Ready, steady... GO!

Inspired by the Olympic Spirit, we are counting down towards our departure.

The last few days have been quite hectic: stuffing our belongings in boxes, sending them to Europe (including getting a bit frustrated at the Chinese customs regulations: no liquids, powders, batteries, Cd's,...) and handling all kinds of small tasks that we have been postponing for some time now.

Today is our last day at work and as we are returning our laptops, from now on we will only be able to post entries on this blog from hot and sweaty internet cafés, packed with coke-boozing computer fanatics.

After a final relaxing weekend in Shanghai, we will leave on monday afternoon by train towards Xi'An.

Train Ticket Madness

We went to the Shanghai train station yesterday afternoon, intending to buy a ticket to Xi'An.

The situation is as follows: we know tickets are only available 5 days in advance, so we went on monday to get tickets for saturday. We also know there are about 10 trains daily between Shanghai and Xi'An, each of them easily carrying over 1000 people.
We aim to leave on Saturday, but in case we by then still don't have our Iranian visa (see other entry), we'd take a train on monday.

A reconstruction of the events at the Shanghai station ticket counter:

Hanna> We would like to buy a ticket to Xi'An, please.
Clerk> When? Today?
Hanna> No, on saturday 9th August. We'd like to take the fast train at 16:30, and book two sleepers.
Clerk> Sorry, no have. Only slow train. 20 hours. You want?
Hanna> Is it possible to get the ticket refunded if we would like to change our departure date?
Clerk> No.
Hanna> Well... we will take it on another day then. What about monday 11th august?
Clerk> Sorry, only can booking 5 days advance. You must return the day after tomorrow.
Hanna> Ok. Is it fine if we come here around 5pm?
Clerk> No, no. One hour, everything sold out. Gone.


So we learned that getting on a Chinese long-distance train is best compared to trying to buy concert tickets for a very popular rock band: there are over 10000 tickets available, but actually getting one mainly depends on your luck of getting through the overburdened telephone network.

Just imagine: 10000 tickets, gone within an hour! Every day!

Bai Bai Shanghai!

After weeks and months of hard and arduous labour (dramatisation, may not have happened) on Chinese shipyards under inhuman conditions, we are finally ready to leave our positions and start our "Long March" towards Helsinki.

However much we are looking forward to travelling, we must say that Shanghai proved to be a nice place, of which we will keep good memories.

The work, our pro forma "raîson d'être" in Shanghai, was reasonably interesting, mainly because of the rather crazy work environment: shipyards are always buzzing with activity and full of fascinating scenes, but Chinese shipyards definitely add an extra flavour to that picture.
Imagine a remote but unforeseenly charming island with small but crowded villages, quite a nice natural environment and some small rice paddies and a few orange orchards. Add a huge, dusty, messy shipyard, with enormous rusty old ships, some newly erected workshops, a dozen of towering cranes and thousands of yard workers dressed in raggy overalls, covered in dust and engaged in something that resembles welding: there you have your Chinese shipyard.

Being on that kind of place and -at times, we have to be fair here- contribute to building better and safer ships, was in all quite an experience. That is, before the general boredom set in and we basically sat out our time at work, longing for a brighter future.

But apart from work, Shanghai was a nice enough place to stay. There is good food, lots of small shops, cheap massage parlors, charming streets and some nice museums. It has been interesting to get an inside view on the way China is building its future, and to get a feel for the Chinese culture and people.
As we stayed on the shipyards islands for the better part of the week, we never really settled in in the city: we didn't join dance lessons or sports clubs, didn't show up at expat gatherings or things like that. When we were in Shanghai, we were happy enough to see each other and spend time doing things with the two of us.

Now, we are packed and ready to leave.
Or, well, we still need to buy our train tickets to Xi'An, send our parcels back to Europe and we need to find a way to pass the last working days (do I hear 'surfing the internet'?). Oh, and our Iranian visa is still to be approved and collected (Insha'Allah, of course)...