The big red bus to China

The big red bus journey to China was easily the best bus journey we have had. I wasn’t scared by the driving at any point, helped largely by the flat terrain but the bus was also big and demanded a certain amount of respect going around corners.

None of us were ill anymore, Rosa was still recovering, but not ill,

and Theo is now more than ever convinced that tea is a wonderful thing – a preventative of epic proportions – it was the only difference between Theo’s life and ours – why else did he not got Covid? (I did start to point out that he had had Covid quite recently before we left and he wasn’t in the same train compartment as us for two days but he thought those were flimsy, unscientific and a bit boring as arguments go 🙂

As we neared the border we spent the last of our Kazakh money at the rest stop (mostly on chocolate) and the parents of the lovely Chinese man who had helped us at the bus station in Almaty, (Xian Jun) only had big notes when we were all queuing to pay for the toilet and so I offered (and then insisted) that I pay for them…a tiny gesture but we were connected from then on 🙂

We dosed Rosa up with two paracetamol half an hour from the border and tried to stay calm.

I had put our chances of getting across the Chinese border overland at less than 10% when we set off a month ago…and here we were, on a bus that was definitely going to a town in China, even if they didn’t let us back on it once we got there… I reckoned we were into the 60/70% realm now.

Time would tell and that time was approaching at a relatively sedate 60 km an hour.

The same heightened feeling we had felt approaching the Russian border began to inhabit the bus as we approached the Kazakhstan border control. This was a big deal for more than just us.

We all got off the bus, collected our luggage and headed towards the first building. The process was slow and methodical, all bags scanned and checked, identity confirmed, passports stamped, and then we were back on the bus for the 300 yard journey from Kazakhstan to China.

Our fellow passengers were quiet as we again collected our luggage from the bus, a quiet that reflected the elegance and magnitude of the buildings we were now entering.

Ordered. Calm. Efficient. Imposing.

…on another scale from anything we’d seen before.

The building was the size of two aircraft hangers, spotlessly clean and with large scale photographs of the landscapes and nature in the region. There were about forty of us and the infrastructure could have handled 1,000 at a time.

We queued with everyone else to give in our Health Declaration Documents. There was an official who helped us with the four foot computer screen where our passport number called up all the information we had inputted the day before. He checked it and then added the info that we didn’t know – ‘please enter the number of the flight/train you will be entering China on’ – the bus we were coming in on didn’t have a number (I had checked during one of my many visits to the bus ticket office in Almaty) but they added a number in anyway and a ticket was issued.

We moved to the next desk, handed in the ticket, our passports were looked at briefly and we were allowed through to an area where we had to fill in an entry form with personal details, details of our Visa, details of where we were staying in China, which countries we had visited in the last two years (we had to write small for that one) and details of any persons we were visiting or meeting.

I don’t remember exactly when I started to laugh (quietly and on the inside) about how incredibly naive we had been thinking we could get a lift across this border. The full might of the Chinese state was in evidence and our little plan to go overland to Australia felt very small in comparison.

Forms in hand we were now guided towards immigration and passport control.

Each of us was interviewed about the purpose of our visit to China, were we meeting, visiting or staying with anyone in China, how long did we plan to stay in China, where were we going in China, what was the exact itinerary of our visit, where had we been before we came to China, whereabouts did we live in the UK (what was the paid work of our grandmothers, how long did the Ming dynasty last and did we know the rules for playing Mahjong!) …all of this delivered by a translation interface that demanded you speak more clearly, and louder, if the intimidation of the situation heightened any timidity you might be feeling… Our fingerprints were scanned, our visas stamped and we were allowed through.

One official told Theo that he had had very little opportunity to practice his English in the last few years, we were only the second English speakers to pass this way since Covid.

Next was customs, we put our bags through the X-ray machines and nothing happened at all…was that it? Were we in China?

We walked out of the building across a square to where we could see our fellow passengers who had disappeared ahead of us, having not had to fill out any long forms or answer sweat inducing questions. We were chatting and beginning to feel an incredible elation when a policeman shouted at us and indicated that we come over to him in his booth ‘right now’…but when we got there he just looked at our passports and pointed our way across the road.

We had done it! More by luck and good timing than anything else but we had done it!!

China.

Rosa was in bliss, she loves all things Chinese, after 8 years of Mandarin study at her school everything was interesting to her…Theo and I were flooded with relief hormones and we were a very merry bunch heading towards the first of three back to back nights on sleeper trains.

We were starting on our adventures in China and the 2,121 mile journey that would take us to ChengDu had begun.

PS Apologies for the quality of the photos – most got deleted and the ones we have were taken in a hurry!