Inside the New China by Gene Ayres

Author:Gene Ayres [Ayres, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781412813501
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 2010-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

21

You Can Get There from Here (But Try Getting Back!)

It all started out reasonably enough. My wife, Tina, and I, not having been anywhere except to the U.S. consulate in Shenyang in the past year, needed some rest and relaxation. So, as it happened, did our friend Janie, and her on-and-off-again and currently on-again boyfriend Leon, a New Zealand expatriate from Auckland. We put our heads together, and I came up with the brilliant idea of a visit to Xing Kai Hu (lake) right here in our own Heilongjiang Province. Heilongjiang means Black Dragon River. It borders Russian Siberia for most of the northern and eastern boundaries of this northeastern-most province of China (the Russians call it the Amur River). And if Black Dragon River isn’t a superior name for a province, not to mention river, I don’t know what is. Most Chinese provinces have more prosaic names in their native language, like “East Mountain Province” (Shandong) or “Venerable Wise Place to Invest” Province, and so on.

A recently arrived American colleague of mine had highly recommended this Xing Kai Lake, having, according to her, “fallen in love” with the place. That was a clincher. Who can resist “falling in love?” Plus, Xing Kai Hu is on the Russian border, and I’d been wanting to have a look at Russia—so tantalizingly close—since arriving here two years ago. Who knows, maybe someday I might want to be governor of Alaska.

It was, according to my colleague “Thelma,” just a short train ride due east to get there, first to a city called Mudanliang, then another “two hours” northeast to Mishan, the nearest city to the lake. Tina volunteered to get the tickets, another Chinese friend of Janie’s and her son signed on, and we were good to go.

At least so far as getting to Mishan went. Tina managed to arrange sleeper beds (not “soft sleepers,” meaning top of the line, with actual mattresses, but “standard sleepers,” which meant basically a padded platform, stacked three-high in a door-less compartment of six). She got two beds for our family: one for herself and Vivi, and one for me. She’d share a meter-wide platform with Vivi mei wenti, she declared. Brave girl.

The day of departure arrived. Our new friend Annie met us at the Harbin Railway Station with her son, Kevin. We waded and elbowed our way through the usual crowd of a million or so, piled onto our train, treading on numerous feet seated in the narrow passageway of the train coach, and claimed our bunks. So far so good.

It was a night coach, the usual choice in China, so that you could theoretically sleep through the night and arrive fresh and ready to roll early in the a.m., at your destination of choice.

And so we departed Harbin at 5:20 p.m., right on time, and rolled eastward on the once-great Trans Siberian Railway towards Russia. This train was a local, it seemed, which meant Thelma’s “few hours ride” took, to be exact, 11 hours. No

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