Never again, I vow every year...and then break my vow the next year. Never again do I want to travel during China's national holidays. But in China "holiday" and "vacation" is the same thing...people don't take vacations outside of the official holidays. So tons of people travel over those holidays, and believe me, China has tons of people.
China has so many people that going to see a major tourist site (like the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an where I went over this last holiday) is a physical contact sport. I was literally pushing and being pushed in order to see these ancient clay men and horses, get my picture, and then get out. Going there and back was also an adventure in how crowded can this get.
China is also really big. To get back to Changchun from Xi'an, I had to take two fast trains for a total of 11 hours of travel time plus an hour to transfer trains and train stations. When we arrived at the second train station, the main Beijing train station, there were So Many People. And So Much Confusion as everyone else was late for their train too! We didn't expect the lines to be quite that long. I talked our way into the short "old people and children" line because we were running so late. Then we tried to push through security. Our bags went through the machine, but a few people pushed in front of us and we didn't get through the same time as our bags. Someone grabbed my backpack by mistake and ran off into the sea of people, so I started yelling in Chinese at the top of my lungs "Wrong! Wrong! This isn't mine!" Fortunately the guy realized he'd made a mistake and came back and swapped bags with me.
Then came the immense shoving mass to get on the train, with a massive crowd so long I wasn't quite sure it was the right train because we were so far away I couldn't see the sign. But I assumed it was and as we went through what I sometimes refer to as "the birth canal" (because all the people push and push and it narrows and narrows until one person at a time squeezes through to get a ticket checked) I was glad I had a friend with me to brave the craziness of the train station.
Yes, China is crowded, but every person is valuable, and time with good friends from all over China is definitely worth braving the crowds to have. Even though while I was sweating in the train station mass I vowed "never again" I probably will again at the next opportunity!
China has so many people that going to see a major tourist site (like the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an where I went over this last holiday) is a physical contact sport. I was literally pushing and being pushed in order to see these ancient clay men and horses, get my picture, and then get out. Going there and back was also an adventure in how crowded can this get.
China is also really big. To get back to Changchun from Xi'an, I had to take two fast trains for a total of 11 hours of travel time plus an hour to transfer trains and train stations. When we arrived at the second train station, the main Beijing train station, there were So Many People. And So Much Confusion as everyone else was late for their train too! We didn't expect the lines to be quite that long. I talked our way into the short "old people and children" line because we were running so late. Then we tried to push through security. Our bags went through the machine, but a few people pushed in front of us and we didn't get through the same time as our bags. Someone grabbed my backpack by mistake and ran off into the sea of people, so I started yelling in Chinese at the top of my lungs "Wrong! Wrong! This isn't mine!" Fortunately the guy realized he'd made a mistake and came back and swapped bags with me.
Then came the immense shoving mass to get on the train, with a massive crowd so long I wasn't quite sure it was the right train because we were so far away I couldn't see the sign. But I assumed it was and as we went through what I sometimes refer to as "the birth canal" (because all the people push and push and it narrows and narrows until one person at a time squeezes through to get a ticket checked) I was glad I had a friend with me to brave the craziness of the train station.
Yes, China is crowded, but every person is valuable, and time with good friends from all over China is definitely worth braving the crowds to have. Even though while I was sweating in the train station mass I vowed "never again" I probably will again at the next opportunity!
