to look at - even if there had been daylight - and I turned back to my staring benchmates. It wasn't that they were rude, or even curious: one had no choice but to point one's eyes at someone, since people were all around. The man across from me was sick, sniffling, groaning, and spitting onto the floor. An older map in a blue cap met my eyes with a vacant stare. A couple, very much in love, sat across from me, he looking exhausted, and she squeezed improbably into very tight black pants and knee-high go-go boots. We all alternately stared and closed our eyes, with no way of passing the time. Conductors walked up and down the aisle selling water and instant noodles, or - a more recent addition - TV sets with VCD players to watch in your booth.

Time moved intolerably slowly. I was miserable, but I was obviously not alone: everyone in the car was shifting and contorting their bodies to try to find the evasive comfortable position. Strangers gave up on keeping any sort of distance, and the man to my right slouched over onto my shoulder and began to snore. Occasionally he would wake up, wipe drool off of his cheek, give me a wan smile, and drop off to some sort of semi-conscious state again. I got up to eat a snack in the vestibule, joining a few smokers who wanted to dare the subfreezing temperatures inbetween the cars. I had to step over people sprawled under the benches on the filthy floor, feet poking out into the aisle. Men and women lay crumpled on top of each other, or using someone else's feet as a pillow for one's head, or trying to bridge the space between two benches with ones midsection suspended in the air. I read the English sign by the sink: "Please don't drop odds and ends into the pond". A sign in the toilet exhorted occupants to "Please flush the chamber pot". Beautiful translations, I thought to myself, I couldn't do a better job.

I returned to my seat, and dozed off uncomfortably. I was jolted awake by the man in the couple, who had fallen asleep with a bottle of juice in his hands which had slipped out as he lost consciousness and spilled onto the man in the blue cap who now lay on the floor underneath us all. No apologies, since this was bound to happen, just a quiet passing around of toilet paper to wipe off the juice from pants or jackets or hair. The sick man groaned. I looked at my watch; he asked me the time, and I told him it was 11:30PM. "Ey-oh". He groaned again. We still had 8 hours to Xining.

The night dragged on interminably. At some point, someone in the car rented a VCD player, which stopped working after 10 minutes, and began pounding on it and cursing the conductor. Everyone looked up and smiled, glad of the distraction from our individual misery. Finally, Xining came into view, and we walked out into the cold pre-dawn air into the city.

I had a couple of hours to kill, so I wandered around looking for soymilk, finding it in a small alley, and paying almost nothing for a bowl and 3 breadsticks (the total was 8 cents). I walked up towards skyscrapers, and watched the city come awake. Traffic was haphazard, with people making impossible cross traffic turns but somehow avoiding a collision. Hui were hauling out sheep carcasses on meathooks. I found a police station that was open and asked about where I should go for an extension. The woman wrote it out on a piece of paper for me to show a cab driver. As I walked out to flag a cab I found a large Bank of China, and in 15 minutes I was back out on the street flush with cash.

I hailed a cab and went to the PSB visa office. I was invited back to an office with a uniformed officer, speaking English, and a plainclothes officer, rather staid, across the desk from him. He asked me what I wanted in a gruff voice. I politely asked for a visa extension.

"Let me see your passport." I handed it to him. "You have already been in China too long. No extension." This was bad news.

"Well, you see, I'm traveling by bicycle, and it takes a long time to cross China - its a big country (forced smile here). I just want to get to Xi'an (a lie - mention Tibet and you can forget about it) and then go home."

He sat silent for a few moments, and then said "OK, I think I can give you 20 days - it's enough to get to Xi'an, I think. Fill out the forms and come back in an hour."

I filled out the forms, and walked around for an hour. The street was full of boutiques selling the middle class dream to consumers. English signs cluttered the sides of buildings. People walked lapdogs down the sidewalk: I watched a man urge his tiny furball to jaywalk with him across 4 lanes of traffic. The dog was obviously terrified, but all the man could do was whistle encouragement. I wanted to say, Pick the damn thing up! but refrained, and watched instead, as they miraculously made it across the street without the dog (or the man) being struck by a vehicle.

I went back into the PSB office. The stiff uniformed man came out and said "OK, I will give you 20 days. Please pay 440Y." This was a completely outrageous sum of money to pay for an extension - the going rate was around 125Y for a full month. I said to him, "I'm sorry, how much?"

"440 yuan. If that is acceptable..." He smiled.

I just laughed, said "No thanks" and walked out. I wasn't going to play into that sort of corruption. In two seconds I decided to get on a bus to Lanzhou, only a few more hours away, and try my luck there.

I flagged a cab to the train station, and told the driver my sob story on the way. He just clucked and said "Gong An" while shaking his head. Chinese experience hassles from these people as well.

Fifteen minutes later I was on a bus to Lanzhou. We drove out past the polluted suburbs of Xining and were soon in the countryside, driving alongside fallow fields waiting for the winter and te following spring. Groups of men squatted over games of cards or lounged on piles of hay in the weak winter sun. Women worked. All was normal in the hinterland.

We drove through a river gorge, losing elevation, and then passed through a coal mining area, with everything covered in soot. Hui restaurants had hopeful looking signs of green fields with flowers and sheep. Men and woman sat on rockpiles and smashed boulders into various sizes with mallets, day in and day out. The scene was depressing. I drifted off to sleep, listening to the warbling bus radio play the same 5 songs over and over again.

We arrived in Lanzhou, passing along the banks of the Yellow River, which was lined on this side with a well-manicured park, full of older Chinese out and about for their constitutionals, kicking and stretching and swinging their arms wildly. We pulled into the bus station a bit too late for me to make the PSB office that day, so I went to catch a bus to the hotel I had stayed at in August, when this whole thing started. Circular movements, the Tao of Travel in China.

An English speaking man with a soft voice asked me if I needed help. What he really wanted was for me to speak English with a group of students from Lanzhou University. I said I would try to do so if I had the time. He was very eager to get an answer, but I told him my schedule was unsure. He asked for my telephone number, or where I was staying. I said I would likely be staying at the Lanzhou Dasha, across from the train station. He ripped out a piece of paper and wrote down "Tim" and a phone number. I said I would try to call him in the morning if I had time.

The hotel was the same, with the electric shoe cleaner by the reception desk. I asked for a dorm bed. "We don't have those anymore".

I said that I had stayed in such a room on the fourth floor only four months before. "No more". The woman smiled.

I said "China is changing fast", and then asked for whatever was cheapest. I got a room with three beds, looking very much like a dorm, but for two dollars more than I had paid in August. I dropped off my bag (I only had a plastic bag with raisins, travelling light...) and then headed out for dinner and a bit of time on the internet. When I came back to my room, I found that Tim had called for me repeatedly, to the annoyance of the floor attendant. I apologized and said I would call him in the morning.

Two minutes later, she knocked on my door and said he was on the phone. I was annoyed as well, but I went to put him off. "Hello."

"Hello...This is Tim. Is this Jeff?"

"Yes." A drunk man came into the room and began slapping my back and breathing into my face.

"I called because I wanted to make sure you were safe. I was very worried, because you weren't there."

"No, no, I'm fine thanks. Just tired."

"I want to come to see you tonight."

"Ah, well, I'm quite tired from my long trip. Tomorrow would be better."

"I really want to talk to you tonight. I can be over very soon."

I didn't want to entertain him, but I thought of all the Chinese who had put themselves out for me during my trip and decided I would indulge him. "OK, you can come over for a while."

He knocked on my door five minutes later. I let him in and offered him an orange and tea. He sat down on one of the beds and we talked a bit. He asked me if I wanted a massage, Kung-Fu style. I said, Maybe, but not tonight.

He told me he had studied the I'Ching for four years and that he could tell my future from looking at my hands. He asked for my hands. I gave them to him. Then he had a close look at my face. He said, "You should lie down, so I can look at your penis".

This was a bit much. I said, no thanks, and showed him the door, politely but firmly. I wished him well, and lied that I would try to call him in the morning. He was distressed at having overstepped, but I wasn't in the mood for what was pretty obviously a pick-up. I closed the door behind him and fell asleep very quickly.

The next morning I went to the PSB to ask - pray, really - for an extension. The bus took me past the downtown shopping and business area. The commercial assault was massive: a TV was on the public bus, the hand straps had ads on them, giant Santa Clauses popped out of departments stores wishing you a Merry Christmas, women in uniforms hawked batteries as part of a promotion. It was horrible that the People's Republic of China had come to this: not even the US was this overrun with blatant consumerism. It made me glad to have spent most of my time in the Chinese countryside, away from all this pollution.

The PSB visa officer was a well-dressed plainclothes woman. She was warm and friendly. We bantered back and forth in English and Chinese, I being as flattering as possible, trying to up my chances of getting the extension. She seemed to receive this well, and said to come back at 4PM - roughly two hours before the train back to Golmud - to find out of I had been granted the extension.

When I came back at four, a different woman was staffing the office, but my passport had a new one month extension in it, and I was happy. I paid the fee - 125Y - and went straight to the train station. This time I got a hard-sleeper, and less than two hours later, I was lounging on my back, car number 5, train number 903 (the Lanzhou to Golmud Regular), looking out at the sunset, glad to be able to stretch my legs and looking forward to a good nights sleep.

The train ride was uneventful, easy, and comfortable. The three men around me all fidgeted with their cellphones like they had new toys. The conductors sold hot food out of a cart. I began to wonder what first-class ("soft-sleeper") was like.

I slept deeply, and we arrived in Golmud at 10AM. I walked out of the station to find that there was a free bus to the hotel I had left my things at, so I got aboard, and checked into the Golmud Hotel. I mended clothes, cleaned and maintained my bicycle, and wandered out for a few things to take with me on the ride to Lhasa.