Adventures in the Hard Seat

So, I just back from an amazing weekend in Beijing. Princeton in Asia was having a reunion dinner, so I headed up there to engage in some good old-fashioned revelry with my fellow PiA China teachers and to see more of the city since my last trip there in 2007. I have to admit, I loooove Beijing. It’s cold, it’s gritty, it’s historical, it’s cultural…basically, it’s awesome.

However, the most blog-worthy experience from my weekend in China’s capital actually stems from my journey back to Hangzhou. Some background: China has one of the world’s most extensive rail transit systems, and it’s cheap, clean, and convenient.

There are four “classes” of train tickets from which you can choose, in descending order of cost:
•The “soft sleeper”—the most expensive; a comfy cabin with four beds and a good amount of privacy.
•The “hard sleeper”—a slightly less private bed cabin with six less-cushioned beds.
•The “soft seat”—a cushioned, reclining chair very similar to those on airplanes.
•The fabled “hard seat”—more of a glorified bench, un-cushioned, that seats two (and sometimes three) people.

Now, I’ve never been on a long-distance train before in my life, and I’ve been really excited to have the experience of traveling on a Chinese sleeper train. So, when I decided to head up to Beijing for the weekend, the natural choice for me was to travel by train. I consulted my more-experienced train traveling friends on which class of tickets to buy, and all of them suggested the “hard sleeper”—apparently the ticket of choice for expats. Hardly any, they informed me, ever take the seats. “Too Chinese” I was told. “Too uncomfortable, you’ll never get any sleep.” “It’s hell on train tracks.”

Yikes. So, the hard sleeper it was!

Only one very big problem. When I went to the train station to buy my tickets, there were no hard sleeper tickets left. Nor were there any soft sleeper tickets left.

Uh oh…So, I left the train station with a dreaded hard seat ticket in hand. And I’d be traveling alone. (cue the dramatic music).

Needless to say, I was nervous. My friends pitied my terrible misfortune of having to travel 14 hours on an overnight train on a hard seat. “Get ready to mingle with the locals!” they told me. “This will be a story that you tell for the rest of your life,” they said.


Yikes. So, Monday afternoon, I boarded the hard seat car at the Beijing train station, a place where no foreigner has ever ventured. This fact was immediately apparent due to the multitude of stares I received from my fellow Chinese hard-seat goers as I jostled and fumbled my way to my bench in the back of the car. I finally found it, and before long I was sitting gawkily on a rock-hard bench with a congested woman and facing two men sitting on the opposite bench.

Awkward silence ensued for the first 10 minutes of the train ride. I struggled to make myself comfortable on the bench, relegating myself to the knowledge that I’d be sitting here all night. Unfortunately, 10 minutes into the train ride, the flimsy covering on my side of the bench broke. As I clumsily tried to repair it myself, one of the men jumped up and fixed it for me. Expressing my appreciation for his assistance, I thanked him in Chinese.

“You speak Chinese!?” he exclaimed, dumbfounded that Chinese words could come out of a foreigner’s mouth.

“A little?” I replied, suddenly self-conscious of my ability to mingle with the locals in their native tongue.

“The foreigner speaks Chinese!” the man announced to the people sitting across the aisle, with whom he had been conversing. However, he proclaimed this loudly enough so that the entire back half of the car heard him.

Suddenly, about 15 pairs of eyes were trained on me. Right on me. People were turned around in their seats, waiting for me to utter some more words in Putonghua.

Ooooh boy.

This is how the entire night goes. Different brave passengers approach me to converse, obviously having considered what to ask beforehand.

“What is America like?”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“What do Americans know about Chinese history?”
“Why are you sitting in the hard seat? Foreigners should sleep in the beds!”
“I’m a traditional Chinese medicine doctor. Can I demonstrate some of my techniques on you?”
“Can we look at your English books?”
“What are some traditional Western medicine practices?”

Needless to say, being the primary mode of entertainment for my fellow passengers, I got no sleep on the train that night. And yes, the bench became almost unbearably uncomfortable as the night wore on.

But, it was still a great experience. I got to chat with people with whom I probably would never have talked otherwise. I got to tell them a little bit about America (or rather, as much as I could given the limits of my Chinese) and give them a better understanding of what it’s like to live in the US.

And, best of all, I got to learn a little bit about their lives: about the Chinese woman who teaches Spanish to classes that are less than half full because students would rather study English, and thus struggles to make enough money. About the traditional Chinese medicine doctor who carries his book of medicinal techniques around in case somebody needs curing, but is worried about Western medicine overshadowing his practice. About the student who lives in Hangzhou, but is trying desperately to get into one of Beijing’s colleges so that she can experience more of China (she’s only left Hangzhou’s Zhejiang Province four times in her entire life).

So, despite the fact that I got to Hangzhou at 6:42am exhausted and with no sleep, I don’t regret “mingling with the locals” in the hard-seat section. It was an interesting experience, and I’m glad I did it.