Still moving

On the 高铁 from Yunyang to Chongqing I share six seats around a table. By the window a man watches tv on his phone while eating snacks. He is well prepared, two different snacks, a battery pack, a Bluetooth earpiece, and a stand to put his phone at the most proper height and angle.

Next to him his wife sleeps, and next to her another woman likewise, head on the table. Underneath, between us, a full white plastic bucket of something, the couple’s. We all share space. Next to me, the head on table woman’s husband sleeps, arms crossed. Beside him, by the window, my factory contact, deep in a half dozen WeChat conversations with the team back in Rongchang, a suburb of Chongqing.

Across from me a man with fingernail clippers on his loaded keychain eats instant noodles while playing a mahjong game on his phone. Another couple sleeps across, arms in their coats to keep warm. This train passes through tunnels frequently and so is half dark half sun lit on our mid day journey. The hills north of Chongqing are steep and green, beautiful and necessitating the tunnels. It’s a two hour ride from Yunyang to Chongqing, and I am happy to be again out in the world.

The early bus rides and first tentative high speed rail links are two decades ago now. In twenty years the 高铁 has become commonplace here, so that “在高上” is what my noodle-eating neighbor yells at the phone when someone calls to ask where he is.

Some things have changed. The train staff collects rubbish frequently and asks the man listening to audiobooks or some long form story, perhaps radio, to use headphones. There are station announcements in English, though I haven’t seen another westerner in days.