Stressful trains, mean little girls, and ancient cities

On the train to Turpan, I slept like a rock. When I woke up Tuesday morning, we were 20 minutes from our stop, and the conductor was waiting by my bed asking for my card. You see, when you get on a train in China, you give the conductor your ticket, which has your car and bed number on it. In return, she gives you a plastic card the size of a credit card, which has your car and bed number on it. In the morning, before it’s time to get off, the conductor (conductress? conductrix?) comes down the train, you give her the plastic card, and she gives you your ticket back. Why all the trouble, you ask? Well, it’s simple. All of these extra steps are in place to make sure that the absentminded American student loses his little plastic card, so that they can scare the shit out of him in the morning when he can’t find it. I did find it, about 30 seconds before I had to get off. It had slid in between the pages of my Chinese-English dictionary. When I got off the train, the conductor was waiting there for me with two uniformed men, ready to take me off to the interrogation room. I gave her my card (much to the disappointment of the uniforms, I’m sure), and she gave me my ticket. Nothing gets the blood flowing like a frantic search first thing in the morning.

At the first tour stop today, the poverty was immediately apparent. When we got off the bus we were immediately bombarded by little girls selling trinkets and bells. They were very charming, so long as you didn’t touch their merchandise. For these girls, you touch it, you bought it. Once it was in your hand, you owed them 10 kuai, and no way in hell were they going to take back little bell. You hold it out, and they cross their arms. When you put it down on the ground, they would turn nasty. We saw one hitting a tourist for not paying up. Luckily we were warned ahead of time, so we didn’t have too much trouble with them.

The site itself was really cool, an ancient, ruined city on the Silk Road that was once one of the world’s greatest centers of commerce. Of course, once we got our tickets and walked through the turnstile, I immediately realized that we had been swindled again. The city was vast, again with an unlimited supply of alternate entrance points. The tour guide had once again paid (with our money) for us to walk through a gate.

This man’s job was to sit and yell at people for climbing on the ruins where they shouldn’t. Of course there were no signs saying where you should and shouldn’t walk, but I suppose life would be boring for him if people knew the rules and followed them. He yelled at me more than once.