Braving a Chinese Train Station During Spring Festival

You don't need to live in a metropolis to know what it's like to be stuck in stop-and-go traffic on an interstate freeway. (Okay, maybe you do, but I'm counting on your imagination.)

Now imagine instead of cars, you have people.

People in a country that is more or less the same size as the US but with almost five times the population and about half its land barely inhabited.

In a tiny train station during the busiest holiday season of the year.

China. Spring Festival.

Me. With a stomachache. And pissed off that half of me was outside the moving bus with its doors open on the way here. Don't get me started about the toilet.

Lijiang, an ancient town in the southwestern province of Yunnan, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. For Spring Festival (Lunar New Year), though, everyone is supposed to be home. Including the travelers and migrant workers.

And everyone goes home.

And since most Chinese people can't afford plane tickets, they go by train.

At Lijiang Railway Station, I thought, "Half these people could disappear and this place would still be packed."

I'm just kidding.

I used a much harsher word than "disappear."

I'd been on trains in Seoul and Tokyo during rush hour. I spent one New Year's Eve at the Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Lijiang was worse.

Oh well. At least I wasn't in India.