Overnight sleeper train from Beijing to Xi'an (China)

After going through the Temple of Heaven’s main sights, I headed off to the train station to catch the overnight sleeper to Xi’an to go see the Terracotta Army and other local sights.

How to take a train in China

Before leaving the US, I found a good reference for taking trains in China, that answers a lot of questions and lets you set up train travel easily from home. This link below describes extremely well (with pictures even) how to travel on a train in China and gives help with the Chinese language that labels the options you need.   How to travel by train in China.  If you are going to take the train, I highly recommend you look at (or print out) this guide.

Additionally, on that same site, you can search for and buy your tickets.  They have bullet trains and overnight trains.  I took an overnight train to Xi’an and then a bullet train back.

The experience

I had an upper bunk in a 4 bed cabin (with walls – not just curtains like in India), and met my roommates: a couple from Xi’an who had just been visiting their son in Beijing, and a man from Holland who was traveling around with a group (but they had ended up in a bunch of different cabins).

Pro-tip:  Try to get a lower bunk if you aren’t limber, young, and/or comfortable sleeping 5 feet off the ground on a sometimes jerkily moving train.

My bunkmates

The woman and the Hollander spoke passable English. I spoke no Chinese other than Hi and Thank You, and the guy from Holland didn’t speak much more. So there wasn’t much that we could talk about.

The guy from Holland said he’d take the upper bunk if I preferred, and I thanked him because I was a bit concerned about getting up and down with there not being a ladder, instead there was only one very high foothold  (and I could be climbing it possibly in the dark), but he said he did it all the time, and he would be happy to take the upper bunk (although he was at least 15 years older than me) and just popped up there like he’d done it a million times.

He left the room to hang out with his friends, so the couple and I talked a little and they shared some boiled chestnuts with me. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I tried one, having found boiled peanuts to be pretty awful, and they were similar but had a better taste, but I think I may have made a funny face eating the first one as the husband made a comment that the wife discouraged.

Sleeping?

Although it was only 8pm there wasn’t much to do, and only one outlet to charge things, so pretty quickly everyone just went to their beds and tried to sleep.  I had a triple charger, but no one wanted to plug their phones into it. 🙁

It wasn’t as bad as trying to sleep sitting on a plane but it wasn’t the easiest because the train didn’t run smoothly and stopped with some frequency.

Morning

In the morning, it was time to try to make ourselves look presentable in clothes we slept in. We sat around not saying much of anything.

Then the husband was playing a song on his phone (apparently playing things out loud on your phone is just normal here), and I expressed interest because it was a beautiful song. So he came over and showed me (and I wanted to take a picture of the video so I could find the song later, and I think he thought that that wasn’t ok at first, but I think she convinced him it was). After that, he showed me some other songs which were also really good. Using the magic of Facebook, I found the song when I returned home. This is the song, still as beautiful as I’d remembered. The lyrics are below.

She works at the local college or university and he was a soldier but now worked for the municipal government. She had recently been to Africa and showed me pictures. Africa was her favorite trip (and she had been many places) and her safari looked really fun.

And then we were there. And we all scattered our different ways.
One thing that was interesting about the overnight train is that they take your ticket and give you a card, which they then exchange back when you get off. I think it’s so they can wake you when it’s your turn to get off.

Hulunbuir Prairie  (probably a poor translation but you’ll get the idea 🙂  )

My wish is to have a vast prairie
grassland between heaven and earth
The white yurts are scattered on the riverside
My beloved is deep in the high mountains
Between vast clouds
Vigorous eagle overlooking the grassland
Hulun Buir prairie in floating white clouds
blossoming in my heart,
Hulun Buir Prairie
My heart, my love