Greetings from Asia! Yes I am still alive and kicking. Last time I checked in we were still waiting on that Chinese visa in Mongolia. It’s been quite the whirlwind since we left Mongolia so I figured I would take you step by step through how my team has gotten to where we are and what we’ve encountered. Buckle up, this is a long one!
Once retrieving “the bag” (the visas) we hopped onto a sleeper train (by far the best way to travel, highly recommend) from Ulaanbaatar to the Mongolia/China border. We were told by other teams already in China that we would need to cross the border by taxi but there’s taxis waiting at the train station so they’re not hard to find. Just as planned, we stepped off our 12 hours train ride, or in my case my bag got stuck in the narrow entrance of the train and I nearly tripped off the train. Regardless, there were two women eager to take us across the border. This was the start of the most sketchy border crossing I’ve experienced (LOL), we stuffed all 8 of us, our big packs, day packs, one too many snack bags and a full size guitar into 2 taxis. We took about a 15 minute ride to the literal middle of nowhere and came upon a paved road to the left with some officers standing by and probably about 50 rugged military looking jeeps, our taxi lady flipped the biggest u-ey I’ve ever experienced and frantically jumped out of the car and began to unload our stuff all while signaling us to hurry. Jordan, Annie, Katrina, and I all looked at eachother not quite sure what to do or what was going on, trying to ask the woman if this was the border. While the woman began to drag our bags to the sand dropoff on the side of the road. We looked around and could not find the taxi with the rest of our team. We kept asking the woman “Where are our friends, we must wait for our friends.” Her only response to to usher us to hurry and began to run off road to the cluster of jeeps in the sand dragging 2 of our big packs, this woman was seriously stronger than she looked. In that moment I remember looking at Jordan and had mutual unspoken conversation where we just decided to go with it so we shuffled through the thick sand after the woman. Through the entire (very short) journey to the jeep I thought to myself “this lady has to know we’re not trying to illegally enter China, we have visas” The way she was scurrying around and crouching low to the ground made it seem like she didn’t want any of the officers on the road to see us, though she could have just been crouching to gain leverage on Katrina’s 50lbs pack she insisted on dragging. We weaved in and out of the multiple lines of closely stopped jeeps with men yelling all around you until we got to a jeep were the women handed us off to this man who got into the driver’s seat, still unable to see the others on the team we insisted that we weren’t going anywhere until we all saw each other. As we were still looking around for the rest of the team our jeep started moving without Katrina and I in it, I went to jump in and tripped…again (not a good day for me apparently) and turned around to help pull Katrina into this moving jeep, all the while Jordan and Annie were shouting to stop the car. Just as we got started moving we saw the beautiful Kaysha’s head pop up walking down the road, we rolled down the windows and waved and hollered until we all saw each other. We got onto the road passed to officers and our driver pulled over and switched back with the original woman who drove us there, she did have a different shirt on though. We figured that this was either a very intricate system they had going on or we were getting kidnapped, luckily it was not the latter and our lady was so kind and asked for pictures before leaving us.
We got dropped off at the bus station and this was the start of travel day, day 2. We walked into the station and heard ENGLISH! We met this guy from the UK named Sam travelling solo, as soon as we had said maybe two words to each other, he was swarmed with people hoping he could translate for us clearly unaware that he did not speak Chinese. Once being swarmed and overwhelmed “Sam had left the building”. We bought our bus tickets to Beijing, which was about a 15 hour bus ride, we left later in the day so we got a sleeper bus and we’d arrive into Beijing around 5AM. Sam came back and we were able to chat with him more about his travels and it turns out we were on the same bus and they put all the tourists in one section so we were together on the bus. You best believe after our dinner stop about 5 hours I popped a melatonin and hit the hay for that entire ride. We woke up to the morning early morning sun in Beijing and decided to head to a Mcdonald’s to get wifi and figure out our next move. We quickly found that it’s very hard to get a taxi in China and ended up walking the whole mile and a half give or take a wrong turn through a very run done residential area of the city with everything we owned.
I consider this the start of day 3, after what feels like 10 hours and a whole lot of sweat later we get to this McDonalds and learn that 99% of places in China do not take visa. We met the sweetest woman at this McDonalds who spoke english very well and she gave us some tips on places to stay, we thought she had left but she came back with a whole bag of Chinese snacks that she thought we would like, so kind, after knowing us for 30 minutes! After about 5 hours at this McDonalds we decided to head to the train station to get out tickets to the city we planned to stay in “Xi’an”. Our new friend helped us get metro passes to get on the subway and told us of our transfers and send us off like a proud mom. Along the way we said our goodbyes to our other new friend Sam as we transferred off his cart. We get to the Beijing railway pile our stuff into an out of the way place, in proper World Race fashion and 3 of my teammates went off to purchase tickets while the rest of us stayed with our things. We quickly realized that we were not a normal sight here, we usually get glances and stares as we truck around a backpack on front and back of our bodies but every one seemed to be exceptionally fascinated with Jordans beautiful red locks of hair and just about anything we would do. We were constantly filmed and asked to take photos with people, I’m pretty sure were somewhere on the internet in China with thousands of retweets or whatever the kids over there do. Annie came back with the train tickets and said “I have good news and bad news, what do you want first?’ Being the naturally optimistic people we are we chose the bad news first……WE WERE AT THE WRONG TRAIN STATION, but we did get the train tickets. We hopped on the subway for another 30 minutes ride with multiple transfers and finally arrived at the correct station. We boarded out last train of the “travel day” and got to meet some really awesome guys who spoke good english since they said this was the first time being able to speak with native english speakers.
We arrived in Xi’an at 3AM and still had about 10 hours to kill before we could check into our hostel, naturally we went to our new home …McDonalds. I can confidently say I’ve never been that tired in my life or smelled worse in my life. You can bet your butt I fell asleep on a McDonald’s table for 2 hours and woke up to my arms and legs asleep. We were greeted with the best welcome about 6 hours into this McDonald’s hangout with the beautiful and much better smelling ladies from team Reckless who were staying at the same hostel and assured us they’d let us check in early or at least shower. After about 30 minutes of trying to hail a taxi and 5 telling us no (I told you, it’s hard to get a taxi in China) we had made it to our hostel.
Though it was a super cool looking hostel all the rooms were in the basement with no windows and very limited A/C but nonetheless the beds we comfy and that’s all I really cared about.
I won’t lie to ya’ll and tell you China has been my favorite country and I can’t wait to go back. China was very hard for me, the second day into China I got sick, my throat hurt, I felt like I was coughing up a lung every 3 minutes and I wasn’t sleeping because our room was hot and the fan didn’t touch my bed. I remember thinking that I needed to take the day to rest but I couldn’t because I couldn’t stay in bed and sweat, it just made me feel worse plus we were sure there was mold somewhere. Some of the ladies on my team were able to connect with a man volunteering at the hostel and really pour into him. There was also a building with street food in it around the corner from our hostel and that’s where we would grab dinner most of the time and my team was able to connect with the man who owned it and got to share the gospel with him.
What I saw the most in China was how almost afraid people were to even talk about Christianity, it’s like a taboo word that when you bring up, people laugh it off or quickly try to change the subject, this was something that deeply broke my heart. One Sunday we were having church in the basement of the hostel (funny since we were literally underground) and the man at the hostel joined us as well as another woman in the room. We had worship and then were watching a sermon out of Gateway when we heard footsteps coming down the stairs to the basement and two police officers entered the basement, they looked at the computer and luckily didn’t speak english so they asked our friends what we were watching and how he knew us. He had to tell them that we were watching a movie and that he didn’t know us, he has just met us that day. The officers walked to look around the rest of the hostel and our friend jumped up pleading for us to change it and put on a movie. Unknown to us if we were reported or what had happened we changed it to Sweet Home Alabama and for me it was such a weird moment, I talked to the Lord and was like “okay, is this it? Are we going to jail? I guess this is happening.” Turns out this was a routine check of hostels because of the upcoming Chinese holiday to be sure there was no overbooking.
We spend 7 days in Xi’an and then headed on an 8 hour train to Lanzhou to meet the squad to head to Kazakhstan. Being in Lanzhou was such a time of rest for my team, I had finally recovered from whatever bug I had and we stayed in an apartment with many WINDOWS! Going through China we really had no idea what we were doing and especially not since the language is pictures it’s hard to sound out the same of streets and places. It seemed that wherever we went if we were lost or couldn’t find something there was always someone there willing to help even if the didn’t fully understand us they took time out of there commute to take places and help us find our way. It also caused me to put into practice what I had learned in Mongolia about having to show people Jesus through your actions it also made me more mindful of being more aware in America that if I was just more aware of the people around me and if they need help finding something, it can completely change your view on a country or people group.
