Last Friday
saw me leaving Shanghai for the first time since I arrived here at the end of
August to attend a wedding in Ji’nan (more on that in a few weeks).
It’s not
very far from Shanghai to Ji’nan, merely three and a half hours by bullet train,
which is quite okay for a distance of around 730 km.
But let me
start from the beginning. And, because I am who I am, and have been heavily
influenced by Victor Hugo’s writing style, let me start by giving you an
incomplete overview about Shanghai’s transportation system in general. In fact, let me take this opportunity to warn you: This is a very long post. There is an (extremely brief) summary at the end though, so feel free to skip everything and read the summary.
~~~
The metro
system in Shanghai is great. And I encourage anyone who doesn’t read Chinese
incredibly well (people like me, for instance) to stick to it. At the moment,
there are 17 metro lines, which can take you to almost any area in Shanghai,
and all the signs in and around the metro station and the metro itself are both
in Chinese and English. They even announce the stops in English!
With a combination of taxis and the metro, you can go pretty much anywhere in
Shanghai without having to be able to read even a single character, and if your
destination isn’t super remote, it won’t cost a lot of money either.
~~~
Of course,
there are busses in Shanghai too. Many of them, in fact. There are more than
1000 (read: one thousand) regular bus lines and some special lines in addition
to that. But for non-Chinese-readers, they are very difficult to navigate,
because absolutely everything (from the stop signs to the bus schedule) is written
in Chinese characters only, and I wouldn’t hold out hope that the bus driver
speaks English.
Riding a
bus in China is actually quite the experience. Once you’re on the bus, and
miraculously on the right one, it’s a combination of good timing, thorough
preparation, and pure luck to get off at the correct stop. The busses are
usually crowded, you can’t rely on the driver to always stop at red lights or
stay on the bus lane when they could drive on the motorcycle lane equally as
well, and I’ve been on busses whose doors wouldn’t close on more than one
occasion.
What’s most
difficult, though, is finding out if you can even take the bus. There is no
English trip planning tool available online for Shanghai, or at least not one
that’s complete and doesn’t require you to know the actual Chinese names of the
bus stops nearest to your location. More than anything else, this is what makes
incorporating a short trip by bus, no matter how convenient it might be, almost
impossible for foreigners – you can’t take the bus if you don’t know that
there’s supposed to be one, or if you have no idea where the bus is going and
stopping.
So, when at
the beginning of the semester, Ms Zhang from the international office of my
university sent an email to all of us and attached a bus schedule in English
for all the busses that stop at our campus, I was delighted.
And I was
even more delighted to find that there is a bus that stops both at the campus
and at Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station (which is the railway station you’ll
likely need to go to in Shanghai if you’re going somewhere by high speed
train).
Because,
you see, my campus is on the outskirts of Shanghai, and so is Hongqiao Railway
Station. They are actually not that far apart (well, for Shanghai’s standard,
anyway), but going there by metro requires taking Line 11 for around an hour
into the city centre to change to Line 2 and go to the railway station, whereas
a bus can follow a more direct route.
Naturally, due
to some very poor phrasing, some of the information on the schedule is rather difficult
to interpret at times (such as where on campus each of the bus stops is to be
found), but I wasn’t too worried. I figured that I could easily enough ask
about the stops’ location when I actually needed them.
~~~
I probably
should have predicted what was going to happen. But it seems even though this
is my fourth time in this country, I’m still quite naïve in some regards.
When I
planned my trip to the train station on Friday I was uncharacteristically
careful to plan for enough time. My train was set to leave at 6pm, so I decided
I would take the bus at 2pm.
It was the perfect plan: I had an appointment with Ms Zhang at the
International Office at 1:15pm anyway, and when I was there I would simply
seize the opportunity to ask her where I had to go to get on the bus.
I was told
by Ms Zhang (who, remember, had compiled all the information on the busses and
sent it to us) that she actually had no idea where the bus stop was, but not to
worry, she would make a phone call. On the phone, she was told that nobody was
quite sure if the bus in question still existed, or otherwise, if it still
stopped next to our campus.
Ms Zhang
assured me that it would all be cleared up if I just went to the entrance gate,
where I was sure to find the bus stop. I wasn’t quite so sure, but I wasn’t
really worried either. In case I didn’t find the bus stop, I told myself, I
would simply take a taxi to the next metro station. Not ideal, as I knew it was
going to take significantly longer by metro, but okay. It was 1:45pm, and I
still had plenty of time.
In no
surprise to anyone, I found two bus stops, neither of which has any bus going
to the railway station stopping at them. So I turned towards the street to get
a taxi.
~~~
Some of the
most baffling things I learnt when I was in China for the first time were
somehow related to taxis.
For one
thing, there aren’t any seat belts on the back seats. For another, the driving
varies between chaotic and downright terrifying. It’s also no good expecting
the taxi driver to understand any English. Print out the address of wherever
you want to go in Chinese. Ideally in a big font size – I’ve had taxi drivers
turn me down because their eyesight wasn’t good enough to read the address (which
doesn’t really inspire my particular trust in a driver).
But, for
the sake of my story, none of those things are relevant.
Here’s what
is relevant: You can’t simply call a taxi in China. I had never questioned the
Austrian way of doing this, but here, you don’t make a phone call ordering a
taxi to your location. Instead, you go find a big, ideally busy, street and
hope that a free taxi passes you by.
Don’t
rejoice once you’ve seen one, though. There is absolutely no guarantee that the
driver will react to your beckoning it over, and even if he does, in my
experience you need to stop at least two taxis before someone will agree to
take you. This, especially, still feels weird to me. We’re apparently spoilt
like queens and kings in Europe, because we simply get into the taxi and tell
the driver where to go.
Stop. Not
so fast. In China, you tell the driver through an open window where you want to
go, and if they’re agreeable and the distance you want to go is neither too
short nor too far, and your chosen destination isn’t, heaven forbid, in an area
that’s in any way inconvenient to the driver, they might agree to take you in.
In all
honesty, you have to realise that I am exaggerating, but not by very much,
promise.
~~~
Anyway,
that’s exactly what happened to me on Friday. I couldn’t say anymore how many
taxis I tried to wave over; most of them ignored them, but quite a few stopped.
Not a single one wanted to take me to the metro station. It’s quite a short
trip (5 minutes by car, because there is a sort of highway between the
university and the metro station), but too far to walk if time is at least
somewhat of the essence. At that point, it was 3pm.
So I turned
to one of the men guarding the entrance, asking him to help me. He was
incredibly friendly, but even when he tried to recruit people to take me to the
metro station, he failed.
There’s a
shuttle going to the closest metro station from university. It’s even free of
charge, and I wanted to take it, but they leave only once an hour, on the other
end of the campus (which we’ve already established is very big) and I didn’t
know when. I approached the guard about it, and immediately realised that I
wouldn’t make it there in time to catch the next one.
I was ready
to stop a random car and offering the driver an exorbitant sum for taking me to
the bus station. The fact that, instead, ended up catching the free shuttle bus
after all is only thanks to the guard, who stopped the bus when it drove
through the entrance gate and convinced the driver to let me in. I haven’t seen
him since, otherwise I’d have already given him a packet of cigarettes (the
gift of choice for men in China). Because of him, I finally, at 3:45pm, reached
the metro station.
It was
pretty smooth sailing from there, and I arrived at the railway station at half
past 5. It’s a miracle that I ended up catching my train.
~~~
Why, you
ask? Couldn’t I simply buy a ticket and go to the platform?
The short
answer is: No.
There’s a
long answer, too.
First of
all, Hongqiao Railway Station is huge. It took me 10 minutes of jogging to get
from the metro station to the actual train station. I also still had to pick up
my ticket. I had bought it online weeks ago, but you can’t travel without an
officially issued ticket – simply printing the payment confirmation isn’t
enough. And there was a long queue, as it was a busy day.
More
importantly, (and time-consumingly) though, Chinese railway stations are a bit
like mini-airports. You have to queue for the security check (and, as
previously mentioned, there were a lot of people), your bags are checked, and
you need to present your passport (or, if you’re a Chinese citizen, your ID
card) in order for them to even let you into the station, never mind the train.
Once you’re
through security and got ticket, you can’t simply waltz straight onto the
platform, either.
You have to
find your gate, and there is a window of five to ten minutes where the gate is
open and you can get onto the platform. Once the gate is closed (five minutes
before the train leaves, in my experience), you won’t get onto the platform anymore,
even if the train hasn’t left and you’ve got a valid ticket.
~~~
I managed
to get onto the train, and I had a great time in Ji’nan. And in the grand
scheme of things, this little adventure was no real adventure at all. It was,
however, a great opportunity to provide everyone with a comprehensive
introduction to different means of public transport in China.
One more thing: I hope nobody thinks I’m complaining about poor Ms Zhang. Releasing a bus guide for international students without really understanding what they have written (or having any further information on the busses) is very typical for many Chinese people in my experience, which is why I mentioned it.
She is a lovely person, though, and has helped me a lot since I’ve arrived here.
~~~
In summary:
Research thoroughly before planning on taking the bus, plan for enough time if
you are at a remote location (or want to go somewhere far from the city centre)
to find a willing taxi driver, and don’t mistake Chinese railway stations for
the ones your familiar with – you’ll need a lot more time here.
~~~
I’ll try to
be back on Sunday or Monday, but no promises. Until then I wish you all a wonderful
weekend!