A Ticket to Hangzhou
A handwritten note, an enormous station and a train journey that challenged my expectations.
On my last morning in Shanghai, I was sorry to leave the friends I had only just made. They were beginning to settle into the city, while I was starting again somewhere else.
Hangzhou was the place I had chosen for a more immersive experience. Now I actually had to get there.
The hotel concierge called a taxi and told me the journey to Shanghai Hongqiao should cost around sixty yuan. I was grateful to have a number in mind; I still had very little sense of what things ought to cost.
At the station, the security reminded me of an airport. I showed my passport, put my luggage through a scanner and went through another security check before reaching the waiting area.
I had arrived about two hours early, just in case. With so much luggage, I decided that finding somewhere to sit and staying there was the safest plan.
Beside me was a Chinese woman. I decided to try a sentence.
‘Nǐ qù nǎlǐ?’ Where are you going?
She replied, ‘I can speak English.’
So much for my attempt at conversation in Chinese. I felt myself going red.
Her name was Wei Wei, and she was travelling to Wenzhou. She worked in recruitment for the English-teaching industry, helping to find foreign teachers.
She asked me to add her on WeChat.
I still didn’t have it. Once again, somebody wrote down an ID for me to use later. I was accumulating potential contacts on paper while everyone else seemed to carry theirs in a phone.
Between the women I had met on the way to Manchester and now Wei Wei, I was beginning to think railway journeys were a particularly good way to meet people. Waiting gave us time to talk.
When boarding began, I showed my passport and paper ticket again, then made my way down the escalator with all my bags.
I found my seat on the high-speed train and settled in for what I remember as roughly an hour and a half. My next concern was getting off at the correct stop. I kept watching the clock, unsure whether I would understand the announcements.
The journey itself impressed me. The train felt smooth and modern, very different from some of the rattling, squeaking British services I was used to.
Before leaving home, I hadn’t formed a clear picture of China. Yet somewhere in my mind, the word ‘developing’ had created expectations that this journey was quietly undoing.
I still needed help buying a ticket and still worried about missing my stop. But from my seat on that train, China was already looking different from the country I had imagined.