Planes, Trains and Automobiles

So we have made our first venture out from the relative safe environment of Jiangsu province to Xi’an in Shaanxi province. If you don’t know where this is, there’s something they have just invented…it’s called a map (that’s right, sarcasm is back!), you can use that to see where we went. Why did we choose Xi’an? Xi’an is one of the oldest cities in China and was at many times the capital of China in the long history of the country. It is also known for the Eighth Wonder of the World….the Terra Cotta Warriors (bingma yong in Chinese). While we were in Atlanta, we took the time to see a traveling exhibit of these warriors in 2008 but we knew at the time that it would be nothing compared to what we would see in Xi’an.

Just so we now can be travel snobs, we were told that if you come to China and don’t see Xi’an, then you haven’t been to China. How’s that for an uppity flair? We had this on our list of places to visit in China as soon as I accepted the offer and it took a little bit of time to make the trip but we finally made the arrangements and set our sights on Xi’an. Over the course of the coming posts we’ll talk in more detail about what we experienced in Xi’an but first we’d like to start at the beginning…..how did we get there?

Living a couple of hours outside of Shanghai has major advantages since we’re not far from a HUGE airport and can grab a plane to just about anywhere in China. Typically, Westerners will have a car arranged (for those of us without a driver) to pick them up from their apartments and drive them to the airport. This is quite expensive (around 400 RMB) and we decided that the trip itself had cost us enough and we would try to save the cash for something else. So we took an alternate route, we purchased train tickets to get us from Suzhou to Shanghai and from there we would hop on the subway to the Maglev station and then take the Maglev to the airport. What’s the Maglev (okay, I’m sorry for the sarcasm earlier, no sarcasm here)? It’s one of those magnet rail, high speed trains that get you from point-to-point in much shorter times than standard trains. The train we took from Suzhou to Shanghai runs at maximum speed of about 200 kph, the Maglev runs at a maximum speed of 431 kph. The trip from the station to the airport took 6 minutes 54 seconds so you can figure out the distance. So, despite our train from Suzhou being delayed about 35 minutes, we were still able to arrive at the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight.

The best part of flying in China is that they start boarding 30 minutes before the flight and they stop checking in people for the flight at the same time. The moral of the story is that if you want to be on your plane, be early (or don’t plan on getting on your flight). It’s the same for the trains; they open the gates about 3-5 minutes before the train hits the station. Once at the station, you’ve got about 3-5 minutes to get on the train and they are off. They don’t wait around for anyone. Of course, this doesn’t mean they can’t be late (like our first train was but it’s the system so deal with it). So, we flew China Eastern Airlines, the same airline I took from Germany to Suzhou a little over one year ago. Another interesting tidbit, you don’t get to pre-select your seat. Your seat is assigned when you check in….just another reason to be early (if you want that aisle seat in the back of the plane by the bathrooms which is my seating preference). So, like clockwork, we push away from the gate about 10 minutes before the scheduled departure time and we head for the runway. So, unlike the US airlines where they believe that pushing away from the gate means on time, in China getting in the air on time is what they count as on time (and they mean it when they say that the flight leaves at 3:00).

So, about 45 minutes into the flight, along comes the snack cart with a box snack. We’re no longer in the US so you really have no idea what to expect for the snack. They serve the standard Coke, Sprite, OJ, coffee and tea to drink. In the box, a roll, a small piece of sponge cake, two cookies and a small bag of apple chips (along with one of those small plastic cups of water). So, the roll contained a surprise. I was wondering why just a plain old roll….cold and dry. Surprise, you bite into it and you can’t help but notice what Anthony Bourdain calls “meat in tube form” inside the roll. Now a cold “pig in a blanket” isn’t what I was expecting but I was starving and it was actually pretty good.

As you can imagine, all of the announcements in the airplane were in Chinese BUT they did repeat the announcement in English afterwards which was a good thing. There were a few bumps on the flight but overall a good flight and we arrived on time. We got off the plane and loaded on to a bus to take us to the terminal. Our luggage was on the carousel when we arrived and we headed out to find our driver. It turns out that our guide, Jacky was also there to greet us and talk to us on the trip to Xi’an (so we covered it all, planes, trains and automobiles). We hopped in the van with our driver, Mr. Wang and Jacky for the 60 minute drive to Xi’an. It was an interesting drive, we were tired but we watched out the window and talked with Jacky about our next several days in Xi’an.

Initial impressions from Xi’an;
· There aren’t a lot of “whiteys” in Xi’an
· The traffic was crazy awful, a city of 8 million people will do that
· People crossed the street when, where and how they wanted. It was Super Frogger (on crack). Seriously, it was crazy. It’s been mentioned many times before in my posts but this was by far the most bizarre situation I’ve ever seen. Shanghai has some order, Suzhou is a little more chaotic but still people basically follow the rules. Xi’an….no rules, no order, just pure chaos.
· The “environment”, well….Xi’an is powered by the coal industry and there was a very large power plant right outside of the city. Need I say more?
· I think we found the “real” China

Stay tuned as we move forward into Day 1 in Xi’an in the next post. Take care.