For the second leg of our train travels we were to catch an overnight sleeper train from Xi'an to Shanghai. We arrived at the station about an hour and a half before our train was scheduled to leave. We pushed our way through the crowd outside the station, while carting our bags and trying to work out where to go. The crowd was similar to this picture of the front of Xi'an Train Station (not my photo).......
We made our way inside and looked at the big electronic board with a moving display showing which platform the different trains were leaving from. We watched for a while and couldn't spot our train, so we made our way over to a help counter. The crowds inside looked similar to this (again not my photo, didn't have time to take out a camera)......
At the help counter we were told to go to a particular platform. We walked over to that platform and looked around. At each platform there is a screen showing the number of the next departing train and a row of seats to sit on while waiting. When we arrived none of the screens showed our train number, but at the same time a number of the screens weren't working. We figured our train was probably supposed to be displayed on one of the blank screens or wasn't up yet on the other screens because we were early. We sat down and waited.
David then spotted a station employee sitting behind a counter in the corner of the platform. He approached that employee with his ticket and asked if we were sitting on the right platform. She directed us to a different platform. Given the new platform was upstairs and required dragging all of our bags through the crowd we decided that David would stay with the bags and I would go upstairs to check things out.
When I reached the platform I checked all of the screens and none of them had out train number. I decided to check all of the other platforms and none of those screens showed our train number either. I then tried to read a large printed schedule on a wall, but couldn't find our train. I stood underneath the big electronic board again trying to find our train. Again it didn't show up with a platform number, but at one point it moved up the other side of the board along with a lot of other train numbers and underneath some Chinese writing I could not read.
I started asking questions of any station staff I could find. Nobody I approached spoke English so I tried to use my meagre Mandarin and was able to convey to them that I didn't know where to go. One woman was really trying to tell me something and waving her arms around a lot, but I just didn't understand enough Manadarin words to piece together her meaning, so she gave up.
I returned to David to report and was starting to get a little worried because we were getting a lot closer now to when the train was supposed to leave. While chatting to David I noticed a western family standing nearby. I made my way over to talk to them and ask them which train they were travelling on. They were a very helpful American family who had now taken a lot of train trips across China. Unfortunately they were headed in a completely different direction to us and could tell me that based on their experiences of stations, our train was most likely not departing from that platform.
At that point David suggested I go back to the start and head back to the help desk. When I returned there I found a lot of angry people shouting in Mandarin. I thought to myself that that seemed promising because I had worked out now that something was going on, I just needed to find somebody who could tell me what that was. I stood with the shouting people and decided to do as the Chinese were doing, so I waved my ticket and said "zai nali, zai nali, zai nali??" - "at where, at where, at where???" While I was waving my ticket I noticed that the man next to me was waving a ticket with the same train number. So I turned to him and with fingers crossed tried to give my clearest "ni hui shuo yingwen ma?" - "do you speak English?"
He responded "yes, a little". Hooray! He was able to explain to me that the train was cancelled. So that answered the first part of my question - we weren't going to be able to catch our train. Now I had to figure out whether there was an alternative train we could catch and if that was not possible, could I get a refund on my tickets?
I came to the front of the counter. A station employee looked at my ticket and said "bu shi" - not be. I asked him if there was anybody who could speak English so I could ask some questions. He disappeared into a room and came back out with a man who spoke perfect English. That man was able to explain to me that the train was cancelled, it wouldn't be leaving, there was no alternative for that day to get to Shanghai by train. I asked if I could get a refund for my ticket and he directed me outside.
I returned to David to report and he looked surprisingly pleased (I guess not too keen to repeat our original train experience). We headed outside the station and joined a veeeeeeery long and slow-moving line as basically everybody that was arriving to catch our train was now being redirected to this line to get their refund. David and I had a quick discussion and decided that after getting our refund we would hop into a taxi and head straight to the airport to try our luck at getting a flight to Shanghai that night.
We stood in the slow moving line for a while and then we were approached by a 'scalper'. I don't really know what to call them - but essentially there were men who walked up and down the line of people waiting to get refunds on their tickets and offered them cash for less than the face value of the tickets. We saw a lot of enterprising people in China making a living for themselves doing things that don't even cross our awareness in Australia. We decided that if we could get an acceptable price we would take this option and hope that we weren't being given counterfeit notes, as waiting to reach the front of the line would count us out of being able to get onto a flight that night. We settled on 90% of the face value of the tickets with a 'scalper' and raced off to the taxi queue.
After convincing our taxi driver that we wouldn't accept his exorbitantly high fixed price and wanted to use the meter, he gave up trying to con us and drove us to the airport. We arrived at the airport and went to the ticket booking office. They told us that there was only one flight to Shanghai that evening with available seats - both in first class. Hmmmmm, we decided the price was a little high and tried our luck with stand-by at the China Eastern counter.
In between reporting back to the stand-by desk to check availability on each flight we purchased tickets for the next morning (and were able to use up all of the notes from the 'scalper' in that process, so probably not counterfeit). We also went to the hotel booking counter and determined that our options were to pay a very high rate for the one room left at an airport hotel or travel back into the city (about 50 minutes) and stay at a Super 8 Motel because that was about all that was available. The second option would also require getting up super early to travel back out to the airport first thing in the morning. We didn't like either option, so returned to the stand-by desk and said a lot of silent prayers.
While we were going through this process there were also a lot of other people in the same boat, as you might imagine.
We planted ourselves on the ground in front of China Eastern stand-by and shot a forlorn look at the man behind the counter every now and then. When it came time to report back to the stand-by desk to check if any seats had become available for the last flight of the night, the man behind the desk told us that he was able to get us onto the flight! We did a very fast check-in and we were given a sticker to flash at everybody to show that we needed to get to our boarding gate pronto.
We ran to security and then got held up because I hadn't anticipated flying that night and so had all sorts of contraband in my bag (bottles of water etc). We then ran to our boarding gate but in exactly the opposite direction we should have been headed because the numbers of the boarding gates in Xi'an airport go up to a certain number in one direction and then start at the next number at the exact opposite end of the airport. My best guess is our boarding gate is probably part of an extension to the airport and so our gate number didn't run sequentially.
So, we ran to the other end of the airport and made it just in time to get onto the last shuttle bus transporting passengers out to the plane. While all of this was happening David was able to call the hotel in Shanghai that we were booked into for the following night. They told him that they had one room left for that night.
We ended up arriving at our hotel in Shanghai somewhere around 1/2am, but we got there! We slept in the next morning.
We made our way inside and looked at the big electronic board with a moving display showing which platform the different trains were leaving from. We watched for a while and couldn't spot our train, so we made our way over to a help counter. The crowds inside looked similar to this (again not my photo, didn't have time to take out a camera)......
At the help counter we were told to go to a particular platform. We walked over to that platform and looked around. At each platform there is a screen showing the number of the next departing train and a row of seats to sit on while waiting. When we arrived none of the screens showed our train number, but at the same time a number of the screens weren't working. We figured our train was probably supposed to be displayed on one of the blank screens or wasn't up yet on the other screens because we were early. We sat down and waited.
David then spotted a station employee sitting behind a counter in the corner of the platform. He approached that employee with his ticket and asked if we were sitting on the right platform. She directed us to a different platform. Given the new platform was upstairs and required dragging all of our bags through the crowd we decided that David would stay with the bags and I would go upstairs to check things out.
When I reached the platform I checked all of the screens and none of them had out train number. I decided to check all of the other platforms and none of those screens showed our train number either. I then tried to read a large printed schedule on a wall, but couldn't find our train. I stood underneath the big electronic board again trying to find our train. Again it didn't show up with a platform number, but at one point it moved up the other side of the board along with a lot of other train numbers and underneath some Chinese writing I could not read.
I started asking questions of any station staff I could find. Nobody I approached spoke English so I tried to use my meagre Mandarin and was able to convey to them that I didn't know where to go. One woman was really trying to tell me something and waving her arms around a lot, but I just didn't understand enough Manadarin words to piece together her meaning, so she gave up.
I returned to David to report and was starting to get a little worried because we were getting a lot closer now to when the train was supposed to leave. While chatting to David I noticed a western family standing nearby. I made my way over to talk to them and ask them which train they were travelling on. They were a very helpful American family who had now taken a lot of train trips across China. Unfortunately they were headed in a completely different direction to us and could tell me that based on their experiences of stations, our train was most likely not departing from that platform.
At that point David suggested I go back to the start and head back to the help desk. When I returned there I found a lot of angry people shouting in Mandarin. I thought to myself that that seemed promising because I had worked out now that something was going on, I just needed to find somebody who could tell me what that was. I stood with the shouting people and decided to do as the Chinese were doing, so I waved my ticket and said "zai nali, zai nali, zai nali??" - "at where, at where, at where???" While I was waving my ticket I noticed that the man next to me was waving a ticket with the same train number. So I turned to him and with fingers crossed tried to give my clearest "ni hui shuo yingwen ma?" - "do you speak English?"
He responded "yes, a little". Hooray! He was able to explain to me that the train was cancelled. So that answered the first part of my question - we weren't going to be able to catch our train. Now I had to figure out whether there was an alternative train we could catch and if that was not possible, could I get a refund on my tickets?
I came to the front of the counter. A station employee looked at my ticket and said "bu shi" - not be. I asked him if there was anybody who could speak English so I could ask some questions. He disappeared into a room and came back out with a man who spoke perfect English. That man was able to explain to me that the train was cancelled, it wouldn't be leaving, there was no alternative for that day to get to Shanghai by train. I asked if I could get a refund for my ticket and he directed me outside.
I returned to David to report and he looked surprisingly pleased (I guess not too keen to repeat our original train experience). We headed outside the station and joined a veeeeeeery long and slow-moving line as basically everybody that was arriving to catch our train was now being redirected to this line to get their refund. David and I had a quick discussion and decided that after getting our refund we would hop into a taxi and head straight to the airport to try our luck at getting a flight to Shanghai that night.
We stood in the slow moving line for a while and then we were approached by a 'scalper'. I don't really know what to call them - but essentially there were men who walked up and down the line of people waiting to get refunds on their tickets and offered them cash for less than the face value of the tickets. We saw a lot of enterprising people in China making a living for themselves doing things that don't even cross our awareness in Australia. We decided that if we could get an acceptable price we would take this option and hope that we weren't being given counterfeit notes, as waiting to reach the front of the line would count us out of being able to get onto a flight that night. We settled on 90% of the face value of the tickets with a 'scalper' and raced off to the taxi queue.
After convincing our taxi driver that we wouldn't accept his exorbitantly high fixed price and wanted to use the meter, he gave up trying to con us and drove us to the airport. We arrived at the airport and went to the ticket booking office. They told us that there was only one flight to Shanghai that evening with available seats - both in first class. Hmmmmm, we decided the price was a little high and tried our luck with stand-by at the China Eastern counter.
In between reporting back to the stand-by desk to check availability on each flight we purchased tickets for the next morning (and were able to use up all of the notes from the 'scalper' in that process, so probably not counterfeit). We also went to the hotel booking counter and determined that our options were to pay a very high rate for the one room left at an airport hotel or travel back into the city (about 50 minutes) and stay at a Super 8 Motel because that was about all that was available. The second option would also require getting up super early to travel back out to the airport first thing in the morning. We didn't like either option, so returned to the stand-by desk and said a lot of silent prayers.
While we were going through this process there were also a lot of other people in the same boat, as you might imagine.
We planted ourselves on the ground in front of China Eastern stand-by and shot a forlorn look at the man behind the counter every now and then. When it came time to report back to the stand-by desk to check if any seats had become available for the last flight of the night, the man behind the desk told us that he was able to get us onto the flight! We did a very fast check-in and we were given a sticker to flash at everybody to show that we needed to get to our boarding gate pronto.
We ran to security and then got held up because I hadn't anticipated flying that night and so had all sorts of contraband in my bag (bottles of water etc). We then ran to our boarding gate but in exactly the opposite direction we should have been headed because the numbers of the boarding gates in Xi'an airport go up to a certain number in one direction and then start at the next number at the exact opposite end of the airport. My best guess is our boarding gate is probably part of an extension to the airport and so our gate number didn't run sequentially.
So, we ran to the other end of the airport and made it just in time to get onto the last shuttle bus transporting passengers out to the plane. While all of this was happening David was able to call the hotel in Shanghai that we were booked into for the following night. They told him that they had one room left for that night.
We ended up arriving at our hotel in Shanghai somewhere around 1/2am, but we got there! We slept in the next morning.
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