Merrell/Chong Family travels: More travel adventures

So yesterday and today were pretty much travel days but that doesn't mean they were boring or uneventful. Yesterday afternoon we headed over to the train station to catch our train to Beijing. Right now is part of what they call "The Great Migration" in China. Every year in the 2 weeks leading up to the Chinese New Year everyone in China is on the move heading to their hometowns. That means big cities like Beijing which are full of migrants from elsewhere are emptying out and the trains heading out of those cities are packed. We were heading to Beijing so that meant our train was almost entirely empty. It had likely left the city that morning and dropped people off along its route. It was now returning to Beijing to load up again. When we arrived in Beijing it was about 9pm or so and cold and dark. We were only staying Beijing for one night so I had given Margaret several options for hotels. Back in November or whenever we were making the reservations she had decided she wanted to experience a true Beijing Hutong. So I booked a room in a boutique hotel in a hutong. The hutongs are narrow twisty alley's that run all through Beijing. They are often so narrow that one car can barely drive down them assuming that no one has chosen to park their car in the Hutong. They do not run straight but instead make multiple turns before either dead ending or perhaps connecting to another Hutong or maybe a street. Houses open on to the Hutong and although the opening may look like just a non-descript steel door set in a concrete wall the house behind it might go back for 200 feet and contain multiple courtyards each surrounded by multiple rooms. There is no rhyme or reason to their naming and someone who lives even a half a mile away might not know the name of all the hutongs in their neighborhood. Usually there will be a little name plate somewhere on the entrance to the hutong giving its name and at least the doors within the hutong are numbered sequentially.
Since traveling in China we've found that the four of us with our bags don't fit very well in the standard Jetta or smaller sized taxis so when we arrive at a train station we usually grab two cabs and meet at our hotel. This time I had Nick with me. Our cab driver was more reckless than the usual Chinese cab driver and nearly rear ended someone. This caused him to slam on the brakes which sent my camera case flying into the back of his seat. That seemed to make him really cranky and it also apparently cracked the plastic magazine holder he had attached to the back of his seat. When we arrived in the general area of the hotel he seemed to get tired of searching for the right hutong and eventually pulled up in front of one and said this is it-get out. The hutong was completely dark and looked like the kind of alley that you would never survive in New York or Rio although it was probably completely safe in Beijing. I asked him to call the hotel and confirm that he had the right hutong. This made him even more cranky and he made a half-hearted attempt to call before kicking us out. Then he noticed his broken plastic magazine rack and got really pissed and refused to give me change. I had given him 100 yuan($16) for a 40 yuan ride. I told Nick to tell him that he was a shitty driver and the only reason his magazine rack broke was because he slammed on the brakes. This apparently made Nick nervous so he said something nicer. Guy still refused to give me my change so I took a picture of his license, made sure we had all our stuff, and slammed his door. Now Nick and I are stuck on a dark street corner next to an even darker sketchier looking alley alone. So we pull out Google Maps and it promptly leads us down the wrong hutong about a quarter mile away. By this time Margaret and Syd have made it the hotel and called us. We told them we would get there eventually. We find some people down that alley who all get together and stare at the address for our hotel and argue about which hutong it is in for a while and finally decide that it was the one the cab driver dropped us at. So we march back to there and start down the hutong. It is very dark and very narrow and completely deserted. It makes about 3 or 4 turns and runs about 200 yards before we find our hotel! It was very nice and very traditional with rooms opening off multiple interconnected courtyards. Pictures tomorrow
This morning we got up and got ready to head to the train station. No cab driver would drive into the hutong to pick us up so we drug our bags back out to the main street. There we found that no cab driver would take us to the train station because it was too short a distance to be worth their trouble. So we ended up walking as fast as we could for 1.6 miles through the streets of Beijing dragging our rolling luggage and hoping we made it in time to catch our train. We got to the station about 9:30 for a 10:30 train and there we discovered the true magnitude of "The Great Migration." I don't think it has peaked yet but still the Beijing central railway station was a mad house. There were people with loudspeakers directing pedestrians traffic all over the station. The station was probably bigger than Penn station or Grand Central in NYC and totally packed. There are at least a dozen waiting rooms each big enough to hold a several hundred people. Each waiting room is for specific trains and each one probably has a train scheduled to leave every 20 minutes or so. With about 15 minutes to go they call the train number and everyone lines up to get their ticket checked and go out to their platform. Then some more people move into the waiting room and whole thing starts over again 15 minutes later. We were assigned to waiting room 3 and we couldn't even get into our waiting room until about 20 minutes before our train left. Before that we had to stand in a big line outside the waiting room waiting to get into the waiting room. When they called our train it was like being swept along by a river of people, through the ticket check and out to our train. Fortunately I paid for 1st class instead of 2nd class tickets so our car only had about 50 seats instead of the 75 or so in second class but every car was packed and even our seats had only slightly more room than coach class seats on a plane
China runs multiple classes of trains. The highest class are the 190 MPH G trains. These come with Business(top), 1st, and 2nd class seats. We've been exclusively on those until today. The business class seats there are only 3 across, recline fully into a bed and seem super nice although we haven't ridden in them. 1st class there is 4 across with enough space between you and the seat in front of you to store your luggage there if you wanted. 2nd class is 5 across and a bit closer together but still comfortable. G trains also have outlets to charge devices and complementary drinks and snacks in first class. D trains don't have these extras. Today we were on the D class bullet trains so it only goes 150 MPH. Like I said the train was packed to capacity and in first class on these trains although it is still 4 across the width and pitch are quite a bit tighter than it was on the G trains. I'm betting 2nd class was a mad house. Below D class are C, Z,T,K, Ordinary, L, and Y class trains. Most of the trains don't have a dining car but their are ladies walking up and down the aisle constantly selling an amazing variety of food; full dinners, chips, cookies, ice cream, popcorn, instant noodles, liquor, beer, juice, soda, fresh fruit, fish jerky(yuck), and all kinds of things I couldn't even recognize so no chance you will starve. Anyway, we rode all day across China watching people get on and off at multiple stops. We passed within a few miles of the North Korean border, and eventually ended up in Harbin. Its 20 degrees below zero outside but our 3 bedroom apartment is very warm and city looks very fun.