Monday May 28 Guangzhou

The Beijing West Railway station is massive.  To enter the station from the street, we had to produce passports, tickets and put our luggage and backpacks through an xray scanner.  This station is so huge it reminds one very much of an airtport with 13 waiting rooms, and each waiting room has 4 or 5 gates to access the train platforms by escalators.  Our train has 17 cars with a posted capacity of 118 per car, but they also sell standing room only tickets once the seats are sold out.  People buy little folding chairs from the platform vendors so they can sit in the aisles.  That would be fine, except all through the trip train staff roll trolleys of food and drinks down the narrow aisles just like the flight attendants on a plane and people need to make room for them.  Seats are arranged with rows facing each other, two on one side of the aisle and three on the other.  10 people are in close contact for each section, but two white guys attracted enough attention to have people hanging over the seats and gawking at us.  Plus the aisle seats!  Conversation became interesting as we used our limited Mandarin and encouraged those around us to use English.  This is a 21 hour train ride and we will have a captive audience for most of it.  One fellow is a civil engineer who has been to Zambia, Uganda and Kenya.  He could speak English so we chatted.  Matthew struck up a conversation with a university grad and boldly went where others fear to go.  He dug out a "Jesus" tract in Chinese and shared it with the university student who comes from Inner Mongolia.  The student said he had a Christian instructor in university and was quite interested in the booklet…so were all the other people as it got handed around with lots of chatter going on.  I could just imagine the secret police waiting for us at the next stop for questioning.  No matter that Matthew had just heard Josephine’s story of being arrested for interrogation for proselytizing and doing missionary work

Because of the former discussion of being in Zambia and Uganda, someone asked what I did for work, so I had to tell the truth, that I am a pastor (no recognition of that word), a minister, a preacher, ok, a missionary.  Ahhh, now they understood.  So you travel around the world to tell people about Jesus?  Yes, I am a Jesus-person, a Christian.  One middle-aged lady smiled and stroked Matthew’s hair.  I didn’t know if that meant, poor boy, you don’t know what you’re in for, or if it was just that she was enamoured with this handsome young man.  I’ve had to fight off the 20 yr. old girls from claiming him for a boyfriend, but not someone in their 40’s!  Matthew has been a hit throughout the trip.  In case you're still wondering, everything turned out well in the end.  We snacked on extra food we had brought with us, but we did see some interesting foods.  You can buy small tubs of noodles to which you add hot water, much like we do in Canada, however, there are also dehydrated or preserved chicken feet or duck feet you can buy in packages to add to your noodle soup.  There are tin trays provided for one to put between their feet on the floor where you can spit out the chicken toe-nails and bones.  Yes, some interesting.

We arrived in Guangzhou (a modern city of 10 million) at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on Monday.  My cell phone time was used up texting Diane, so I will need to get it topped up again with more minutes so I can contact some 'friends' I’ve never met.  After 4 attempts we finally found a bank that would accept my debit card and also found a phone card to top up the minutes on the phone.  We contacted J (don't want to use his real name) and arranged to meet at 11 a.m. the next morning after his scheduled meeting.  As has been our habit, Matthew and I made a familiarization tour around some of the streets around the hotel.  After that train trip, we were glad to be horizontal in comfortable beds for the night.