Buying tickets at Shanghai Rail Station

After all the stories online about avoiding Chinese train stations, we still decided to give it a go - not like we had any choice - but we did go well-prepared. Armed with our first, second and third choice train timings, passports for the whole family, flush with local currency and even equipped with a moderately intelligible mandarin-speaker, we set off for the Shanghai Railway Station.

The place is huge! It took us more than 10 minutes walking around with two grousing kids in tow just to find the right entrance for non-self-service ticket procurement. Fortunately, the lady at the info desk directed us to a zone with relatively short queues. After a few minutes, we realized that we had lucked out and ended up at the “English-speaking counter.” The signage was abysmal and it was extremely unlikely that the teller actually spoke any English - at least they are trying!

Just as we arrived at the head of the queue, we had our first experience with non-existent Chinese queueing etiquette. This old-ish wrinkled guy stepped out in front of us from out of nowhere and claimed to need a ticket for a train on the same day. In the end it may perhaps have been a legitimate excuse as he did end up buying a ticket departing in about 30 minutes, however it definitely confused everyone.

Thankfully, when we got to the counter there were plenty of tickets left on our first choice fast train to Beijing (phew!) and we were able to sit together and all that good stuff. The lady was a bit gruff and seemed surprised when we asked about when to be at the train station and how seats are assigned. We did forget to ask about our oh so scary kitchen knife and whether or not we would be allowed to take it on board - just going to have to take a chance on that one.

On the way out of the station, we had to grab a shot of the largest skewer “tree” that we had ever seen. It was a real shocker, and while the skewers are at least made out of wood and hopefully recycled afterwards, it did force us all think twice about snacking on skewers again. Given how popular this way of street eating is, we could only imagine the sheer number of skewers being thrown away in China each and every day.

After wandering around for a bit, we decided to find something around Hanzhong for tonight’s supper stop. We knew as soon as we stepped inside that this hole-in-the-wall diner was a bit of a different place. First off, there was only beef and lamb on the menu - not the usual duck, chicken and pork. Then we saw ladies in muslim garb eating inside. Recalling that Yuning had told us that one of the reasons why there are so many beef noodle soup places in Shanghai was to serve the non pork-eating muslim population - and that they generally made really good, flavourful food - we figured that this would be a great time to give this local cuisine a try!

We shared a nice bowl of beef hand-pulled noodle soup, some stir-fried shredded potato and peppers on rice, as well as another veg dish comprising some kind of local squash (we ordered this one off-menu - basically looked at what they were eating at the staff table and asked if we could try some of that!) Davy was struggling a bit with his hair getting into his soup and noodles, so he borrowed Mommy’s neck warmer and we snuck a shot of his new armed-with-a-headband-and-ready-to-eat-noodles look! Czytaj więcej