When you are travelling, you come across great sights, interesting cities or breathtaking landscapes. But often, it’s the people you meet along the way that really make your day.
Since direct trains from Ulanbaatar to Beijing were sold out, we had only bought a ticket to Jining (about half-way between the border and Beijing) in the hope to secure an onward ticket from there. After saying goodbye to the superfriendly American traveller that we had shared the compartment with for the last 24 hours, we stepped out of Jining station and found ourselves in the middle of a bustling city, surrounded by a forest of signs in Chinese, none of which meant anything to us. The first task was to find an ATM to get some Yuans, then buy train tickets for the next day to Beijing. Both we accomplished after lots of sign language and drawing on our little notepad. The girl who helped us buy the tickets crossed out the two seats we had drawn, and depicted instead a standing person. It dawned on us that we might have just bought two standing room tickets for the eight-hour train journey…
As the sun set, we started to look for a hotel for the night. Our guidebook did not cover Jining, so we were on our own between all these cryptic signs, with no English speakers in sight. After asking several people and receiving lots of answers in Chinese, someone adressed us in English. His name was Haipeng, he was a soldier (in plain clothes though) studying at the military academy and was also in Jining just for the night. „Let’s go together“, he told us, and with that we were three looking for a hotel. It took even Haipeng a while to find a room for us, as several hotels said they don’t accept foreigners (!?). In the end, he found a nice hotel for us, and we ended up paying only 5€ for the double room. Afterwards, we invited Haipeng to go out to dinner with us. He insisted to pay for himself, but was very keen to give us a first introduction to Chinese cuisine. It was late and most small restaurants already closed, but when the business-minded Chinese saw the foreigners come, they put down the chairs again and offered us food. This could never have happened in Russia! Haipeng ordered Langzhou noodle soup for us. It was delicious, and we managed to impress him with our chopstick skills. 
During dinner, he introduced us to a lot of Chinese etiquette, such as not to completely fill up your cup with green tea, or put your chopsticks down carefully aligned when you are done. His train was to leave at 5 am the next morning, so we thanked him wholeheartedly for his help and the great evening and went to bed.
The next morning, we were woken by a knock on our door. Mario opened, and I saw a uniformed soldier stand there (which scared me for a split second). It was Haipeng, this time in his uniform. He had changed his ticket to make sure we get our train! „Let’s have breakfast“, he said in his cute English, and took us to have boiled eggs, steamed dumplings and some kind of sweet breakfast ’soup‘ containing red beans. On one of the shelves, we spotted a big glass container with a snake submerged in liquid – it turned out to be alcohol, and we were offered to drink from this snake-infused liquor, which we politely declined.
As the clock approached 10am, Haipeng told us it’s time for the train. He took some pictures of us („to show my mother the Germans I met“) and accompanied us all the way to the door of the correct carriage, where all the Chinese passengers queued orderly. However, as soon as the doors opened, the big fight for the few unreserved seats started. Haipeng’s advice was: „Don’t care about other people so much. In China, we are so many people, we don’t have a choice, everyone has to look out for themselves first“. Without being too pushy, we managed to secure two seats, so the nightmare of having to stand all the way to Beijing did luckily not materialise. Haipeng waved us goodbye from the platform.
The train ride was great fun – we got amazing views as the train trundled along the Great Wall, and met many more really friendly Chinese people, without having a common language. So, we are off to a great start here – may it continue this way!
