Across from me sits a woman in the chair that is just too small for her. Her bottom spills over into the next seat to the great annoyance of the person next to her. The expression on her face is one of study as the looks at me. Not unlike the look your face would produce when trying to read a sign on the highway which is too far away and when you need new glasses. Besides her sits a man, who I presume to be her son, who is also looking at me, in his eyes the same expression as the woman.

Next to this man sits another man on a bucket. The train we are in is so full that all the chairs are already taken. Why this man took a bucketload of buckets into the train is something I don’t know but they turn out to be a convenient chair. The bucket man glances over at me every now and then. The family on the other side of the train compartment makes no secret of their curiosity. The younger children point at me and then at their nose or ears or eyes.

Me and my fellow travelers are in the train on the way to the Chinese city of Guilin. The 12 hour train ride which was supposed to be 10 hours is proving to be an interesting glance into Chinese life. There are people standing in the pathways, in the smoking area. Some are sitting on the floor and someone has perched herself on the little wash basin next to the toilets. All around people are munching on the snacks they brought or get boiled water for their instant noodles from the dining car. And all the while the air conditioner strains to keep up with all the radiating body heat.

I’m tempted to ask where they are going and what they’ll do there. Are all these people in this train to go on holiday? Or are they going back home? Why are they willing to endure this sneak preview of hell to get to their destination? I’m too shy to ask since previous incidents with people laughing at my Chinese. So I suppose I’ll never find out. Also, if they find out I can speak a few words of Chinese I will not get a second rest on this train.

And just when you think now it’s really full the train pulls into a station. You look out the window at the dozen or so people standing at each door pushing to get in and you think how on earth are you all going to come in here? But they do, somehow. And everyone stands a little closer together. Some of these people need to stand up in this train for all of the 12 hours of this journey.

For the first two hours in this train most of my thoughts consisted of ‘oh my God this is madness’. When those two hours were over I thought I’d quite like to read a book so I get up, climb over some people, crawl underneath some other ones, navigate through a jungle of bags, buckets and let’s not forget garbage. Finally, I reach my bag. I look around me to see if I’ve hurt anyone and notice that every single person in this train is staring at me. So I do what anyone would do. Wave and say: ‘good evening!’. Which had the absolutely wonderful result of suddenly making everyone realise they were rudely staring and in the blink of an eye everyone looked away.

And at last, dawn comes. And with dawn comes the arrival of the train into the otherworldly landscape of Guilin.

This is the first of a series of stories about my travels in China.