snake mountain

the train bustles with activity, as does the skyline. the chinese countryside looks how i imagined.

this morning we trundled through low-lying flat land. infinite paddy fields tended to by crouched locals in wide-brimmed hats, their bicycle or moped propped up somewhere nearby. just like in the films. frequently the flat expanse gave way to a small town or enormous factory. it was reminiscent of the siberian landscape, but inhabited and working. the factory yards filled with wooden structures and concrete items, stocked full, ready to be loaded onto trucks and trains and whisked away to inordinate cities.

i'm in fucking china!

the dry gobi desert air has gone and dissolved into humidity.

after a meal from the restaurant car that looked and tasted familiar, even down to the cardboard takeaway style packaging, we're headed deep into a mountain range. it looks like the other chinese countryside i anticipated. we carve our way through high and steep rocky mountains, almost vertical cliff-faces in all directions. a deep, thin valley glides below us with a trickle of a river feeding the homemade disheveled allotments that occupy every square morsel of flat space. on the other side of the river another railway regularly carries goods: timber, containers and brand new diggers, their yellow paint the brightest thing against the grey rock. trees and shrubs grow out of boulders, all the same shade of warm, moist, deep green. the whole scene constantly disappears when we honk honk into a tunnel, replaced only by the sound of rushing air.


...

now the trickle has become a huge river. now a docile blue-green depth of water softens the sharp interlocking crags that rise up either side. it's deep too, until a dam across the valley stops it in its tracks and it suddenly returns to the dry sorry flow.

...

now an industrial town appears like a badly made jigsaw puzzle in the rocks. the houses and garages overshadowed by an enormous soviet style factory perched halfway up a cliff. millions of tons of coal are mined in this area every year and are sent out into china. the only way in or out of each of these pockets of civilization must be by rail. it's quite beyond me how the tracks got there though.

the air is warm and wet.

i'm in china.