Faced with existential questions like ‘How many more big trips do I have in me?’ and increasingly forced to accept I am indeed now 71 (it has taken me 5 minutes to come up with ‘increasingly forced’ – quite definitively not the words I think I had in mind) it has seemed wise devote some real time to actually planning this trip, especially because the answer to the second existential question: ‘How many train journeys can I cram into a month?’ is ‘A lot if it’s an enormous country with a staggering rail network’.

On the road again. Jim will join me at the end of the trip for 2 weeks R & R in Vietnam. Meanwhile he is happy to drop me off at Logan airport.

I am immediately confronted with two unfortunate realities: First, train tickets only appear online two weeks before the departure date, at a time that is definitively not congruent with a good night’s sleep in the US. Second, at precisely the same time, approximately a million Chinese who are awake and surfing the web, will simultaneously decide that the very same journey, no matter how obscure, sounds like just the job. Fortunately, Vivi has come to the rescue; for a mere $5 a transaction she will wield her invincible algorithm on my behalf, beat back the ravenous hordes and score me whatever ticket my heart desires. In terms of mental health, and certainly sleep, it is as they say priceless, but less of a financial bargain than it seems since many of the tickets are no more than $10. But Vivi is worth her weight in gold in so many other ways; she also wields a devastating translate app that does not hesitate to interject whenever one of my online orders is plunging me into certain disaster.

 “Hello dear, we spent last week conveying you south, why are you inexplicably turning north”.

“Sorry once again Vivi, I inserted an inauspicious Y into that station name”.

“Inauspicious lol (rolls eyes)”.

Also, thanks to Vivi I am now aware that China Railways has certain unexpected and alarming features, in particular stations so small that while Vivi assures me it will be theoretically feasible to hop on or off in the 5 seconds the train stops there, my tickets are to or from somewhere completely different (larger and up or down the line). I can be reasonably sure no-one will have found it useful to transliterate the names of these miniscule stations into the English alphabet and even more sure that any fellow passengers on these trains will not be wielding helpful translation apps. (Disappointingly despite three weeks diligent study with Duolingo I am still only able to convey [forcefully] that I don’t like cold porridge and inquire whether you are an Italian teacher. Remarkably I do remember critically important words like ‘beer’ and ‘noodles’ from last time, presumably because they are solidly lodged in my long-term memory).  Reading Chinese will never be on the cards

Nonetheless, I am now in Beijing with an army of VPNs to fortify me against the Great Firewall, an ESIM that is pretending I’m in Indonesia and with electronic documentation for a satisfyingly complex journey more or less from north to south, so I can check out all those obscure tributaries of the ancient Silk Road that have been nagging at me since 2019.

Some of old Beijing persists in ancient Hutongs, with tiny houses circling a common courtyard. My hotel is in one of them.

After what feels like 3 days on a plane (I have in fact eaten three breakfasts) a beer at the local bar seems like a good idea. They are unfailingly polite of course but seem relieved I don’t plan on staying for tonight’s live performance.

The Nice Young Lady (NYL) at the hotel disapproves of me spending my pension in bars and sends me off to the grocery store to buy beer for my room, where I do find an authentic reminder of home.

Tomorrow the Forbidden City!