"Standing Room Only": Guilin to Beijing in 28 Hours

Although we consider ourselves well educated and aware of international happenings, somehow we missed the fact that during Spring Festival (AKA Chinese New Year) over 3 billion people will take domestic Chinese trains. Sit with that fact for a moment...This means that nearly half the world is taking trains during the month of January... well... 3 billion people and two very naive travelers from Colorado. This statistic became very real for us as we attempted to buy train tickets from Guilin, China to Beijing. Here is a photo of just what that ticket purchasing crowd looked like...

After standing in line for about an hour, Kelly made it to the ticket counter and was informed that all tickets for Beijing had been sold out for over two weeks and that the only tickets available would be "standing room only". These tickets are exactly as described. Each domestic Chinese train has 4 classes: Soft Sleeper, Hard Sleeper, Seats and Standing. The car with seats has a capacity of 144: 100 seats and room for 44 people to stand.

Although we could not completely capture for you just how crowded this is, I think Kelly's face says a lot...

This photo of Kelly was taken in the small corner we were able to occupy during the trip. We received sage advice that we will gladly pass on to anyone who is silly enough to travel during this overly crowded Chinese holiday period: 1) arrive at the station at least 3 hours early;  2) try to get as close to the gates where they let you board as possible;  3) as soon as the woman sounds the horn alert that it is time to board the train -  RUN.  By "run", we seriously mean run. You are racing for a place in the train car against all of these people:

After winning the race and being the first to make it to our car, we found a small cubby where we could set down our packs.  We remained in this cubby for 28 hours.

Fortunately, during the three days prior to our trip, though we were told the horror stories about just how tough this trip would be, we were distracted by the magnificent and other-worldly countryside of Xing Pin, China (a small village just outside the metropolis of Guilin). During our first day in this region, we were befriended by a wonderful man who told us to call him "CP" (after he took sympathy on our pitiful pronunciation of Chinese surnames). CP invited us to join him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At breakfast,  for the first time in our lives, we tasted chicken's feet. Again naive, we assumed this would be one of the most adventurous things we would eat on our trip. By the end of that day, we had consumed two different types of boiled animal's blood (very good for the lungs, by the way). We also enjoyed other parts of  lamb and pig.

Chicken's Feet

Boiled lamb's blood

Boiled pig's blood

Pre-boiled pig's liver, intestine and flank.

We washed it all down with several rounds of traditional chinese tea.

Our gracious hosts: Mr. Liu, CP, Mr. Sun and the Colonel.

After our day of enjoying delicacies, we took a bamboo raft up the Li river where we spent a few days between Xing Pin and a small fishing village. 

 View from the roof of our Hostel, "This Old Place"(rough translation).

 The lovely motto of "This Old Place" Hostel.

 We left our mark...(Bottom right)

 A photo from our hike to the fishing village. 

Xing Pin has  -without a doubt, the most beautiful and picturesque scenery anywhere in the world. 

Chris could not resist.

After our long hike and 3 weeks of traveling through Asia, we craved a little taste of home...Although, we later learned we were enjoying our first taste of dog meat (sorry, Elbert). 

A few days on this remarkable countryside and it was time to take the long haul to Beijing...We have already detailed that adventure. Unfortunately, because of the crazy travel period, we were only able to spend a few days in Beijing, but we tried to fit in as much as possible, including:

A flag lowering ceremony at Tiananmen Square...

with no shortage of security surveillance;

 A visit to the People's Palace;...

And, of course, Peking Duck.

Although the duck was savory, our favorite part of the trip to Beijing was our overnight trek on The Great Wall.  Initially, we simply considered The Wall a "must see" and an awesome hiking adventure. However, by the time we left we had learned that The Great Wall is a symbolic parallel to the theme of our trip:  Stretching 5500 miles and dating back over 2000 years, the wall was built substantially by political prisoners.

 We chose the more secluded section of Huanghuacheng Great Wall because it is not controlled by the government, but is instead controlled by the people of the local village which makes it less crowded (we saw only three people during our entire stay).

 Sections of the wall are incredibly steep.

Our campsite.

Via foot, hitchhiking and bus, we made our way back to Beijing. Our plans with our local couchsurfer fell through after we got a bit lost on the subway, so we spent a chilly evening in a local train station. We treated ourselves to a McDonald's breakfast, our first in Asia.

Because we met so many amazing human rights workers in East Asia, we decided to compile a couple short films about the biggest human rights issues currently facing the region.  We will post those films in the next couple of days. While we are in Mongolia we will be meeting with a local artist who promotes human rights through his art.  We are very excited to learn more about his work and the issues currently being addressed in Central Asia.