Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I hope you all enjoyed your turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.
I improvised in something hacked together to resemble a Thanksgiving feast with the other White People(tm) in Baoding, but it involved a lot Chinese dishes and KFC. Although Kim, a teacher at Hebei University and exemplar of social prowess that I can only dream of—probably because I regularly use words like "exemplar"–managed to save Stove Top since June for the meal. So, you know, go Kim.
I’m departing for a long weekend in Xian today, home of Terra Cotta warriors. Kim, having recently returned from there, says that the town is really cool, so that’s something to look forward to.
Adam and I have gone to great trouble to secure our soft-sleeper class train tickets for the 12 hour ride, but we have no idea how we’re getting back. Despite the entire train ticket purchasing system being digitized and networked, the powers of China have deigned that ticket sales are limited to certain regions. That is to say that we can’t buy train tickets from Xian back to Baoding until we’re in Xian; we can’t buy them in Baoding. Well, technically we can, but we went to the ticket office on the first day of sales, and over four trains, only 1 bed was available. I like Adam, but I’m not playing spoons with the guy, especially now that he’s grown a beard.
When this regional ticketing system was being explained to me, the justification for it was that it wouldn’t be fair to the residents of Xian if the rest of the country bought them out of "their" train tickets.
o.0
What?
If a person is taking a twelve hour train ride somewhere, it stands to reason that, what, 95% of the time, they will want to come back from that place. I mean, has there been a huge problem where people have cornered the ticket market of Xian, effectively sieging the locals?
I doubt it, but then again, I’ve seen things in this country that I never would have imagined. Ultimately, all one can do is look up to the sky, sigh, and say, "Oh, China."
See you in a few days. (I hope.)
