We usually try to learn from our mistakes.

May as well.

Taking a taxi to the train station is comfortable, but Beijing roads are jammed, so you may miss your train. The subway is faster, but it’s less comfortable, especially with two large backpacks and a suitcase, especially during the morning rush hour, and especially when you have to transfer three times.

Never mind. We walked straight to the Workers’ Stadium subway station.

Each subway trip starts with going through a fairly easy-going checkpoint, where you have to put your belongings through an X-ray machine and take a sip of whatever drink you’re carrying in front of a team of two or three employees who couldn’t care less about terrorism.

Trust me, subway employees have seen it all. Chinese people ride the subway with anything from bags of chicken feet to shopping carts full of watermelons. But, apparently, they had never seen an Axe spray and Feng was asked to open his suitcase to show it was just deo, not a lethal foreign weapon.

Forget about long-distance buses in China—we travel by train on the super-efficient high-speed network. Tickets are cheap and easy to book, and they take you anywhere in the country.

Our first destination this year is a new city, Zhèngzhōu (郑州).

Why Zhèngzhōu?

Ahem… because. Because we’ve never been there, because you can get to anywhere from Zhèngzhōu, and because it’s only two hours from Beijing but 695 kilometres from the capital, so different and potentially exotic. Good enough reasons, right?

Chinese train stations are organized chaos. First, you have to get to the right one because many cities have several train stations. Hopefully you know the words 东北西南 (dōng běi xī nán) because they provide a geographical clue—east, north, west and south stations.

This time, we left from Beijing West Railway Station. It made sense since we were going slightly west… but very much south, deep into Henan Province. Chinese logic.

Now, picture a massive building with thousands of Chinese people going somewhere right when you’re also going somewhere. Once again, a security checkpoint and an X-ray machine stand at the entrance of the station. It feels very organized until you realize you’ll never get to it unless you push a few people who are also pushing other people.

Once you’re in, find your waiting room. Good luck, everything is in Chinese. At this stage, everybody is usually busy buying food and drink, occasionally fighting for a seat, but frankly, there’s plenty of room.

At one point, it will be time to get through a last ID check before accessing the platform. Suddenly, everybody gets up and fights their way to the ID scan machine or to the employee.

As soon as you take the stairs down to the platform, feel free to light up a cigarette—everybody does before boarding the train.

And yes, there will be a final Chinese-style queue management system to board the train. Just push your way through. Fortunately, passengers book a specific seat in the train, so after a while, everybody is happily seated and resumes snacking until their stop.

Phew.

It’s okay. We made it to Zhèngzhōu. How is Zhèngzhōu? Now, this is a different story…