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From Changsha to Wudang Mountain
Friday, July 15, 2005-10:00 PM
The exhausting journey from Changsha could have been made under better circumstances. The weather was hot and humid. The trains were packed. And I was all the time on the verge of being seriously sick.
Wudang Mountain in Hubei province has strong connections to both Chinese Daoism and Chinese martial arts.
It also pops up in modern popular culture now and again, mostly via Kung Fu movies like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
Even the hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan's name is derived from this legendary mountain.
Before I boarded the train in Changsha, I already had three things working against me: possible food poisoning from bad seafood, a ticket but no seat on the train, and a ticket to the wrong city.
In fact, my ticket wasn't for the wrong city, but rather there were better cities I could have headed to that would have gotten me closer to Wudang Mountain.
I thought maybe if I got on the train quickly, I might be lucky and be able to find a seat.
No way. It was difficult just to get on the train. In addition to the hundred and fifty or so seated passengers, each car held an additional fifty or so passengers standing anywhere they could.
I prepared myself for the eight hour train ride through the middle of the night, standing shoulder to shoulder with the other passengers on a hot, humid, and sometimes smoky train.
The train ride ended up being more like twelve hours.
Even standing there in extreme discomfort, I was happy I could experience China from another point of view. I've never traveled under such difficult conditions, but lots of people do every day.
There were little babies as well as senior citizens on the train traveling under the same conditions. The big difference was that I knew this was a limited experience. Someday, I'd probably be back in America where, if I ever needed to make a cross-country journey, I'd have the luxury of getting in my car or flying.
People used the tables between the seats as pillows, resting their forwards on them. The next day, after sweating on the train for an entire night, their faces would become covered in a thin film of grime.
There was a baby in our car wearing basically a bib. At one point, when his mother apparently thought he needed to urinate, she started to hold him out the train window Michael Jackson style while the train was beginning to move.
The baby didn't cooperate, and he was never more than halfway out of the train. A while later, he did need to urinate. He peed right there on the train floor, where other passengers where walking with bare feet.
The train I was on would carry on after my ticketed destination of Yichang to Xiangfan, a bit closer to Wudangshan. I upgraded my ticket and stayed on the train.
At Xiangfan I quickly boarded another train to Wudangshan. Even boarding the train to Wudangshan, I was already being approached by people with connections to the tourism industry in Wudangshan.
After the train, I hopped straight on a minibus and started to head up the mountain. Tomorrow, I'll climb to the top.
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