“Get the seat,” my friend Michael says as I stand at the ticket counter at the Hung Hom train station in Kowloon. “Come on, get the seat.” For some reason, I’m reminded of the scene in the classic buddy film Rush Hour where Chris Tucker finds himself in a standoff with the villains, who are holding a Chinese schoolgirl hostage by strapping her to explosives. Spurred on by Tucker, the little girl yells, “Push the button! Blow everybody up! Push the goddamn button!”

A common ritual for expatriates in China is the visa run. Because of the limited number of days a tourist can spend in one “visit” to China (in our case it was sixty days), those staying in China for longer durations must make the trek out of the country and back in to get a new stamp on their passport and reset the timer. Common destinations include Mongolia, South Korea, and Hong Kong, whose special status counts as leaving China. Often it’s used as an excuse to take a vacation every couple of months, and that’s what Michael and I did for our first run to Hong Kong—we made a weekend of it. This time, however, was supposed to be a formality: take the train from Beijing to Hong Kong (a twenty-four hour trip), then immediately get on the return train and head back. Clean, simple, and efficient.

However, there was one snafu to trip us up. We didn’t book our return train ahead of time, and after arriving at the station, we found that the return trip was already completely sold out. The next train from Hong Kong wouldn’t leave for another two days, meaning we would be stuck on the other side of the border until then. This was unacceptable to Michael, and because of obligations back in Beijing, he opted to take a plane ride back the next afternoon, at the cost of around 2000 Hong Kong Dollars (about $256 USD). I, on the other hand, had no such deadline, and so there was another option. Tomorrow, a train would leave from neighboring Shenzhen. I could cross the border on foot, then take the Shenzhen train to Beijing. This would only cost me around 400 HKD ($50 USD). “That sounds pretty good,” I say to the attendant.

“It’s a hard seat,” she replies.

“Are there any sleepers?”

“No, no sleeper, only seat.”

On the train to Hong Kong, Michael and I had tickets for a “hard sleeper” coach, meaning that we had bunk beds to sleep in for the duration of the trip. The first time we took a train ride in China, I was filled with trepidation, having read some horror stories online: cramped cattle cars… no running water… angry baijiu-swilling migrant workers who would slit their mamas’ throats for a nickel. And it’s true that the “soft sleeper” cars on the train seemed like wonderlands of luxury (Doors that can close! Western-style toilets!) but the hard sleeper cars were pleasant enough. The train rides were soothing in their own way.

However, on this trip, my only option was to get a “hard seat” ticket, meaning I would have only one space on a bench of seats in a crowded train car to call my own for an entire twenty-four hours. Or I could get a plane ticket like Michael, but I’m not made out of RMB. “Get the seat, Oscar. Come on, get the seat!”

And so frugality won out. I pushed the button.

—

Even with our new plans, we still had an evening to kill in Hong Kong. Rather than staying in a hostel for the night, Michael had another great idea: just power through and stay up until the next day. As I was on a frugality kick, I foolishly agreed. This led to a Lost Weekend-style journey throughout the city, which included eating at the Tsui Wah cafe, getting kicked out of three Starbucks over a period of three hours, and spending much of the night drinking in front of 7-11. (This is not as cheap and degenerate as it may sound. If Hong Kong is the West’s idea of China transformed into a theme park, 7-11s are the concession stands. They’re everywhere, and every night you can see I-bankers in expensive suits and dolled-up club girls standing in front of 7-11s pounding Bacardi Breezers before heading to their next venue. Alright, that does sound cheap and degenerate.)

Around 4 AM, Michael and I head to an all-night McDonald’s where he immediately passes out in a chair. It seems we’re not the only ones doing that, as every other seat is filled with men sitting around, sleeping upright, or staring off into space. The girl at the register comes over to the table we’re at and cleans up the trays and trash left by its previous occupant. She gives a look to me and Michael. “You’re here in Hong Kong to work?” she asks me.

“No, we’re just visiting.”

She looks at us askance, as she sees all the other men in here who are probably “just visiting.”

“Are you from Malaysia?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Indonesia?”

“No, we’re from America, but we came here from Beijing.”

She takes another look at Michael. I can see the wheels turning in her head. She finally asks, “Are you from Vietnam?”

—

The next day, Michael heads off to the airport, where I have no doubt his trip back to Beijing included buckets of Cristal and back massages from cute flight attendants. I, on the other hand, cross the border to Shenzhen and board my train. After the group of over a thousand people are herded through the station, I take my seat in a compartment that says it’s designed for 150 people; but with the number of people standing around and crammed into the seats, there’s probably a lot more than that. Soon thereafter, another passenger comes in and tries to stuff a colorfully-designed bag three sizes too large into the overhead compartment right above my head. Its gargantuan size means that if it fell off and hit me in the head, the sheer force of the blow would probably snap my neck. Luckily, a conductor comes by and waves him to take it down. Meanwhile, I begin to zone out. It’s been two full days since I’ve taken a shower, and the accumulated fatigue is beginning to take its toll on me. But at least I have a seat, and I’m on my way back to Beijing. The worst seems over.

Hour 1: Having found my seat, more people continue to pour into the train. A girl stands beside my seat to the right, just standing in the middle of the aisle. I wonder if there’s a problem with our seats, but she seems content to just stand there. I begin reading the book I brought on the train, Peter Hessler’s Country Driving. I consider the poetic nature of reading about traveling across the Chinese countryside while actually traveling across the Chinese countryside. However, it’s interrupted by the girl to my left, who starts playing music from her cell phone like it’s a boombox. It’s a Jay Chou song that I don’t recognize. This continues, and when there’s a pause, a boy on the other side of the aisle plays another Jay Chou song from his phone. I don’t know how common this is, or if this is some sort of Chinese flirtation.  It’s cute for about six or seven minutes.

Hour 2: Train attendants walk up and down the aisles with carts of snacks and fruit to sell. This is something I have seen before. However, one of these hawkers carries a tray of beads with him, and plops it down on a table. He gets everyone’s attention, and starts launching into what must be a sales pitch, talking at lightning speed. Basically this man is the human equivalent of those SkyMall catalogs on planes. This would be the first of many attempts to hawk his wares to his captive audience. If this were a market, I would just walk away; but here, to walk away would mean walking through the nearest window of a speeding train. Later on, I will seriously consider this.

Hour 4: The police on the train check everyone’s identification cards. I’m the only one who pulls out a foreign passport. Phone Girl points and talks to Standing Girl in Chinese. “That’s why he doesn’t understand! He’s a foreigner!” These are the only words of Chinese I comprehend during the entire ride. Phone Girl and Standing Girl talk to each other, and then Phone Girl stands up and gives Standing Girl her seat. My theory is that these two are friends who bought one ticket together and are switching off for the duration of the ride. I consider this ludicrous, but then some passengers will end up standing for the entire duration of the trip. This breaks my brain.

Hour 6: I get over my fear of potentially losing my seat to the pack of standing passengers and attempt to use the restroom, navigating around the crowd and the woman passed out near the sinks crouching in a puddle of water. I am sure you have an intellectual conception of what one train toilet used by over three hundred people over a period of twenty-four hours must be like. It is times like these, like the Hundred Flowers Campaign, where intellectual notions are quickly outstripped by reality. Also like the Hundred Flowers Campaign, I feel like purging. I resolve to not eat or drink  for the rest of the ride, in the hope of avoiding a return trip.

Hour 7: Phone Girl and Phone Boy keep switching off Jay Chou songs. When Phone Girl plays, she also sings along to the sound of her phone. It would be nice, I suppose, if I weren’t stuck between these people for what seems like the entirety of Jay Chou’s career. I begin to hate Jay Chou, and if you must know, I loved Initial D.

Hour 10: Almost halfway there. In Country Driving, Peter Hessler describes a factory manager writing an ad for workers. “Must eat bitterness,” the ad says. This is a literal translation of the word 吃苦 (chiku), which means to endure hardship. I consider for a moment that while I feel broken down and beaten by the cramped quarters, the poor hygiene, the constant noise and distraction, and the marathon of physical and mental endurance that comes with experiencing all of these, everyone around me seems content to bear these conditions. In reading about Chinese cultural mores, Western writers often mention how it seems ingrained in the Chinese mindset that pain and suffering are inevitable, and so one must just endure it—eat bitterness. I consider, as my editor George Ding put it, the consequences of uneven economic development without social development. It’s a moment of self-reflection. The moment soon passes.

Hour 12: The train stops. It’s too dark to read any signs about where we are. More passengers come onto the train, and considering there weren’t enough seats already, it seems that cartoon physics will soon need to be applied to fit these people on the train. Seeing a fresh batch of customers, Mr. SkyMall launches into another sales pitch, carrying a tray of plastic things that look like dinosaur sponges. I have no idea what they could be, and without understanding what he’s saying, I will never know.

Hour 13: They don’t shut off the lights. They don’t even dim the lights. The Pentagon’s internal review of enhanced interrogation techniques revealed several methods which fall under that umbrella. 1: Yelling. (I dread the return of Mr. SkyMall.) 2: Loud music and light control. (The interrogators at Camp X-Ray preferred Slayer; here, it’s Jay Chou.) 3: Environmental manipulation. (Because the lights are never turned off, looking outside the window is literally looking into a black void of darkness. I have no idea where we are. I could be in deep space.) 4: Sleep deprivation. (Well, duh.) 5: Stress positions. (Does being stuck in a hard seat for twenty-four hours count? I think it should.) 6: 2o-hour-long interrogations. (Ditto.) 7: Controlled fear. (Well, six out of seven ain’t bad.)

Hour 14: It is literally the middle of the night. Mr. SkyMall returns. This time he’s selling anti-radiation bracelets. The box features a smiling white couple on the cover. I begin to wonder whether they’re laughing at me.

Hour 15: Dehydration and fatigue, compounded with the clouds of cigarette smoke wafting in from the other side of the car, have induced a hallucinatory experience. Everyone around me seems to stop speaking Chinese. Instead, they’re speaking English, except I no longer understand English. Does that make any sense? Every time I start drifting off, I hear a snippet of speech above the cacophony that sounds like I should understand it, except I don’t, and its only purpose is to keep me awake and confused. This persists for the rest of the trip.

Hour 16: I begin to consider welcoming death. I attempt to maintain my sanity by constructing this article line-by-line in my head. (The original “train draft” version of this piece concluded with an elaborate revenge fantasy where I re-enacted the ending of Inglourious Basterds on Michael.)

Hour 19: For a couple of hours, I manage to get some sleep, as my body feels like it’s just shutting down due to sheer exhaustion. I am awakened by Mr. SkyMall walking the aisles, selling more crap. This time, it’s toothbrushes, which are the only products he has which seem to make logical sense to sell on a train. The train makes another stop, and Phone Girl and Formerly-Standing Girl leave. They are replaced by an older woman, a younger man, and a little girl. When the woman holds the girl on her lap and looks out the window, the light makes her look exactly like that one famous Dorothea Lange photo of an Okie family.

Hour 21: During the ride, I’ve been keeping George and Michael informed of my progress on the train. “Don’t worry, it will be over soon,” Michael texts as if I’m losing a battle with terminal cancer. George adds, “You should write an article about your experience.” Across from me, a baby throws up all over itself. Spittle and vomit drip down to the floor and onto the mother’s shoes as she tries to clean the child up. Beside me, the Okie family are eating sunflower seeds and tossing the shells onto the floor. To be fair, they’re aiming for a tray of trash, but the floor keeps getting in the way.

Hour 23: At the rear of the compartment, a small audience forms as two of the passengers, an old man and old woman, put on a show. The woman sings in what I think is a traditional Chinese style. Kids run down the aisle towards the wailing. It’s difficult to see through the crowd, but I believe there are puppets involved. Even Mr. SkyMall stops hawking his wares for a minute to let the show go on. It’s a genuinely interesting moment.

Hour 24: Sweet, sweet release. The train pulls into the Beijing West train station, and as the doors open, people flood out of the car and merge with the masses outside. It will still take me an additional hour to get back to my apartment, but at least I’m back on familiar ground. I know I should have no right to feel as if I’ve really eaten bitterness, considering how everyone else in that compartment handled the experience, but stepping off the train I really do feel like a war veteran coming home. “Poor kid, you had to ride the subway for an hour? Let me tell you a story about the night train to Beijing…”