Baoji - 宝鸡

Another train ride, yay... Third class, six-bed compartment, no doors, feet sticking out into the aisle (mine would block it (if I had been lying lower)), but there was air conditioning set to 15 degrees - cool. As the only Europeans in the whole train, Tom and I quickly became the unintended main attraction of the train. Children's crowds came to see the creatures from the West, and even adults enjoyed entertaining themselves with us. One boy in particular seemed very interested in a mobile game that I was playing, as it seemed that it didn't exist in China due to the 'Great Firewall of China'. Since I didn't have much fun with the game myself, I let him play and started talking to him and his mother, who were the only ones in the car who spoke a few words of English. The following conversation was a clash of openness and limited, distorted, and system-compliant worldview. When asked what image they (son (15 years old) and mother) had of Germany or what they associated with Germany, they couldn't think of anything other than 'Hitler', to which the term 'exploitation' was later added. This conversation was also very enlightening regarding the general view of the Chinese on their own country, and it matched the consensus of all other conversations we had or the impressions we were able to gather. For example, the Chinese portrayed themselves and their country as if they were helping the world, only doing good, and bringing peace to the world. Taiwan was not seen as a sovereign state but as part of China, Hong Kong was seen as a problem that the government was 'solving', and Western media was considered pure 'fake news' or simply misunderstood things fundamentally. Oh well...

Especially funny was the evening procedure of climbing into bed... first, you had to climb up a ladder, past the feet of two Chinese people, into the third floor, where you then had to crawl in headfirst. Sitting down or any other maneuver - impossible. The only possible thing was to do the "worm roll" in place, because there was only about five centimeters of space on the left and right and about 35 cm to the ceiling. Once you managed to lie on your side, you could also use the logistic problem of storing the backpack. The fetal position was suitable for this, as it provided space behind the knees, as far as bending the legs allowed, which was to serve as storage space for the backpack for the night. A change of position was necessary that night due to the hardness of the sleeping surface, but not possible.

Finally, tired in Baoji, a desperate eight-hour search for a hotel began, which ended on the twelfth floor of another hotel, as our originally booked hotel seemed to not exist... At least it was not to be found at the two specified addresses (which changed as soon as they were displayed in Chinese), locals said this hotel did not exist, and neither could we, nor Booking.com, contact the hotel. But the handmade dumplings that we ate in the next few days were nowhere as good as in Baoji. A dream!

Although Baoji, as a city with millions of inhabitants, didn't have much to offer, it was nice to observe how people gathered in front of houses and squares for communal dancing in the evenings. It was not so much a couples or community dance, but rather a mass imitation dance gymnastics, but still quite nice.

What was unfortunately not very nice was a mega construction project in the heart of the city. If you call Berlin Airport a major construction site, then you haven't been to China yet. The extent of this inner-city construction project was revealed to us when we climbed a hill on the outskirts of town during a trip to the mountains. A city within a city.

The aforementioned trip to the outskirts of Baoji was the highlight of our time in Baoji. We left the city towards the mountains and passed through villages where, according to the looks of the locals, Europeans had never been before. When we were a little higher up, locals who had followed us in their car warned us that we shouldn't continue here due to some dangers... We chose a different path below our original route and eventually reached the end of the paved road after a beautiful hike past rice and terraced fields and through the jungle, where a kind of water pump station was located. Just as we were about to turn back, as there was no way past this station, we were surprised by a police car with flashing lights speeding up the hill. Five policemen got out and asked us what we were doing here. They couldn't really make sense of our answer that we were hiking and enjoying nature, as it was probably the first time a European had hiked there, and apparently locals generally don't do that. With great mutual incomprehension, our passports were cautiously photographed and shared in all possible messenger groups with friends, colleagues, and family - something like 'look, we've caught two Europeans'. Who knows what the villagers who called the police thought we, the two dubious European individuals, were looking for, but the police decided to escort us back to the hotel, which suited us just fine, and we made no objections (also because we had heard that the Chinese police was entitled to hold someone without cause for a maximum of two weeks). So, with a little coffee and smoke break for the boss sheriff, we went back to the hotel. Couldn't have been more exclusive.