Wilsons vs China part 2: trains and trees

a view across Mongolia from the Trans-Mongolian express

I have a bit of a confession; I like trains. Not in a count-the-numberplate, anorak wearing kind of way – more in the ‘relax, slow down, look out the windows and see life’ kind of way. I did seven straight days on the Trans-Mongolian express (sorry - I've just realised that post doesn't have any pictures) coming to China in August 2010, I interrailed around Europe July-September 2009 and most recently I took my parents on a 24hr ride down to Guilin from Beijing.

Flying around China is undoubtedly the quickest way to get around, it’s not too expensive either, but, if you’re in a hurry to relax then your holiday is oxymoronic to start with. That’s my feeling anyway. You see life out the windows of a train. You slow down because you have to. Having control (and internet) taken away from you for twenty-four hours can be something of a shock to the system, but oh boy does it take you away from the usual routine of city living. Chinese trains are unlike anything back home – at any one time more than a million people are said to be using the railways, there are several different classes of trains and classes of seat within those trains. You can only book your tickets ten days in advance, and you have to do it in person either at an agency or at the station.

Beijing West Station

The first time I got on a train in China, I was heading to Handan to start teaching. We had hard seats, all our luggage and the train was so crammed you literally had to climb on people to move down the carriage. A tiny woman bullied people out of our seats and fed us boiled eggs; a lady sat opposite didn’t realise how desperate her baby was until the poor child literally exploded all over her lap. I took Mum and Dad soft sleeper; there’s such a thing as a cultural experience taken too far. Both journeys, incidentally, started from Beijing’s West Station – a gigantic transport hub to which the subway (somewhat inexplicably) doesn’t go yet.

We had a Chinese lady sharing with us overnight, but her stop was midmorning so we didn’t see much of her. With my halting Mandarin I managed to tell her we’re English, that I live in Beijing and that we’re going to Guilin. I didn’t understand a word she said to me, except that she has sisters. This meant we had a four-berth, rattling box of China pretty much to ourselves for twenty four hours and were free to question and comment and guess about what we saw out the windows.

My parents are keen gardeners, so their point of comparison was the wildlife and agriculture we passed through. The interesting thing from our point of view was that all the farms seemed to be at subsistence level, none of the giant farming conglomerates you see at home or in the States as far as we were aware. For a place as huge as China, this must (we thought) keep life at a very local level. I’ve subsequently done a bit of research into Chinese agriculture – not much mind you – and we were close to being right! Sort of anyway.

farmland around Yangshuo

Around 300million people are employed in the agricultural sector, which (at one estimate) contributes to 12% of China’s GDP. China doesn’t have that much viable arable land in percentage terms, but 75% of all crops grown are food crops. We hadn’t factored history into our thinking, or at least, I hadn’t. (Maybe Mum and Dad did and I slept through it.) China and agriculture had something of a fraught relationship in the 20^th century. Before the Cultural Revolution, the country was a feudal state with the kind of peasant farming that goes with it. After the devastation caused by the “Great Leap Forward” in 1958, which I really don’t know enough about to be able to explain properly (hence the link), farms and farmland began to be re-distributed back to small holdings in the 1960’s. The rest of the century seems to have been a long exercise in cleaning up the mess left by unfettered idealism. This meant we did get to see the stereotypical rice paddy farming, complete with water buffalo and lamp-shade hats though.

We also saw plenty of trees that were similar but not quite the same and flowers that they’ve got in the garden back home. This was more noticeable when we got off the train and were walking past nicely done herbaceous borders, but set us thinking about the links between gardens and open spaces and how they’re universally important to people. Again, this set me off on a bit of research, mainly from reading Bill Bryson’s "At Home" it has to be said, about plant hunters and the fortunes that were made taking new species of plants back to England to be cultivated. While I was doing this, I found out about Robert Fortune who went undercover to steal the secrets of tea growing from China in the mid 19^th century.

I’ve always known that history is fascinating stuff – what I hadn’t quite comprehended was how much plants feature in it and how much you can learn about a place from who grows what and why. It does tempt me to go to Xi’an to the 2011 Horticultural Expo. The theme this year is “Continuous Harmony between Heaven, People, and Nature” I assume this grandiose title actually intends to explore the links between people worldwide, gardens and culture in a wider sense. I have to admit, I’m intrigued… maybe that’ll be my next trip out of Beijing?