Sit for Suzhou
What little faith still existed in my heart for China’s train system has just been destroyed. I previously wrote that the trains, despite being crowded and difficult to get tickets for, always left on time. Ha! That’s not really true anymore. A friend and I went to Suzhou for the day and were only able to get standing tickets for the ride there. Our car was so crammed with people, the attendants struggled to get the doors open and closed at every stop. I suspect the ticket offices don’t even keep track of how many standing tickets they sell.
But I’ve come to expect these kind of setbacks. The truly annoying, faith-shattering part was that, once everyone was on, and the doors were shut, the train just sat there. No explanation or apology as to why we had to wait 30 minutes before we started moving. It was hot, there was no space to move, and several guys couldn’t wait to get off the train to smoke a cigarette. Ugh. The only reassurance I had to keep me from blowing up was that the odds of this happening again were very slim.
Yeah. Right.
Whatever the odds are, we got ‘em. The same thing happened on the way back to Changzhou! The train stopped, and the attendant yelled, “Changzhou dao le!” All of the Changzhou passengers stood and gathered around the door, but it wouldn’t open. The attendant passed through the crowd several times but never opened the door, just kept telling everyone to wait a minute, wait a minute. Thirty minutes later, the train started moving again. In another five minutes, it stopped at the real Changzhou station and let us off.
Anyway… Suzhou was nice. It’s a city famous for its historical gardens. We hit up three of them before braving the train back to Changzhou. At least we were able to sit on the way home.
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