Two Sides of the Hard Seat

Southwest Region, China

That day, a “hard seat” train ticket was my only option to leave from Wu Han, the transportation hub in the middle of China to Guizhou, a capital city in the south west mountain region some 15 hours away. All other classes, soft sleeper, hard sleeper, and soft seat–in decreasing order of comfort–were sold out.

The waiting room was packed to the wall. Around midnight, a tsunami of people, many of them migrant workers carrying huge nylon bags stuffed to the fullest, rushed me onto the train. I got an aisle seat on a three-person bench with dark blue vinyl cover and very little padding.

Sitting next to me was a skinny young man in his twenties, but his hair was spotted white.

A business-looking man sat by the window, always holding his briefcase on the lap. As soon as he sat down, he took out a hand towel and hung it on the metal wire across the window.

More and more people rushed in, stepping on the bench seats to push their heavy luggage onto the overhead rack. Soon there was not an empty seat left in the compartment. A forty-something woman and her frail-looking mother sat across from me. They placed a plastic bag showing instant noodle bowls inside on the small fold-up table between us, leaving just enough room for four thermos cups belonging to the four other passengers sitting around the table.

The train left the station almost on time at 12:20 a.m. Quiet skylight of the city outside was soon overpowered by the hectic moving world on the train. Stewards pushing various carts peddling loudly of whatever inside, chewing gums, roasted sunflower seeds, fruits, candies, noodles, sausages, canned rice porridge, beef jerky, and marinated chicken feet and duck necks. One stewardess made a scene with her DVD movie rental cart. Children swooped around her until one passenger was generous enough to offer group entertainment.

Even though the train was labeled “direct”, one hour later, it stopped at a small station and picked up more people, forcing some to sit on their bags in the aisle. A woman with a bamboo backpack, common in the area for herb farmers, stood leaning by me, her hand-weaved shoulder bag dangling in front of my face.

The air became stuffy when people shut the windows to fend off the cooling night. There was a non-smoking sign by the door, but to the smokers on board, it was simply invisible. A man several rows ahead of me liked to stand up when he smoked, demonstrating the skillful use of his disfigured right hand with only three fingers remaining. Plumes after plumes of smoke rose up in the air, bounced to the ceiling before dissipated into every breath of everybody on board.

A little girl in a pair of split-crotch pants, after losing interest in the movie, squatted down at the aisle and there went a small puddle of water, flowing to one side of the bench seats when the train made a turn.

Several stops later, a young couple carrying a newborn child replaced the elderly mother and daughter in front of me. By then, candy wrappers, sunflower seed shells, empty noodle packages, and anything else people discarded had covered the whole train floor. Once in a great while, a steward would come in and sweep with a straw broom, only pushing the mount to the closed door between two compartments.

I wanted to fall asleep, but it was impossible. The air, filled with smoke and reek of sweat, was hardly breathable. I felt suffocated.

A group of three very loud women got on from one station and landed on one empty seat near me. They took turns sitting while sharing a big jar of pickled hot peppers. Later, one of them pulled out a dismantled cardboard box, slipped it under my bench seat, and then crawled underneath. I didn’t see her until the next morning.

To me, that was a sleepless night.

The central plain by the Yangtze River turned into mountains. The train cut through one tunnel after another. Early raising farmers were already working on the terraced fields, some plowing with cattle high up on the hills. Inside the train, nobody seemed to care what it looked like outside. Wading through the aisle now filled with trash and stepping over others who were still trying to take a nap, people started the morning routine with long line in front of the restroom where there was nothing but a stainless steel hole on the ground inside.

By the restroom was a huge hot water tank. People formed new lines to have their instant noodle bowls filled. Hot and sour rice noodle was a local favorite in the mountain area. Soon, another flavor was added to the turbid air.

After breakfast, almost every smoker lit up their first cigarette of the day, including the young father sitting across me while holding his half-awaken newborn in the arms. The young mother, as soon as she finished her noodle bowl, took over the baby and started breast-feeding, exposing almost half of her fully-developed figure.

“How old is your baby?” asked the skinny young man next to me after his cigarette.
“Two months,” the mother replied.
“A boy or a girl?”
“A girl.”

“How cute she is! Little ones grow really fast. Everyday is a new look,” praised the young man. From his plastic shopping bag, he took out some marinated duck necks and offered to others sitting around him. He then began enjoying them himself, spitting small bones on the floor as he went.

Another new stop brought new faces to the crowd, a stocky businessman, a dark-faced migrant worker, and an elderly minority woman wearing a beautifully embroidered shirt. The three very loud, pepper-loving women, one of them now emerged from under the bench seat, were busy with their morning routine of hair brushing, facing washing, and more pepper eating. All the newcomers didn’t have an assigned seat and one woman of the threesome with a black mole on her cheek was among those eager to share their seats with others.

All the commotions made the baby cry. While the mother was there rocking her, somehow the diaper twisted and just in time, a small waterfall cascaded down the father’s pants, their soft travel bag, and plastic food bag. People scrambled to offer their napkins and toilet papers. After cleaning their belongings, the thankful parents threw the papers on the floor, changed the baby to a new diaper, and in the same fashion, discarded the old diaper.

The skinny young man hopped off the train one stop before me and everybody around lightly bid farewell.

My train ride was about to be over, too. It felt so much longer than the fifteen hours it took. It was as if I was in a theatre, sitting through one show after another destined to see something in every genre. Some scenes were horrific, some were unbearable, some were kind and compelling, most were unthinkable, yet all of them were real and all of them seized my senses and pounded my judgement with challenge: Can I look through the horrific and unbearable to see the kindness of people? As much as I want to alienate myself from the seemingly unacceptable behaviors consented by the general masses, can I still see the commonality between me and the masses around me?

A foggy city surrounded by mountains marked my destination. I threw myself into the busy streets knowing the reality, no matter how I interpreted it, would continue on the “hard seat” train.