to put it simply, leaving beijing for vacation after j-term finished was difficult. why? chinese new year travel, for everyone involved, is hell.
let me start with the reminder that china has an insanely large population problem. you can try to imagine how many people are here, but if you haven't been before, it's really not an image you can conjure up in your head. that being said, chinese new year (end of january/beginning of february) is thus the absolute worse time in china to travel. people are either returning home for what might be the only time they can see their family during the year or trying to get away from the crowds of people, which makes travelling nearly impossible.
for february break, my two friends that i traveled with and i decided to first go to sanya in hainan, often called "the hawaii of china" by locals, to experience some warm weather after a bitter cold four weeks in beijing. since traveling by train in china is very cheap, and as were told quite the experience, we decided to book tickets to take a 31-hour train from beijing to haikou, a town in hainan three hours away from sanya, and then take a cab from haiko to sanya.
the first major hurdle in our trip was actually buying train tickets. because there are so many people here, pre-booking tickets online doesn't exist. if you want a ticket, you have to wait for hours in line at a travel agency because tickets for the same trains are sold throughout china at exactly the same time. in our case, our tickets would be sold one night at 7 pm, so we lined up at around 4 pm just so that the woman at the desk could input what we wanted so that when tickets started being sold, she could immediately track down what we wanted, since most tickets sell out within 4-5 minutes. we managed to score tickets, but most of our friends weren't as lucky and were turned away two days in a row empty-handed.
thrilled to have actually gotten tickets and ready to hit the beach, my friends and i went to the train station a few hours in advance to catch our train, since we knew that it would be pure madness. "ren shan, ren hai" (literally "people in the mountains, people in the ocean" -- a chinese phrase to describe the masses of people in a given place) doesn't even begin to describe the crowd there. we pushed and shoved for half an hour, with almost everything we had brought to china for the semester on our backs and in our hands, just to get inside of the station. why? you have to understand that people in china don't wait in line. they have a word for it -- "pai dui" -- but it's absolutely useless. as a man i befriended on a different train (that story to come) explained, communism basically ruined china's manners. no one had anything and had to fight for what little they could get. in a practical context, that means that watching people trying to catch trains looks like everyone is fighting for their life -- but, without fail, they leave time to hack and spit everywhere in the process.
but back to the train. inside the station wasn't much better. one of the most telling images we remembered was one man casually leaping over falling luggage as he rushed to catch a train. it seems like everyone is prepared for chaos here, and rightfully so. when we finally arrived at the area from where our train would depart, we read on the departure screen that our train was delayed a few hours because of snow south of beijing blocking the train from getting through. in china you have to expect delays, so we weren't fazed. however, the problems kept coming. the train we were originally supposed to take couldn't get through at all, and so another train had to fill in. this train, unlike the original one, did not have any beds (we had booked "ying wo" or hard bed tickets). we groaned at the idea of having to spend 30+ hours in a seat, and so did a lot of other people: many started leaving, and announcements were made for ticket refunds. nonetheless, we decided to stick it out -- we didn't really have a choice.
the tell-tale sign that we really should not get on the train was that when the train finally arrived, it was announced that the train could no longer take us to haikou because of all the snow. instead, it would stop in guangzhou, which was still at least 15 hours away by train from haikou. as people began in true chinese fashion to rush the gate, we were faced with the decision whether or not to try our luck in guangzhou, or to book last-minute plane tickets, since we already had hostel reservations in both haikou and sanya that we couldn't get refunded. as much as we wanted to have the "dididaodao" (authentic) chinese train experience, we knew nothing about guangzhou or where we might be able to stay there, and so instead we returned, defeated, to our dorm for one more night. luckily we were able to buy plane tickets for the next morning, and so 8 hours after leaving the train station we boarded a plane for haikou.
as we flew problem-free to haikou and took a taxi to our hostel, we had no idea that people in trains all over china were victims of what turned out to be china's worst snowstorm in 50 years. it was only a few days after we arrived in hainan that we learned of the many people that died from the cold or lack of food. in fact, we would have been stranded 2 hours outside of beijing for 3 days had we taken our train, which still makes me shudder.
as chaotic and exhausting the process of getting to our much-needed tropical vacation was, i learned three important lessons:
1. forget waiting in line until i return to the states
2. backpacking backpacks can get aggressive chinese travelers out of your way, but cause serious back pain
3. go with your gut, even with a $400 price tag
