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Friday 2005-09-30 - Xining, China
Shopping day: return the true flavour
Our stay in Xining is mostly a shopping day: tonight we will leave for our long overland trip to Lhasa, getting on the night train tonight and then continuing by sleeper bus tomorrow on the first of October: the national holiday in China. This implies that all banks will be closed for a week so we’ll need to make sure we have enough money for at least a week; we’ll also need to stock up on food for on the bus — there will be no occasion to properly eat during the long ride.
After going to the bank (five stops with bus no. 2 from the small branch of the Bank of China we found first but which does not handle any foreign currency) I go to the food market we passed last night when we arrived, just a block from our hotel. It’s a nice market and I first spend some time walking around and taking some pictures. On a small cart I notice some roots, one cut through to display the interior with red veins; I immediately recognize the “radish” that was used to decorate our lunch in Ta’ersi yesterday. That will be nice to nibble on on the bus but I have a little problem to make clear I only want a small one, not the largest, nicest one they want me to have; it costs all of 0.6Ұ! Back at the beginning of the market I buy some fruit, finding that buying just two bananas isn’t all that simple either…
Across the street from the hotel is a large supermarket where I stock up on other munchies, such as my favorite Chinese travel snack: jelly pudding with fruit. I also find crackers with spring onions (sounds nice) and whole-wheat biscuits, one kind with vegetables mixed in; both are from a brand that apparently specializes in “health food”.
The biscuits provide another nice example not only of “Chenglish” but also of modern Chinese culture: having English text (or just Latin characters) on packaging (and clothing for that matter) is not just for tourists but simply very fashionable. The actual text on my purchases also exemplifies the Chinese marketing style.
My crackers with spring onions are described as “DALIYUAN FRAGRA-ONION SODA BISCUITS” and recommended with:
GOOD TASTE FOR LARGE MASSES SERIES HIGH FOODSTUFF DELICACIES LOVED BY ALL CHOICENESS RAW
THEY ARE IDEAL FOR YOUR RELAXATION, BREAKFAST AND TO TAKE WITH YOU ON YOUR DAY OUT
The “HIGH FIBER LOW SUGAR VEGETABLE BISCUITS” sound even better:
WE LIKE THE NEW TASTE.WE NEED THE QUALITY AND WE
NEED THE BEST FOOD.HERE YOU WILL FIND WHAT YOU WANT.COOL FASHION
NEED COOL TASTE.YOU ARE THE NEW MAN.HOW DELICIOUS CAN
NOT FORGET,SPECIAL TASTE,RETURN THE TRUE FLAVOUR.
Now how do I return that flavour? By email?
More Chinese Internet
Above the supermarket in Xining is also an Internet cafe where I spend two hours catching up a bit on my blog — for only 1.5Ұ per hour: the cheapest so far. The price is set off by the quality: It’s very smokey here and the keyboards are so dirty that the keys regularly stick, especially the shift key, so it’s hard to type capitals and punctuation. Otherwise no problems after an attendant has installed an English keyboard driver for me. Apart from the fact that (much to my surprise) at one point while I’m busy typing a window pops up trying to entice me to a (Chinese? Japanese?) sex site. No thanks. I had thought that was all thoroughly filtered out in China…
Train to Golmud
At 16:00 we leave our Xining hotel to be brought by bus to the train station where we will board the night train to Golmud. For a change we don’t use the soft-sleeper lounge, it’s not all that busy here. This turns out to be an experience in itself: when the train is nearly ready for boarding, everyone is ordered to line up in single file — it’s just about accepted that we stand two abreast but still somewhat frowned upon. Then getting onto our wagon is a problem at first: there aren’t proper steps although the door is open. One acrobatic guy manages to climb up anyway but doesn’t know how to solve the problem; he disappears, presumably to get help; it takes a while before the wagon attendant — she must have been sleeping — appears and folds up a part of the floor to the door: ah! now there are proper steps and we can get in.
Once we’re all seated (all our compartments shared with some Chinese) and the train has left the station, the next problem annnounces itself: there is not only no water at all in the wash rooms but there is no hot water to prepare tea or noodles either: the water still needs to be heated with a little coal stove (the fumes are making me cough). After a long wait the availability of hot water is announced and the attendant starts to fill the thermos flasks for each compartment. Meanwhile the cart with noodles and drinks hasn’t appeared either so we walk along the train to get them from the restaurant car — passing through some very old and rather dirty hard-sleeper wagons.
While this train is as punctual as all Chinese trains are, the service and quality is decidedly worse than on the trains around Beijing.
