Beating the Clock

We took a soft sleeper from Beijing to Harbin and back. A soft sleeper has 4 beds per room and, you guessed it, you can sleep on your way to your destination. Our train left at 8:30pm and arrived about 7am going both directions. Jenny and Anthony were kind enough to both book and pick up the tickets for our entire group.

This is one side of a soft sleeper.

We were meeting at 7:30 at the train station. Anthony and Jenny got there first and they called us as we walked up to them at 7:40. We had all taken the subway. Emma called to say she was less than 2 miles away in a cab. Due to the lovely Beijing traffic 15 minutes later she was no closer. We decided that at 8 we had to go to the train gate and when we found it at 8:15 the gate people told us we had to board IMMEDIATELY!

But we had no Emma! And to make matters worse, we had her ticket!
The crew was adamant - we needed to get on board now!

We explained that we had another friend coming who was stuck in traffic and that we had her ticket and that she was also a foreigner and that she had red hair and that really the whole trip was kind of for her because she was going back to the states the next week and we really wanted to wait for her and...

And we got on the train.

Jenny and Michael stayed at the train door hoping to see Emma come onto the platform. We tried to call her cell phone to give her the latest update but nobody could get through. Then the lady at the train door very apologetically informed Michael and Jenny that she was very sorry but they had to get in the train because the train was moving.

Just then Jenny saw a small group of people rush from the station onto the train. Maybe Emma was part of the group even if everyone in it looked like a Chinese man and Emma, being tall and red-headed, is rather difficult to mistake for a Chinese man.

Crestfallen, Jenny and Michael came back to our sleeper car as we moved out of the station. It just didn't seem possible that we were leaving Emma behind - she had been so close!

I tried calling her again and realized, as she answered the phone, that I didn't want to be the one to tell her we had already left.

(sigh) 'hi emma'
'Hi! I'm on the train! What car are you in!'

Apparently that last group of people had been students returning to Harbin. They had talked the gate keepers into re-opening the door for them and Emma had come through with them. Then, the attendant had noticed her hair and put her right on the train with the students just behind her.

She had answered her phone just after she had shared a spontaneous victory dance with the Harbin students.

It was quite the start to our weekend of adventures.

This picture is when Emma made it down to our car and we had visual confirmation that she really was on our train.