Report from the road 1 - Live from 长沙

Yo yo yo!

Right now I am in Changsha, Hunan province. Long story short:

We left Gongyi at 2 AM Saturday for the crappiest 7 hours I've ever spent in a train. We didn't have seats, so for the first hour we stood in the small space between the crowded cars, freezing our testicles off. Then, in Zhengzhou, some people came out, so we were able to move towards the center of a car. Still painful, but warmer. Good thing I brought my Creative Zen mp3 player and my foldable chair to keep me company. Then, somewhere in south Henan, we finally got seats, but I didn't sleep more than two consecutive seconds. Anyway... faut souffrir pour etre belle.

Oh yeah... the train was actually sold out, but wiseass Davey bought some tickets for the 13th and just changed the date to the 10th with a lead pencil. We didn't have trouble to hop on, but once in Wuhan, our first destination, a train station security guy said "HEY!" and took Davey away when he saw his semi-fraudulent ticket. Davey came back 2 minutes later, so I wasn't on my own.

Then what, walking around Wuhan, eating deliciurs snack food, taking a ferry-boat full of Chineses, going to a huuuuge market, before meeting our couchsurfing host Ben, a nice Texan, at 7. We went for some dongbei food, then headed to his place to drink pijiu (beer). We also met some other laowais, some of Ben's friends, and drank more and played hand pong. I thought it'd be awkward (I won't tell the details) but it was pretty cool.

Ben woke us up Sunday with a "dejeuner au lit", some deliciurs Wuhan style re gan mian! What a nice host! Then we took the sky train, wandered around more, before hopping on the train to
Changsha. It was a sleeper train converted into a normal passenger train, so it was weird a bit.

And now, just to re-state the obvious: not all Chinese people are like this stupid bitch from Harbin or the other vermin that you encounter sometimes. 99% of Chinese people are super nice, and on average, a nice Chinese person will be 4.2651989 times nicer than a nice Westerner.

So yeah, in the train I was doing my exercise in my Russian for beginners book (I got it in Beijing; I'm like on page 8, so don't expect me to be fluent yet) when Davey pointed out to me that (one of) the cute Chinese girl in front of me speaks Russian. For half an hour or so, she tutored me and helped me out. Nice!

Of course, Li Li (her name) is super nice, but not as nice as Huang Jin, (one of) the other hot girl in our train cubicle. As she's a Changsha resident, Davey asked her if she knows some good cheap hotels we could crash at. She didn't only say yes, but she agreed to lead us there! So when we reached the Hunan metropolis, we hopped in a cab. After finding a ghetto, but comfortable place (my kind of thing), we had some food, then helped her carry her bags to her place. She lives with three other girls in an unheated one bedroom appartment, but she wears D&G high heeled boots, I guess it's a question of priorities. We goodbye'd her then went to sleep for 12 hours. I was still exhausted from the sleepless night two days before and it's not the beer I ingurgitated at Ben's place that will help me recuperate, plus I had a cold.

So today, Huang Jin, being the super cool awesome girl she is, got the two of us to eat lunch with all the people she works with. I don't know what the best part was: her nice smile and pink cheeks, the deliciurs Hunan cuisine, or the fact that her boss paid the entire bill, but anyway it was awesome. She wants to hang out tonight also, so I'm waiting for her call. It sucks that she has a boyfriend already, but it seems that every fine Chinese girl has one, goddamn one-child law. :(

Oh and I saw a badass pub alley not so far from our hotel. I'll check it out for sure! I miss the British finest's on tap... And they seem to have tons of Belgian stuff too! It's pretty unusual in China.

I'm sure I forgot tons of details... anyway bottom line is, I'm having tons of fun and I hope you do too! A prochaine!