13 Stops, 35 hours and 1822 Kilometres

Up at 6.15. Misty half-light over the Pearl River. To Guangzhou station for the 8.30 train to Shanghai. Through the cycle rush-hour. Only older men still favour Mao jackets. Otherwise it’s Western 1950s or, amongst the young, American casual. A Turnerish sunrise spreads over the city, silhouetting the forest of TV aerials turned, despite official discouragement, in the direction of Hong Kong.

The long, elevated motorway to the station is a Western commuter’s dream; almost empty at peak travel time. At the station an immense characterless building in a side square crowned with neon signs advertising Sanyo, Seiko and State Express 555s, there are few vehicles but a huge swell of people. Many are squatting in groups on the main concourse, their baggage consisting of two plastic or string bags, looped around a bamboo pole, and carried on their shoulders. They scan a state of the art dot matrix indicator for news of their train.

Ours is already at the platform, which is clean and well-swept. The eighteen coaches are green and cream painted, of chunky old-fashioned design, ridged along the outside with air vents on top. A stocky girl with a pretty face and pigtails stands, in the uniform of the railways, at the entrance to our ‘Soft Class’ coach. Attendants in peaked caps abound (there are fifty to serve this train). One feels that part of China’s achievement has been to put as many people as possible into uniform – of any kind.

The ‘Hard Class’ coaches are already full, their occupants leaning from open windows to buy sandwiches, orange juice and cola, or drinking their tea from big enamel mugs. The ‘Intermediate Class’ have bunks, but in an open-plan arrangement, and without the homely touches of ‘Soft Class’ compartments, which include four berths, complete with duvets and fluffy pink cushions, a small table with an embroidered red cloth on which is set a reproduction oil lamp with cut-glass shade, and, of course, a pot plant. Lace curtains are drawn back at the window. It’s very cosy, an odd mixture between a bordello and my grandmother’s.

We leave on time and are quickly out of the city and into a landscape of fields still worked by families with hoes and rakes. Our smiling, pigtailed lady appears with an enormous steaming kettle and fills up my thermos jug. Another attendant follows up with some cups and jasmine tea-bags.

Talk to a helpful railwayman who tells me, among other things, that we have thirteen stops ahead of us on our 35-hour, 1822 kilometre journey. He’s called Mr Cha and has worked on the railways for more than twenty years. I ask him if there were foreigners riding on Chinese railways twenty years ago.

‘Oh yes, indeed. But only from countries we were friendly with.’

‘Such as?’

‘Vietnam, North Korea…’ He can’t think of any more names. He gets off at the next stop and leaves me his cap badge as a memento.

At 10.30 plastic bags are brought round to collect our rubbish. Outside, the landscape is still, serene and peaceful. Every stage of rice production is in evidence: planting, growing, harvesting, winnowing and threshing, all non-mechanised, like a series of period tableaux. A couple of perky dogs march across a field, tails in the air.

‘Lunch on a lead,’ says Clem.

Lunch turns out to be dog-free and extremely good. There is one restaurant car, which appears to exist mainly to service the huge staff, who are to be found in there most times of day, with their caps off, laughing and gossiping. The kitchen is solid and heavy and full of people, with the cooking done by five chefs on cast iron ranges in woks the size of Jodrell Bank. The tablecloths are plastic and two bottles are at each table, one marked ‘China Red Wine’ the other ‘Chinese Brandy’. I presume they’re ornamental as I never see either drunk by anyone throughout the journey.

Those who don’t want the restaurant and haven’t brought their own food, can buy carry-on lunches in white polystyrene boxes, which they then throw out of the windows.

At Ganzhou station a wall is being erected at enormous speed, by a workforce consisting of old men, young men, women and boys. Fourteen-year-olds are straining under bamboo yokes from which are suspended pails full of bricks. I counted thirty in one load.

We talk to some of the passengers in Intermediate, including an infectiously enthusiastic lady who has learnt English off the BBC World Service. When asked for an interview she agrees politely and just before we turn over cries, ‘Wait a minute!’, and rushes off to put on her lipstick.

Mid-afternoon and feeling drowsy as we pass into Hunan province – Mao’s province. I talk with Mr Xie, one of our minders from China TV. He’s very earnest and calls me ‘Mr Mike’.

‘Lot of people have deep feeling for Mao,’ he says, ‘but there have been economic changes that are visible, and the political changes must accompany economic changes.’

‘Do you think there will be free elections in China, say, ten years from now?’

‘Yes,’ nods Mr Xie, frowning with concentration, ‘is historical tendency.’

Now we are in amongst walls of rock rising sheer from the fields, eroded into fantastic shapes. Then we run along a narrow gorge beside a mud brown river, down which stacks of bamboos are being punted. At Zhen-zhou a couple of grimy steam engines stand tantalisingly close to our train. I hop out and ask if I might climb up into the cab. (For train buffs, the engines were 2-10-2s with smoke deflectors, built in 1981.) Whilst in the cab I notice that the engine is parked level with the roof of a long engine shed, roofed with small earthenware tiles, of the kind which Terry Gilliam, one of my timekeepers, requested I bring back. Very gently I prise one loose and return to the train, very pleased with myself.

At sunset Swan Lake is playing over the PA as we head out of Hangyang. The chef excels himself and provides the best train meal in 45 days. Pigeon in soy sauce, squid on a hot plate, with tomato, pork and sea-turtle casserole, fish cutlet, and in the Chinese manner, just as you think the meal is over, soup – in this case cucumber and egg-white. In Intermediate Class they’re playing draughts. A lot of people are smoking. The land outside is very dark. The stations we pass through are dismally lit, though large crowds still wait patiently on the platforms.

At Zhuzhou station at 10.15, Dave Passepartout goes in search of digestive biscuits, a man goes along checking the axle temperature with his bare hands and Mr Xie wants to draw me into conversation about the book I’m reading: The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Carey.

‘This look very serious book, Mr Mike.’

When I tell him that much of it is raucously funny, he seems very disappointed.

Later, I’m comfortable under the thick duvet but lie awake for quite a while, listening to the ever-changing sounds of the train. It seems wrong to waste any of China in sleep.