michaelSichuan, China
The following is from a trip to the cities of ChengDu 成都 & MianYang 绵阳 in Sichuan province 四川省, China 中国.
This post covers my commute from MianYang 绵阳 (where our contract manufacturer is located) to ChengDu 成都 (where our partner company is situated), Sichuan 四川省, China 中国.
Outside the MianYang train station there is a block covered with food vendors. Between all of them about five different kinds of selections are repeated: fruits, fried bread, soup, meats (in the foreground), and some Chinese salad (in the rear, with the customer family sitting on the blue buckets).
This is one of the soup stands, with customers slurping noodles accompanied by a bewildering (to me) selection of taste add-ons. Soups are a really big deal here; I’d venture to say that for working people most of their meals are soups.
Okay, now into the train station, where, to no surprise, people are QUEUEING!
Then, on the platform, more queueing.
It’s dark as we disembark at ChengDuDong. I want to get across to everyone the scale of this place. This is the platform, down which we walk just to get to the main building.
Then we’re funnelled into the departure area, where we have to go through reverse security, having our ticket checked to ensure we took the trip for which we paid.
Then we’re on the main underground concourse. Remember, this is only half of the place; there’s an exact mirror copy stretching out behind me.
At the end of the concourse we’re greeted with a high gate and another funnel. Still walking, walking.
Now there’s some more walking until I see the first TAXI signs. We’ll have to walk through the blue door-frame…
…and up the escalator behind this police officer, towards the exit.
There we’re greeted by this multi-lane, exceedingly long taxi queue. Right now there’s no people queued because I’ve taken my time with these pictures, and the rush-hour crush has been dispatched into the surrounding city.
Once in the taxi, having shown my paper with various address written out in English and Chinese, we drive through a concrete snake to ascend to the street level.
10-20 minutes later — this is where the rush-hour thing comes in — we’re downtown. The blue lighting here is under the flyover I’ll post tomorrow.
Often it gets worse than stop-and-go, mostly stop, Then I have the taxi drop me off; walking is faster. That’s exactly what happened tonight. I had a long block to go, where I took this photo of the hotel, in the background.
That’s my one-way commute. I get back to the hotel just as California is waking up to their new day.
Now it’s 00:49 here, and it’s time to hit the ‘post’ button, close my eyes, and get up in a few hours to repeat the process yet again.