It had begun to rain, and the brick dust that gives Huaihua an orange hue was running down the gutters and scratching under the soles of my new slightly-platformed shoes. We had asked the manager of the restaurant what there was to see in Huaihua, and he had scratched his head vacantly. The park he meekly recommended was merely a small square of turf with a pagoda and a pond, we weren't even sure we'd arrived, but faithfully visited it anyway, if but to take shelter from the drizzle. We had nothing to do but watch the green water for a while, only electing to move on when we noticed the nurses in the hospital next to the park pointing at us from an upper-storey window. There was the distinct smell of what we presumed to be medicinal-purpose marijuana drifting from the hut next door.
 

It was getting close to departure hour by the time we had finished wandering aimlessly around Huaihua. We passed through the station gates without trouble, and were able to find the sign that read in Chinese the place to stand without difficulty. Perhaps we were overconfident in our minor abilities with Chinese characters, as we failed to interpret the arrow that plainly pointed to a stairwell leading to the opposite platform: the train we subsequently watched pull out from the other side was to be our own.

It was to be the crowning failure of the day; the conductors sympathised and were able to exchange our tickets for another train without charge, but this train was leaving two hours later, and would take 27 hours to make the trip to Chongqing. We were kindly settled into a small private waiting room, where the beer we'd purchased for the overnight journey was immediately opened in a move of self-pity. With nearly thirty hours to go before we got where we wanted to be, and the nightmare of a sleepless night stuffed into a carriage with other boisterous misfortunates ahead, spirits were difficult to raise above the rim of a plastic mug of Hunanese Old City draught beer.

We stood on the platform for the half hour before our second train was due to pull in, not daring to repeat the mistake. The platform was quiet, despite being populated with scores of small stores on wheels decked out in sausages and greasy chicken heads; storekeepers in white aprons silently awaited passing trains. One stopped, and the platform jolted into motion and noise; hot hordes of passengers squeezed monkey arms and shirtless torsos out from the small carriage windows, the squealing merchants handing up animal parts on sticks and pulling down wet notes in exchange. The passengers thrusting their bodies from the windows were obscene in the yellow light of the station lamps: Hamish and I looked at each other unhappily, reconsidering getting on our train when it arrived.

But it did arrive, and we got on, or rather pressed ourselves into a gap between two people already standing too close together. The temperature was hellish within 70 seconds, the train set out, the smell of sweat, excrement and peanut shells wafted miserably into our intercomparmental space.

From nowhere, a young woman in a white T-shirt and cropped jeans stood before us. She nodded, and introduced her self as an English student. Smiling nonchalantly, she asked if we'd like her to help us upgrade to a bed ticket.

We were too astonished to be surprised. She walked us to a nearby office set into the next carriage; a few words with the conductor, and it came to pass that there were indeed two and only two beds which had just been made available. Bed tickets are purchased for the whole journey even if part of the journey was to be taken - this train had been slowly making its way to Chongqing since departing Guangzhou the day before. Passengers who'd disembarked at Huaihua had left a space which Hamish and I took without hesitation. We hardly had the chance to thank the girl who'd sacrificed an opportunity to practice her English with us in order to help us out; speaking English with foreigners would have at least been something for her to do as the hours stretched on by. We were even guiltier when we came to realise that she'd been on the train, alone, for almost 24 hours already without a seat.

The night on the train passed comfortably enough, and I awoke in a pleasant mood to the announcer sweetly greeting the morning passengers. It was a few moments before I realised that I was taking in the Chinese effortlessly, like a native language. It was only to be a momentary illusion of fluency, but this memory of being a real participant in the Chinese language for the first time would remain a milestone in my language acquisition experience from that moment on. We were deep in the countryside and high in the hills, passing through chiselled tunnel after chiselled tunnel; the hillsides were cut into pancake levels of rice paddies, not a fraction of earth untouched. The landscape was saturated in lime green and ochre and black coal smuts; the girl on the berth opposite mine was mimicking the countryside with her black skirt and ochre stockings. She sat against the window and leant her head against the glass, the sunlight reflected from the forest green chipping paint of the train carriage splayed across her face; in her bright black irises were the tiny reflections of earthy railside terraces, two-tiered homes with farms laid over the roofs. It was inspiring countryside, Hamish and I shared a pair of earbuds plugged into dance music, Steve Hillage's swooning guitar riffs and Kevin Ayers' quirky ballads; it was a sacrilege of sorts.
 

We'd slept well, and I wanted to offer the angel we'd met on the train the night before the use of our bunks for the remainder of the trip, and so I wandered through the carriages to find her, but she was already asleep, squatting in a corner with her head on her knees, it was best to let her be. I went back a few hours later and thanked her profusely, we swapped email addresses and promises to stay in touch. Her name was Xisea.

We arrived in Chongqing at around 4.00pm. It was a sweaty spring, and Chongqing city was under ferocious heat, and we still had a few tasks to perform before leaving the city on the same day for Chengdu. Chongqing city proper juts into the Yangtse river, it is from here that a ferry ticket can be purchased that will take you all the way to Shanghai in the extreme East of the country. A voyage along the river that gives life to Southern China would not only take us through the fabled Three Gorges region, reputed to be a breathtaking experience of a fairyland central to traditional Chinese art and poetry, but would also be a convenient passage back to Hunan. The plan was to buy a boat ticket, wander the streets as much as possible, and then take the late bus to Chengdu, which would see us arriving there at around 3.00am. Two days later, we could return late in the evening and stay out all night, getting on the boat at dawn.

The bus to the dock was easy to locate, but the ticket office itself less obliging. We wandered down the bank to a pavilion beside the river, it was there that we began to be approached by touts offering luxury cruises down the Yangtse. We followed several to various travel agencies who offered us fabulous rides at American prices; when we explained we wanted to take the regular passenger ferry with the Chinese, we were given various excuses; there was no boat, we wouldn't be permitted, we were too late, etc. We felt defeated, and sat outside on a park bench, close to believing what we'd been told by so many faces: actually, they were all lying. A particularly beligerent tout sat next to us and asked: you really don't want to buy a cruise ticket?

No, we answered, we weren't tourists, we just wanted the passenger boat, we just wanted to know where the ticket office was. 

He thought this over, and said that he'd show us where it was for a small fee: 20 yuan. Under the circumstances, it seemed reasonable. We agreed, and he led us back to the office, which was right across the street from where our bus from the train station had stopped. He seemed to be extremely friendly, assisting us in the purchase of cheap fourth-class tickets, which gave passengers a bunk in a 30-bed dorm, and even went so far as to show us the platform where we should get on our boat a couple of days later. Then he asked for his fee - 40 yuan, 20 per person. He was inhumanly persistent, and walked away with 30.

Being cheated for more than an hour straight after a disappointing day previous was not a mood lifter. Further down the road, we couldn't even get a fair price for a coke, and the only place where we could think of where we might get away with being treated politely was to locate a temple our guidebook mentioned, which contained a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant - we figured vegan monks had to be safe.

And they were - something about eating vegies on consecrated ground made Chongqing not seem so bad after all. The food was as good as promised, too, and cute to boot - even the tofu made to taste like beef was shaped into a little heifer. The temple outside the dining hall was an old monastry that had been concealed by high rises on all sides; I wondered lazily if it made any difference to worship when the view from the balconies which had originally overlooked the river now faced a multi-level carpark. To know anything about Buddhism is to know that it shouldn't, as in the calm emotionless gaze of a true believer, the beautiful and the second-rate are all equally illusionary. 

On the way out, we were fortunate enough to witness a service, complete with candles and gowns and gorgeous colours - but it was the music that was the most entrancing, rhythmic clashing of metal and wood, the seamless vocables of the head monk, a chorus of shaved heads in counterpoint. Locals were gathered at an open door to peek and smile, a mother carrying her baby grinned at us peacefully. 

We'd not been wrong in turning to the simple atmosphere of delighted worshippers to reverse our sprirts, and the streets we wandered afterwards seemed full of sparkling souls going about their holy business, young students giggling and clasping hands, an old man in a grubby cap, the stubbleless employee of a CD store clapping on the doorstep to attract customers. It was evening and the main street easy to find, we located Chongqing's unaspiring Liberation Monument which is merely a clock on a pedestal, passing through throngs of happy folkspeople in cool summer gear. Chongqing is one of China's new, thriving metropolises, but in its core it is a small beautiful place, with glass towers erected on intriguing old alleyways and rows of traditional stone terraces. Pulling out from Chongqing on a bumpy bus for Chengdu a few hours later, we regretted not having had more of the day to explore the city.