The Long Train Ride

Between Shenzhen and Changsha

I had been polite, and I thought my Mandarin had been clear. There was no need to cut in front when the line was stalled. "Wait a minute," I repeated as another man shoved me aside. "They'll move forward soon." But I had no way of knowing this; from my angle at the foot of the train steps, I could not see far inside the car. I could see only a dozen people staring into the space I could not see, where others were surely storing their luggage about to take their seats. Once they had, everyone else could move forward. There was no need to push by merely to wait. They could wait politely at the foot of the train steps as I was.

I checked the time. The train was leaving in two minutes, and yet the people had not moved forward. I was alone on the platform. Tired from a night of little sleep, and anticipating another of still less, I felt angry that behind the opaque windows people were so slow to store their luggage and take their seats. I walked up the train steps and into the car, supposing passengers would settle down after the train departed.

My pushy fellow passengers had only exacerbated my fatigue, so that when I boarded the train, I half thought my first impressions were the beginnings of a dream—or, more accurately, a nightmare. The luggage had already been stowed—in rows along the ceiling bins, under seats, and in the aisle. Where there wasn't luggage, there were people—standing in the aisles, or spanning the laps of fellow passengers. A few were trying to lie on the tops of seats as Snoopy might have done. There was simply no space for anyone.

I found a place in the middle of the aisle and sat. Folding my knees up to my head, I closed my eyes and hoped it would all be over soon. Guangzhou isn't so far away, I thought. A lot of people will be leaving then. If I can sleep for just an hour, it will become more comfortable then. Perhaps there would even be a free seat.

I awoke with pain in my left leg. For a frantic, confused second, I thought the train had hit something. Instead, something had hit me—a rickety food cart driven by an old, unhappy woman. Seeing me awake, she pulled the foodcart back and pushed it forward with a strength not at all suited to her age. I stood up and let her pass.

"She'll be back," said a voice behind my head. "There's no sense trying to sleep in the aisle when you have to stand every five minutes. You'll go crazy that way."

The voice belonged to a young man, who through better luck and better planning, had managed a seat. I rose and stood perpendicular to the aisle, hoping that when the cart returned it could roll by me.

"Don't try to sleep standing up," said the young man. "You can't do it. Or if you can you'll just fall down. It's a lose-lose situation." He said this last sentence in English. I could not recall ever having been this tired before; despite the man's warning, sleeping while standing up seemed perfectly feasible, even natural. "Don't do it," he repeated.

I had managed to store the better part of my bag under a seat. Kneeling down, I extracted my book, and began to read. "Why are you reading a dictionary?" asked a man sitting opposite the younger man. I had the suspicion this was his father.

"It's not a dictionary," I explained.

"It looks like a dictionary," he said, standing up in his seat to get a better look. "It has a boring cover."

"It's an anthology."

"An anthology of what?"

"The writings of Mao—pre-1948."

"Mao?"

"Yes, Mao." I thought perhaps I had said the wrong tone, and added for clarification, "Mao Zedong."

"I know who Mao is," exclaimed the man, somewhat taken aback.

"Well yes, of course, I just thought..."

"You thought what?" His tone was not unpleasant, and I noted he was smiling. I was grateful as our conversation was providing entertainment for the whole train car. Most heads were pointed directly and me and my fat red book, and those that weren't were silent, listening.

"What essay are you reading?"

"'On Contradiction.'"

"And what do you think?"

"It's very..." I visualized a mental list of every adjective I had ever learned in Chinese. "Interesting." I concluded. "It's very interesting." I recalled, with a tinge of guilt, my frustration that my students consistently used that word as a cop-out. I made a mental note never to give them a hard time again. "Interesting" was a wonderful word, a perfect word.

"Is it a contradiction?" the man asked.

"Well, no, it's about a contradiction. The essay isn't the contradiction..."

The whole car was laughing now. It sounded rather like the laugh-track on a dated sitcom. I realized that to everyone in the car except me, it might as well be. Train-rides didn't get more fun than this—watching the foreiger make a fool of himself.

"And what is that contradiction?"

"What?"

"The essay is about what contradiction?"

"Oh...social classes. That the proletariat and the bourgeoisie form a contradiction." That sounded right. I was only a few pages into the essay and it certainly seemed to be going that way.

"Do you agree?"

"Do I what?"

"You're American, no? And America is capitalist. China is a working state. So is there a contradiction?"

"Between our socities?"

"Yes."

The question was unfair. The situation was unfair. The man's philosophical reasoning (as far as I understood it and his Mandarin) was not solid; he could not extrapolate a class struggle between the worker and the employer into a culture clash between a nation that theoretically supported one and a nation that theoretically supported the other. Moreover, it was unfair to ask me these opinions in public about a essay I had not finished reading and couldn't hope to fully understand. I felt conscious of every part of my body, from my dry and tired eyes to my pounding heart.

"It's really all rather like marking the boat to find the sword," I ejaculated. I did not remember having thought that sentence before I said it, but the explosion of laughter—whether of praise or derision—told me that I had nothing to fear.

The expression—a chengyu—suggests that a debate has been made superfluous by changed circumstances. It made my own circumstances change for the better; the man seemed satisfied, and did not ask many more questions. And the rest of the passengers, their evening entertainment ended, turned their heads and ears elsewhere. Those who had seats drifted into sleep, and those who didn't stood idly by, hoping it might come to them anyway.

"Give me that book," said the man after a while. "I should be frank, I've never read it." I reluctantly handed him the book, bequeathing unto him the only thing I had to pass the time. Perhaps he'll fall asleep soon, I thought. Then I can get it back.

Yet the man did not seem tired at all; he opened the book to its first page, and as the minutes passed I saw the left side of the book grow thicker as he perused its pages.

I took in my surroundings. The train, I noted, was rather tall. It was a waste of space, I thought. If only someone had installed hammocks above the seats there would be more than enough room for everyone. And then I realized that there was space after all—not over, but under.

A row of seats would be about long enough. Slipping under one, I found that in the fetal position I could keep most of my body under the seats and away from stray legs or the food cart. My backpack was stored a few seats away under other luggage; it was too bad, for I could have used a pillow. I spied a small spider a few feet away and hoped it would ignore me. Then I decided it did not matter; that night I could sleep through anything.

I awoke with a start. I remembered no noise, and did not have the sensation something had touched me. Instead, it was the sensation of being watched.

A woman, about my age, was crouched in the aisle staring. She was not at all abashed about staring at me as I slept, nor did she seem to think it strange I had taken refuge under dusty train streets. She clearly wanted to say something.

"My English name is Strawberry," she said in English. "And I really want to practice speaking English with you."

I wished that the train would jolt—hit something even—not enough to derail us, just enough so that I could hit my head on something and lose consciousness for a while.

"I am going to ask you a few questions," she began.

I did something terrible then, but a terrible something I maintain is within the rights of any spider-bitten, sleep-deprived man to do. "I'm sorry, but I really need to sleep," I said in Mandarin. She looked devastated.

"I really didn't sleep at all last night. I'm really sorry."

"I understand," she pouted in English, and she walked away.

Yet I was not left alone for long. The man, despite his comfortable seat, had not managed to sleep. He knelt down where the woman had just left and asked heatedly, "That was so rude," I knew from his tone that he meant her and not me. "What did she want from you anyway?"

"To ask a few questions. To practice English."

"I see," said the man. He did not look pleased.

I hoped he did not want to talk again. I felt that after our conversation earlier there was a sort of connection between us, so that I could not ask him to let me sleep as I had of Strawberry. Yet he did not continue talking. Instead, he held out his hand.

He was returning the book.

"You finished it?" I asked.

"No, but I read enough," he said. "But I thought you needed a pillow."

Surely I had misheard him.

"Lift up your head," he repeated.

I obeyed, and when I laid down my head again, it sunk into that boring red cover—a thousand pages above the spidery floor.