During most of our travels, we had to stick to a tight budget so that we could see as much of China as possible. We did not stay in dorms often, but we haggled hard for hotel rooms. The same budget applied to our traveling. The bulk of our traveling was on trains in the hard class sleepers. Hard class sleepers can actually be nice with six stacked beds per open "compartment". and about ten "compartments" per car (no doors for the compartments). Some trains had A/C and the others had fans and windows that could open to cool you off as you sweat it out. All of the trains had sheets and some sort of blanket (often a beach towel).

The train rides could be really fun or shear misery, depending on who you shared your compartment with. On our first train ride to Xian from Yantai, Jennie and I taught the kids in our car how to play UNO which was a lot of fun. UNO was always a huge hit and people always wanted to try to figure it out, but only the kids wanted to give it a try. However, during our trip from Xian to Lanzhou we shard a compartment with a bunch of 50 year old chain smokers who drank themselves into a stupor until they finally passed out at 3AM. Since the train conductor was partying with them, there was little that anyone could do.

Trains were the preferred mode of transportation, but occasionally sleeper tickets were impossible to get and we were not about to spend 20 hours in hard seat. This was the case from Guilin to Xiamen or from Beijing to Shanghai. In these cases we flew, but I actually hated flying in China. The airports are always far outside the city center and I have yet to be on a flight that I was not clinging to the seat as the plane rocked and rolled or dove at the runway.