Getting to Beijing

In what has been termed my AC/DC moment, thunder struck the moment I exited Dondang subway station. I had exited at the wrong exit, I was in a park and for good measure enormous drops of torrential rain had just began to fall.
It had been a trying day.
I did eventually find my rather charming hutong hostel, but not before getting soaked to the skin and having to shelter beneath the overhang of a very official looking guard post. The official looking guard just glared at the damp muffle aged woman, weighed down with her damp backpack.
From the comfort of my enormous bed (no doubles in China only beds big enough for three or four reasonably friendly people) I can reflect on god experience of catching a train in China.
It is easier than expected. The systems are efficient and work. There is some signage in English.
There is also endless queuing and there's always someone who tries to elbow you out of your space in the queue or just steps in front of you. You have to push to get in anywhere.
These things are tiring. They are presumably tiring for Chinese folk too. There's a lot of tired looking people.
But once on the train, it is a marvel! Three hundred and three km for most of the journey. Whizzing past fields, towns and most amazing of all endless enormous cities.
The whole plain between Xi'an and Beijing seems to be a series of huge conglomerations of tower blocks that go on forever and high rise office blocks. Oh, and huge power stations, often in among the tower blocks!
It's not the China of charming paintings, but it is magnificent!
And between these huge cities, whose names I have never heard and where I am unlikely to ever go, there are dirt roads, farm tracks, shirtless men in the fields and little walled farms where bone suspects life had not changed much in generations.
It's the kind of thing you can only see out the window of a train. It makes for queuing and pushing and worrying about directions totally worthwhile.
I am not sure if I like travelling in China. It's hot, it's hard work, there's a lot of uncertainty and having to trust folk. But it's able to dish up some sights you wouldn't get anywhere else.