I am searching for the place that the journey begins, a bright purple thread that will stitch itself into the plain fabric of the last day… the one that writes a world in pictures that look into me and then out onto this Northern China world again. I know it is always there, though… the single strand I can always count on coming. I am quiet until then. I watch and wait.

I have been on the train since yesterday morning, a second-class hard sleeper ticket next to the smelly toilet. I share the space with five other people. Some have come. Some have gone. Some I will remember. Some I will forget. The engineer blows the horn… the train comes to a slow stop and, then, a jolt. My consciousness slows more each time the train slows down, and, soon I see everything around me in a kind of clickety-clack train rhythm. I visit a little with my neighbors as they crack sunflower seeds between their teeth and spit the hulls into their hands before discarding them in the round, aluminum dish provided by the train. I hover between the beds in my foreign silence that tries to miss nothing… perhaps misses everything. Hawkers peddle fruit and the local, twisted bread at the siding. I’m too cold and lazy to go out and look at their wares, buy a bag of tiny oranges instead from the “fuwuyuan” passing the cart down the narrow walkway in front of the beds. She is a neat woman… hair fixed, face washed. She must lift the heavy cart over each end of the car into the toilet alcove where people splash in the cold water without soap. Then, she pushes the cart over the couplings into the next. It’s heavy, boring work, but she is smiling. She sings a song of sausages and beer… soda and noodles… oranges and fresh dates. She is a thread, but not the purple one that I know is there somewhere.

There is a blast of cold air as people leave that becomes more frigid as we turn north. The horn blows again, a blaring “all aboard” without words. The new people have arrived. I can feel the cold from their bodies drawing away the warmth from mine. We start up again. It’s noisy for a while as people find their places. Then it gets quiet until we arrive at the next station.

I am in the bottom bed. The interdependence of China will require that people from the upper two tiers in second class will sit on my bed until the lights go out at ten o’clock, and the dirty curtain is strung to keep out light and thieves. I accept my visitors graciously. The train is full. Where would they go? There is only one small table with a cute yellow, scalloped tablecloth with the junk of everyone’s traveling. Bags are shoved under my bed. Shoes are everywhere. Who would be imprudent enough to put the dirty shoe bottom of China on a bed that may be clean? The trick is to climb up and down the tiers and get a foot into shoes without touching the grimy floor and carpets. I watch my fellow travelers get in and out of their shoes. Most are perfect at this task. We all drink tea from the “cups” we have brought. They are all varying types of glass bottles. Some are pretentious, insulated, etched glass with tea strainers… some are rinsed out instant coffee jars with cloudy tea… the large, green leaves growing up from the bottom like grasses in a murky lake. We all take turns filling the train thermos taken from the container bolted to the floor. The water is so hot. The tea is such a comfort on this cold day. The fragrant steam of the green elixir warms our faces as it snakes upward out of the cup. None of us ever stops drinking it. We all cooperate. We move as one… move out of the way for others… tiptoe through everyone’s feet on the way to the toilet. There would be travel chaos, otherwise. How could that be good for anyone?

A mother and a baby occupy the second tier. The baby is rotund in padded red, corduroy leggings. She is an angel. Each person smiles and talks to her as they come by. No one misses an opportunity except a drunk who sways down the narrow corridor and ends up in one of our fellow traveler’s laps. We all take turns holding her as her mother does the “this and that” of traveling alone with a child. For a while, I take a turn holding her. Her eyes are bright like new pennies as she looks out on the world secure in her innocence. I bounce her up and down…

rideacockhorsetobamburycross

toseeafineladyuponawhitehorse

ringsonherfingersbellsonhertoes

sheshallhavemusicwhereevershegoes

She looks at me in wonderment. She laughs and makes me smile. I lay my hand on her head. Silently, I wish her a happy life without troubles… give her back to her mother.

The dull afternoon gives way to evening. The river of condensation drips onto my pillow until, cold enough, the entire window begins to freeze. We fall asleep one by one. Hours later, I pull the curtain frozen to the ice puddle away and look out. It is a morning in sepia, this light before the day. Frost has painted patterns on the edges of the train window, and there is mist in the fields. There is no separation between the dark and the light, no boundary between the tree and the sky. Everything blends outside of this frozen window in this far north place of China. The coming light stitches itself into the fabric of me. The color is not bright purple, but the color of this morning… this sepia thread that stitches this day into one piece.

Souls, heavy with slumber begin to stir slowly. They stretch their arms upward. For a moment they hang suspended as if the heavens are naturally pulling them toward it involuntarily. They stand up, dazed in the half-life between train sleep and wakefulness to look out of the window. If the dark, dream-world of sleep has whispered its secrets to them, they have already forgotten in the glance at the watch on the wrist, the trek to the bathroom to wash their faces… the anticipation of a destination.

I dump out my limp tea leaves into the dirty bucket at the end of the car that is already filled with the brown, overused leaves of everyone else. I fill the train thermos with boiling water from the tank to make fresh tea. The “fuwuyuan” with the cart passes with breakfast. I buy porridge and a steamed bun. I think, perhaps, I am thinking something, but in the end, it is nothing at all.