“One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.” — Edith Wharton
I am dubbing today ‘kindness of strangers and blessings of new friends day.’
We wrapped up our last class session around noon today, and
I hustled off to the Shanghai train station to catch the 2pm bullet train to
Beijing. The bullet train is the fastest in the world, running 186 mph, and
covering the 811 mile journey between Shanghai/Beijing in just 4 hours 48
minutes. The infrastructure in China is visually stunning. Though there are rumors here and there of
construction shortcuts, you certainly can’t tell by just looking at the
buildings – and the train station was no exception. It was enormous, spotless,
and modernly shiny.
The Chinese are rather maniacal about queues – totally understandable
in a country of 1.3 billion, since queues are the only way to get things done.
Having spent the week in Shanghai surrounded by other students, this was my
first ‘on my own in China’ moment, and I spend a fair amount of time wandering
the station trying to figure out where to wait for my train. I finally settled
on a spot after lots of gesturing-please-look-at-my-ticket-and-help-me moments,
and an elderly Chinese couple in front of me in the queue kindly asked me to
check my ticket as this queue was for the right train but only certain car
numbers. In fact they were right – I needed another queue that was
God-knows-where – but the wife kindly walked with me around the station until
we found my correct queue. I never even got their names, but this is an
official thank you to them!
The train itself was quite like Amtrak inside (but cleaner),
and towards the end of my journey I happened to see a Columbia EMBA who had
been assigned to my negotiation team for class earlier in the week. This was an
unexpected blessing for several reasons:
1.
I didn’t think anyone else in my program was
headed to Beijing that day, much less on the same train
2.
I never would have recognized him if he hadn’t
been assigned to my negotiation team (he’s a year ahead of me)
3.
He was traveling in first class many cars away
and decided on a whim to see what second class was like (where I was)
4.
He introduced me to the rest of his EMBA
friends, two of which I ended up sharing a cab with, and another two of which I
ended up going with to see the Great Wall. It truly is a small world, even in China!
After taxi-ing into Beijing and some minor hotel room drama
that was eventually straightened out with more gestures, I meandered Wanfujing
road with two of the EMBAs from the train. The street was rather like Fifth
Avenue – glitzy stores, and full of Chinese tourists.
We took a side street
into a local market and saw all kinds of “intriguing” food roasting on sticks –
frog, starfish, scorpions (still wiggling), baby ducks and more. Yick.
I’m ashamed to say, after 45 minutes of watching the local
Chinese munch on still-moving insects and whole frogs, the three of us wimped
out and ate at KFC for dinner. Oh well.
Tomorrow: off to the Great Wall. Can’t wait!
No comments:
Post a Comment