Indecisive Chinese train journeys

Photo: Train station of Shanghai, China - 15/11/10

A matter of being flexible in China too. While in a touristic town full with canals and many interesting views, I met an English chap, Ed, who at his turn met two Chinese tourists. The four of us spent the day walking around in the city, and the next day Ed and I where leaving for the train station. Ed taking his train back home to a town outside Shanghai, ready to go back to work teaching English, me catching another train to my next destination.
Ed, being able to speak quite some Chinese, helped me getting the train ticket, and after lunch he left to catch his train.
While I was waiting for my train, I was browsing through the lonely planet and re-reading where I was going, what I planned before. Suddenly I realized that I might not want to go to the little villages I planned to go. I didn't feel in the mood to go to these little villages, which probably are beautiful in the summer as per the lonely planet, but in the winter, well suddenly I had a very depressing image in my head with poor looking people doing hard work carrying heavy stuff etc.

Feeling numb in Chengdu

Photo: Chengdu, China - 06/11/10

Six months after my departure, I found myself on a big airbus a319 heading for the airport of Chengdu, located more or less in the middle of China. This country was among my list of countries to which I have been curious when I was a child.
China, is a whole new experience for me and it is so different than the countries where I have spent my last 6 months! To be starting with the temperature, I was nervous to not have enough clothes to protect me against the winter cold. From the moment I left home, I spent walking in 30 up to 42 degrees celcius. And now suddenly I would step into 15 degrees. Brrrrr, as at night and in the morning it will be around 4 only.
During the flight I was reading one of Paul Theroux's travel books, which I bought the day before. Coincidentally in his book he was traveling to China in 1986 ;) I thought that would be reading in style. I was reading a chapter in which he, together with a group travelers, he crossed the border by train from Mongolia into China. One of the guys from the group was screaming through the train that the border police had taken two guys for questioning as they were carrying an edition of 'the economist'.