Two Tickets to Beijing, Please!

"It is practically impossible to get tickets to Beijing," Buyan, Choi's husband, said. "Best to go through this special Chinese man I know who can get you tickets if you book a night in his hotel. His fee is small."

Not ones to pass up a challenge, especially one having to do with obtaining train tickets (afterall we are pros now), we poo-poo'd Buyan's warning and headed straight for the International Ticket Office.

"Something must be wrong," I told John. "There is no queue." Were we in the right place? I wondered. How was I suppose to buy a ticket if there wasn't a mob in front of me? Where was the scratched plastic window with the tiny slit through which I was to thrust my money? I'd gotten quite good at the elbow jab and I wanted to use it. Not here it seemed. A pleasant-looking Chinese woman sat behind a real desk.

"Hello," I said. The lady didn't look up. She was busy stacking her pencils neatly on the desk in front of her and then cutting and folding about 2000 pieces of pink paper. Apparently she could focus on only one task at a time. I waited.

"Hello," I began again. "We'de like two tickets to Beijing."

"When?" This was her only reply. Her eyes remained fixed on mine.

"I pointed to a date on the calendar beside the desk. "July 28th," I said.

"There are no tickets," she reported.

Hmmm. She never checked her computer. Perhaps now was the time to put to use some of those Russian-honed, ticket-getting tactics I had mastered, namely assume nothing, never accept 'no' for an answer, and always hold your ground. "Ah, do you think you could check your computer on that...please."

Her eyes wandered to her fingers which began punching on the keyboard. She looked up. "There are no tickets," she said.

OK, I wasn't handling this right. I had neglected to mention first or second class. I had confused her. I started again. "We'd like two second-class tickets to Beijing. Could you check if second-class is available please?"

"No."

No, she wouldn't check, or no there were no tickets. Ugh! "Can you check for July 29th then?" I asked. We had to do this in baby steps and I was taking my chances leaping forward to another date like this.

"Yes."

Her reply threw me off guard. "Yes?"

"That will cost $120 US," she continued. "You give me the money now with your passports. Come back in ten days for the tickets."

"Whoa, wait a minute. In ten days we'll be in the Gobi desert!" It just blurted out of me. I wasn't about to hand over the money with only an IOU on the goods. I explained our dilemna. "Can't you issue the tickets now?" I asked gently. If the tickets were available what was the difference between now and later? Of course I was thinking like an American. A habit I have to break.

"You sit there," the lady said and pointed to a couch. She pulled her eyes back to her desk and began cutting and folding more pink pieces of paper, answering the phone and rearranging her pencils. Another couple came in while we waited. "No, there are no tickets to Beijing," she told them and they left.

Five minutes went by, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. "John, do you have any idea what we are waiting for?"

"Not a clue," he said.

The ticket lady had simply ignored us. We didn't exist. Well then, if we didn't exist, we have never come into the ticket office right? I marched right up to her desk. "Excuse me," I said. "We'd like two second-class tickets to Beijing for the 29th of July." (read: you never saw us come in here and ask this very same thing fifteen minutes ago.)

The lady tapped at her keyboard. I held my breath. "Yes," she said, "tickets available."

I gave her my best smile. "I'll take them. Can I get them now?"

"Of course," she said.

We had to go downstairs to pay a four dollar tax. John flew down the steps - he didn't want to risk her forgetting us again. Meanwhile I raced to the bank in the next office to exchange a 5000 bill she had rejected because of the hole through the center.

We watched apprehensively as she counted the wad of money (the largest note issued at the banks is equivalent to a $5), and breathed a sigh as she handed us two train tickets.

Buyan was surprised when we told him. "You got tickets? Really?" he said. Later that night at a pizza pub we met another traveller. "I can't get a ticket to Beijing," The man from the Netherlands told us. "They told me there weren't any. Now I am going to take a bus to the border and hope to catch a local train from there."

"Ever been to Russia?" I asked him.

He looked at me. "No, why?" he said.

"Oh, no reason," I replied. I lifted my beer mug. "Here's to getting to Beijing!"