Underbellies
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2007
1
7
20
Trip End
Dec 15, 2007
Xi'an,
China
Friday, October 5, 2007
i'm in xi'an now. i'm staying at a hostel that's affiliated with the hostels that i stayed at in both beijing and pingyao...and i've come to realize the appeal of frequenting places well worn by other backpackers. as well as sorting out my train ticket problem, the hostel in pingyao reserved me a bed in xi'an and arranged for me to be picked up at the train station by hostel staff. the customer service at the chinese hostels geared towards foreign backpackers beats anything i ever came across in india. and after the time i spent in the north-east (where few backpackers go) i can see the contrast between services for westerners and services for chinese tourists. some independent chinese travelers (usually young chinese, older folks seem to stick to the package tours) seem to have figured this out and use the western geared hostels as well.
thinking about it, i probably don't really have enough to write about yet to be creating a new entry (i see the terracotta warriors tomorrow), but i think what caused me to want to write was something that happened in the pingyao train station last night. as i was waiting i had noticed two woman and a child of about three, mostly because the child was spitting all his chewed food out and handing it back to the woman holding him, who i assumed to be his mother. my attention wandered, as it does when in waiting rooms, and i forgot about them. then, just as my train was called, two men walked in. one had on an official looking jacket, maybe police but i couldn't tell from where i was. nothing else about him looked official, and even the jacket looked a bit tattered. they walked up to the two women and the child and an argument broke out. the man wearing the jacket promptly hit the woman holding the child full in the face while the other man ripped the child out of her hands and started carrying him out of the train station. the assaulted woman burst into tears while the man who had hit her shook her and held her back, and then left to follow the man who had taken the child. another man sitting beside them (who i hadn't noticed until this point) jumped up and started running after the men but he was held back by the two woman. he broke free and ran out of the station, chasing after the men and the child. i wasn't sure what i had just witnessed. was the child kidnapped by his father (or possible father...was the man who was sitting with the women the father...was the paternity in doubt?) was the man wearing the jacket acting in an official capacity or a personal capacity? what shocked me the most was the sense of disinterest that permeated the room. neither of the station guards intervened or seemed to care and no one reacted in any visible way except to turn their heads and watch. the violence struck me as barbaric and alien at first...until i realize that similar things happen in canada all the time...maybe not in a train station and maybe not as brazenly...but what i had witnessed was hardly 'chinese'. i would like to think that if something like that had happened in the cobourg train station people would have reacted to it differently...but probably not. still...i can't shake the sense that i'd witnessed a degree of disregard for the lives of the people whose personal business had been so jarringly put on display that i think can only exist in a place where life is very crowded...and very cheap.
