Night Train

The train from Guilin to Shenzhen is seventeen hours long. Our's departed at 9:18p so we were in for a long night. The hard sleeper cars are arranged in open berths each with six beds, two high, two middle, two low. These compartments are situated on one side of the car with a narrow aisle on the other. The bed is also the seat you paid for, so if you didn't get lucky enough to book a bottom bunk, sitting up is near impossible as there is little head room in the middle and top bunks.

The beds were barely wide enough for a westerner, but amazingly softer and more comfortable than many of the hotel beds we've slept in these seven weeks, so we ate noodles, climbed into our bunks and drifted off as the train rocked its way down the track. In the morning rice gruel was served as the sun came up over the Chinese countryside. This was a big deal, because we had not seen the sun for a long time. We knew by noon that when we did get off the train, the weather was going to be beautiful.