There I was, smack in the middle of an elderly lady burping up her dinner of noodles and yogurt and a rather large man sitting on a set of newspapers spread across the floor. His sweaty back wobbled against my right leg as the train rattled a little on the tracks. The windows fogged up because of the body heat inside the car as the nighttime countryside whooshed by.

‘Is this worth it?’ I thought to myself, as I prayed to get off this nine-hour hell ride as soon as possible.

This is traveling by train in China. It is cramped. It is crowded. It tested my limits. It all started when some of my friends decided to go to the port city of Qingdao. It is a nine-hour trip by train, but I couldn’t have been more excited. Qingdao is a coastal city with wide beaches and the home of the sailing competition for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Germans colonized the city in the early 20th century, leaving behind German architecture and the beer factory for Tsingtao, one of the most famous beers in China. There are European-style churches next to restaurants selling strange sea creatures out of less-than-sanitary tanks next to stores selling beer in paper bags.

Little did I know, half of the trip’s adventures would be in the journey to get there. A one-way train ticket to Qingdao cost about 17 U.S. dollars to travel more than 550 miles. In the United States, it is three times as expensive to go one-fifth the distance. Travel in China is cheap, but you get what you pay for.

And what I paid for was entering a train that was beyond maximum capacity. It’s like riding the New York subway in rush hour for about a whole workday.

My friends decided to travel down in relative luxury. The ‘hard sleeper’ train has a bed and a pillow and is kept quiet for the night. Meanwhile, the ‘hard seat’ is crowded with people, including burping grandmas and sneaky individuals who pay to stand only, but then try to take seats from unsuspecting seat purchasers.

The Beijing Railway Station doesn’t warn those unprepared for the arduous ride. There were waiting rooms upon waiting rooms in its upper floors crammed with people sleeping on newspapers, backpacks full of who knows what and even each other. And of course, as with any train station in China, there’s a McDonald’s to serve all the hungry and tired masses.

The station was named one of the ‘Ten Great Buildings’ in Chairman Mao’s Beijing, and it holds up to the name on the outside. If you can get past the hordes of sleeping people and confusing signs, what awaits is pure adventure — and an example of the extreme population density in China.

It is said that, ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn.’ That’s why, by the seventh hour of this ride, I wanted off that train. My legs cramped, my neck felt crooked in the wrong direction. The carriage started to smell bad. But in the spirit of adventure, I moved my leg away from the sweaty back; tried to ignore the burping grandma, Chinese pop music and the laughs from old men playing cards behind me; and fell asleep.

At 7 a.m., the train finally stopped in Qingdao, my destination. And outside the station, I was rewarded with one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen. Half a mile from the train station lay the Yellow Sea. Ocean waves crashing on brown rocky shores and lapping up on graveled beaches. It was paradise. The sun had just risen, and I had survived this escapade. And was it worth it? Hell yes.

Andrew Swab is a junior magazine journalism and international relations major. His column appears occasionally. He can be reached at ajswab@syr.edu.

Published on April 5, 2011 at 12:00 pm