"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent"

--Friedrich Nietzsche

The train trip from Beijing to Xi'an was one of the top events so far. For this 11+ hour ride, I took the luxury of booking myself a hard sleeper. A hard sleeper is one of six beds that are shared within a single train cabin. The arrangement is quite simple actually: The train wagon is broken down into multiple compartments. Each compartment contains 6 bunk beds (3 on each wall).
The train itself is a lot newer and modern than I expected, with fully digital message displays for the passengers (that I can't read anyways) and other cool amenities. I also have a new friend, Sabrina, a backpacker from Germany. She is the compartment next to mine and although she is not a big woman by any means, she carries a backpack that is probably twice the size of the one I am carrying. Sabrina very much represents the reason why I like to backpack: She is a very interesting person and it is eager to share her experiences with other backpackers. Sabrina is a linguist who specializes in Natural languages for computers. She has been living in China for a year now and is taking one more trip to see new parts of China. I am not rude to the point of asking Sabrina her age, but she must not be more than 25 years old. It is truly fascinating to see this 20 something year old girl, from Germany, brave across China all by herself, staying on cheap hostels and riding Chinese trains packed with peasants. I know VERY FEW (if any) America girls who would be willing to do such a thing. Most Americans demand to have their nice 3 star hotels, car rentals, plane tickers and all the comforts that only the most shielded and self-centered tourists would endure. Fortunately for me, there are plenty of Europeans, Israelis, Australians and Japanese willing to put their hiking boots and backpacks on and head out traveling hard core across different places. And those tend to be the friends I make on my backpacking trips. That is my tribe, I guess.
Sabrina and I spend hours talking about traveling, the different places in China worth visiting, how to avoid scammers and so on. As she is a linguist, eventually I bring the subject of my favorite book: Snowcrash. It is a sci-fi book that involves linguistics and the use of the core human language as a tool for mind manipulation. The book is really out there and I truly recommend it to anyone who remotely enjoys sci-fi and computers. Anyways, Sabrina and her knowledge of natural languages and computers was able to give the book a whole new perspective.
As we talked, several of the Chinese passengers would offer us fruits, including pearls, apples, oranges and peaches. By the time it was time for the lights to be turned off, we had more fruits on our backpacks than what we know how to do with it. I guess we would not have problems with having food for breakfast.
At 10:00 PM the lights inside of the wagon were turned off. I put my earplugs on, laid down on my buck (which was actually quite comfortable) and passed out.
The night trip went on without much disturbance, except for the train staff, which would occasionally enter our compartment in the middle of the night and use a flashlight to search for something under my bunk bed. I am not sure what they were looking for, but it was quite annoying to be awaken twice at night by a train staff searching for some mysterious thing under my bed. I hope they did not think I was a bomb carrying terrorist or something. But other than that, there were no other major incidents. I slept quite well, the ride was quite and the train shook very little. I can see myself taking other train rides like this before I leave China.

Next morning, I get to know my cabin neighbors. It is a family that includes husband, wife, a pair of twin kids and grandma. They are peasants going back to Xia'an from Beijing. The twins are no more than 5 years old, but they already speak English amazingly well. They ask me tons of questions and eventually decide to teach me Chinese. We go over the basic 10 numbers, some random objects inside the cabin and then we move to a magazine, where they point at pictures and give me their meaning in Chinese. The kids are really smart and eager to practice their English. I learn later that it was their father who thought them English. Unfortunately the dad is not much kin of talking, because, following the Chinese tradition, he feels that his English is not good enough, so he is embarrassed to speak. It is a true pity, because that must be a remarkable man, with even more remarkable kids. As I look at them and watch the kids speak to me in flawless English, I cannot help but smile. Experiences like this are the reason why I started this trip to begin with.

Xi'an is a tourist trap like no other. I am staying at the Han Tang hostel downtown, near the Muslim quarter and the bell tower. The hostel is alright by my standards, but most of my American friends would freak out if they had to spend the night here. However, there are other backpackers from around the world, and I quickly make acquaintaces with a few of them.

Of special mention is Kathy, a very bright English woman that I meet during our excursion to see the Terracotta soldiers. It is really not that impressive experience, but at least I got to spend some time with Kathy, who has been teaching English in China for 11 months now and was able to provide me some very good insight on the Chinese life, problems, and issues. She told me of her impressions (developed over the last 11 months) of how inflexible and corrupt the Chinese society truly is and how big are the challenges that they face as they try to become a super power. She confirmed my of my suspicios about chinese society and reinforced my belief that in many ways, China lacks some key elements to reach the next level of development. She appears to agree with me. Tiem wil tell, but I am not betting on China becoming the new world superpower anytime soon.

It is real shame that I did not have mroe time to spend chatting with Kathy (she is heading to Beijing as I write this) but she did recommend me a book that I am most certainly going to check out assoon as I return to the states. It is called "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris. It is about how people attach themselves to dogmatic powers, be it God and Jesus or Mao and the communist party. It was good to be able to chat with Kathy about the most varied subjects as we were lead from one tourist trap after another during our stay in Xi'an. So, Kathy, if you ever read this, thank you so much for providing such good company while we were on that very boring excursion to the silk factory. Good luck to you as you return to the UK!

So, the best part of the trip so far were the amazingly intelligent women I have met so far in China. I look forward to meeting more interesting people as this trip continues. I am still trying to figure out what I am doing tomorrow here in Xi'an, before I depart to Yunnan provide, where I will meet Zhang once again. I will keep you all posted!