Transportation on a long weekend in China

I wrote about our long weekend in Yangzhou in my last post. That was about how we spent our time while we were in Yangzhou. I wanted to dedicate that post to our experience as tourist within the city. What I left out was our experience leading up to the trip and at the tail end of it and that will be the subject of this post.

This Yangzhou trip was hatched only about 3 days prior to the day of the trip. After we made the decision to go, we made the appropriate plans to go. Since we don't own a car here in China (mostly for our own safety) we can either take the extensive network of trains or buses. Here in China the cost of riding the trains is lower than long distance bus. This is probably due to the very high ridership on the railways. The train is a very important mode of transportation because of the affordability over flying

For us the better alternative is the train since it is faster and safer than riding a bus where the driver thinks he is Michael Schumacher. Besides, there are no flights available for such a short distance. We were able to secure train tickets on an express train going to Yangzhou, but all trains coming back to Shanghai were completely sold out. This meant that on the return leg we had to take our chances with the bus. We made our way to the long distance bus station in Yangzhou Sunday morning as we were going to leave for Shanghai that evening. The bus station was packed with travelers buying tickets and this foreshadowed things to come.

We purchased tickets for the 5:20PM bus for Shanghai. We arrived at the bus station that afternoon at around 5:05 and we immediately realized things are different from our previous experiences. The bus depot was more crowded than normal and as we approach the Shanghai departure counter we realized that there was a scrum of people waiting desperately to leave. There was no way to make our way to the counter to even inquire about our 5:20 bus as the wall of people was about 15 deep. We immediately realized that we better make our way past the ticket takers and to the buses outside to see if we can get on our scheduled bus. We went to the Suzhou departure counter which was less crowded. After about 5 minutes of waiting the ticket taker at the Suzhou counter left her post for a brief moment. That was the opportunity that everyone was looking for and a stream of people including us went though the ticket counter to the waiting buses outside. We quickly spotted the bus to Shanghai and frantically boarded the bus to Shanghai. The driver who was taking the ticket did not even bother check our tickets to see if we were boarding the right bus to Shanghai.

After we boarded and had time to reflect, I began to realized what has happened. Basically the bus depot was not able to control the large crowd in the bus station. The mentality of the riders when encountered with this kind of situation is to make sure they are able to get on a bus and not get stranded in case buses got overbooked. This created a situation where the crowd became agitated and eventually the authorities lost control of the crowd. I wondered how long we would have had to wait if it wasn't for a ticket taker at a different departure counter leaving her post for a moment. This was a potentially dangerous situation, which I am sure has been replayed in China many times as there isn't an adequate infrastructure to handle the large population of China.

This is a period in China's history where a burgeoning middle class have leisure time. This creates a strain on its infrastructure especially during holiday weekends and holiday weeks (yes holiday week imagine the horror of that).

These are the kind of experiences that makes me think twice about living in China permanently. There are many benefits that I enjoy from living here in China over America, but there are also many difficulties where there is nothing one can do.

Yangzhou weekend

No that is not me.



This past weekend was a 3 day weekend. Last Friday was the Qingming holiday or 清明节 in Chinese. This is traditionally the day were one "sweeps the tomb" in remembrance of deceased family members. This sounds like a solemn day, but now in modern times the Chinese have turn this into a day to enjoy oneself after the duty of tidying up the tomb has been completed.

Since neither me or my wife has any deceased close family members entombed in China, we chose to spend the 3 day weekend in Yangzhou, an old city in nearby Jiangsu Province. The trip to Yangzhou from Shanghai ranges from 2 1/2 to 4 hours depending on the mode of transportation. The travails of our conveyance will be covered in an upcoming blog.

The main attraction of Yangzhou is the Slender West Lake (瘦西湖). It borrows the name from the more famous West Lake (西湖) in Hangzhou. Calling this a lake is a bit of a misnomer since it reminds one of a river or stream than a lake or pond as hinted in its name. The site itself is quite scenic with a winding body of water and its numerous bridges. If one had time to stop, reflect and enjoy the scenery this could be a very pleasant place to visit. However, this is one of a few long weekends on the Chinese calendar so the place was swarmed with people, many from Shanghai. Therefore, I could not really described this experience as pleasant.

One of the other things that we noticed about Yangzhou is that since it is located along the Grand Canal of China (of which Slender West Lake is a part of) there were many small canal within the city. There was a charm to the city that does not exist in Shanghai.

The city has an interesting dining experience that is similar to the dimsum experience in Cantonese cuisine. The Yangzhou people have a tradition of the weekend brunch just like the Cantonese. The food at these events however, pale in comparison with the dizzying array of delicate and delicious food at a Cantonese dimsum. Not to say that the food at a Yangzhou brunch is not good, as a matter of fact the food is pretty good. It primarily consists of steam buns filled with various fillings, wontons, steamed tofu slivers in a crab based broth and the crab soup buns. The crab soup buns are very interesting as it consists of no meat, just crab broth. One uses a straw to draw the soup from the bun before eating the floury skin otherwise the soup will be spilled all over your plate and table.

I found the city to be a nice mix of old and new with a pleasant backdrop of water and greenery.