{"id":2616,"date":"2010-10-03T13:13:16","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T13:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=2616"},"modified":"2017-12-22T09:17:05","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T13:17:05","slug":"golden-week-travels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/golden-week-travels\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Week Travels (\u9ec4\u91d1\u5468\u65c5\u6e38)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greetings from Hohhot<\/strong> (\u547c\u548c\u6d69\u7279 – h\u016b h\u00e9 h\u00e0o t\u00e8), the capital city of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region<\/strong> (\u5185\u8499\u53e4\u81ea\u6cbb\u533a – n\u00e8i m\u00e9ng g\u01d4 z\u00ec zh\u00ec q\u016b).\u00a0 Seeing as how it is the autumn edition of Golden Week<\/strong> (\u9ec4\u91d1\u5468 – hu\u00e1ng j\u012bn zh\u014du), it was time to get out of the big city for a change of scenery.\u00a0 Although I have previously sworn off traveing in China on Chinese holidays, I had a change of heart, and I decided to give it the ole’ college try and fight the crowds to buy train tickets<\/strong> (\u4e70\u706b\u8f66\u7968 – m\u01cei hu\u01d2 ch\u0113 pi\u00e0o).\u00a0 In China, there are two long holidays every year – one week in October for National Day<\/strong> (\u56fd\u5e86\u8282 – gu\u00f3 q\u00ecng\u00a0 ji\u00e9) and another long holiday in January\/February for Spring Festival<\/strong> (\u6625\u8282 – ch\u016bn ji\u00e9).\u00a0 As you can probably imagine in a country with such a massive population, traveling on these holidays can be a headache and a half.\u00a0 Well-off families book up plane tickets and fancy hotel rooms, while the \u8001\u767d\u4eba line-up at 5 a.m. to procure train tickets bound for their hometown<\/strong> (\u8001\u5bb6 – l\u01ceo ji\u0101).<\/p>\n

Armed with a list of seven potential holiday destinations and a pocket full of kuai<\/em>, I headed to my local train ticket office.\u00a0 Surprisingly, there wasn’t a very long line.\u00a0 Not surprsingly, the people in said short line were incredibly pushy and spared no attempts to cut me.\u00a0 Having fended off the aggressive line-jumpers, I finally had my turn.\u00a0 First, I asked for tickets to Shanghai <\/strong>(\u4e0a\u6d77 – Sh\u00e0ngh\u01cei).\u00a0 “\u6ca1\u6709 (m\u00e9i y\u01d2u)” was all I heard back from the attendant (literally meaning “no have”).\u00a0 “That’s OK,” I thought.\u00a0 “I’ve already been there.\u00a0 Plus, it’ll be too crowded next week.”\u00a0 On to potential travel destination #2 – Hangzhou <\/strong>(\u676d\u5dde – H\u00e1ngzh\u014du).\u00a0 Again, I was greeted with a prompt “\u6ca1\u6709.”\u00a0 It soon became obvious to me that requesting tickets for the popular tourist destinations of Southern China would all result in a quick “\u6ca1\u6709” from the nice lady behind the counter.\u00a0 With pressure from the guy behind me, I quickly jumped down the list to choice #7 – Hohhot.\u00a0 Much to my excitement, I finally heard “\u6709” from behind the counter (literally meaning “have”).\u00a0 Sadly, my request for a hard sleeper<\/strong> (\u786c\u5367 – y\u00ecng w\u00f2) was denied, and as such we ended up booking two hard seat<\/strong> (\u786c\u5ea7 – y\u00ecng zu\u00f2) tickets.\u00a0 Not ideal, but at least we had tickets.<\/p>\n

Arriving at Beijing West Railway Station<\/strong> (\u5317\u4eac\u897f\u7ad9 – B\u011bi j\u012bng x\u012b zh\u00e0n) last night around 7 p.m., the check-in process was shockingly quick and trouble-free.\u00a0 Despite the massive crowds of people present everywhere in the station, it really wasn’t so bad, and we actually managed to find some seats to wait for the train.\u00a0 Of course, this being China, the travel trouble was going to have to come sooner or later…<\/p>\n

Boarding the train, I quickly realized exactly what we were in for.\u00a0 While we were fortunate enough to have seats, there were plenty of people who were not so fortunate.\u00a0 This meant an extremely over-crowded train car with dozens of people crowding the aisles, in what was certainly well beyond a fire hazard.\u00a0 It was clear that my plan of being able to kill time by strolling about the train was going to have to be abandoned.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, we brought along a bottle of red wine<\/strong> (\u7ea2\u8461\u8404\u9152 – h\u00f3ng p\u00fa t\u00e1o ji\u01d4) to make the ride a bit more enjoyable.\u00a0 Although the first few hours were a breeze, the hours of midnight-5 a.m. were not so great.\u00a0 With so many people crowding the aisles, the lights remained on all through the night.\u00a0 Instead of quietly enjoying a book or listening to personal headphones, our fellow travelers preferred loudly chatting with each other, smoking, and playing music right out of their cell phone speakers right up until the moment we pulled into Hohhot.\u00a0 Oh well… T.I.C.\u00a0 At least we made it!\u00a0 While riding Chinese trains can be a miserable experience, it at least shows you how real people get around.\u00a0 Plus, there’s always the chance that you can see a woman beat up on her husband for being a drunk idiot…<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=F4as9HxZSeA&p=49B1F9FE8104254E&playnext=1&index=14<\/a><\/p>\n

Tomorrow, we’re heading off on a 3-day tour of the desert and the grasslands outside of the city.\u00a0 We plan to sleep in a traditional Mongolian dwelling, a yurt<\/strong> (\u8499\u53e4\u5305 – m\u00e9ng g\u01d4 b\u0101o) and ride camels<\/strong> (\u9a91\u9a86\u9a7c – q\u00ed lu\u00f2 tuo).\u00a0 You can expect a full recap of the trip when I return to Beijing next weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Greetings from Hohhot (\u547c\u548c\u6d69\u7279 – h\u016b h\u00e9 h\u00e0o t\u00e8), the capital city of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (\u5185\u8499\u53e4\u81ea\u6cbb\u533a – n\u00e8i m\u00e9ng g\u01d4 z\u00ec zh\u00ec q\u016b).\u00a0 Seeing as how it is the autumn edition of Golden Week (\u9ec4\u91d1\u5468 – hu\u00e1ng j\u012bn zh\u014du), it was time to get out of the big city for a change…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":2618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11670,11671,11666,11667,11669,11668],"class_list":["post-2616","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-china-golden-week","tag-chinese-train","tag-hohhot","tag-inner-mongolia","tag-11669","tag-11668"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2616"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14028,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions\/14028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}