On The Road Again
Yes, although this isn’t strictly about language and certainly not Cantonese as I’m Mando-jabbering all day long, I want to put these postings from my blog www.chinadroll.com here as well. Travel broadens the mind, narrows the arse. Day 1 on great journey to Kazakhstan:
I love trains and especially Chinese ones. Always have. Having said that, when my bunk is the top one of three and it’s so close to the ceiling I can’t even sit on it but must take up a Being John Malcovich-like half-lying stance, two whole days and two whole nights really is enough. Always get a lower bunk, people!
These are my travel comrades as seen from my perch, including quite a bit of zoom. So yes, high up. Trains are supposed to be about laying down after lunch and after dinner (the train food being excellent and cooked on the rolling premises, another reason to favour Chinese trains over all others) 
but when the bunk is like a mini Everest with twice as many people to step on going up – or down – you don’t go easily into that dark and nasty cave. Especially when the train, like ours, isn’t air conditioned. But the food, beer and especially the peanuts which I can’t recommend highly enough, made up for all of it. Almost. No, it didn’t. Lower bunk, lower bunk. That’s the only way.
When we got on the train we tried to elbow our way from carriage number 5 to 13, where the space allocator is. We succeeded but this is what we found:
That’s right, sleeping on the job in full view of about ten people hanging over the counter trying desperately to, presumably, get out of hard seat and onto our perches which must have seemed like paradise compared to sitting up for 45 hours. (My record is 31, and it’s not much fun. All right, it’s completely without fun.) My friend gave him a good poke and he burst into life, only to say that it was impossible to say when an allocation could even take place. So we zen-like indifference’d our way through the provinces.
It worked! Now, if people would only start disciplining their one child policy progeny …
Looks like angel, right? Wasn’t. Was devil.