The life of the homeless!
Last night, I got to experience something new. Well, two things actually. The first one was that I took the High Speed Train from Nanjing to Beijing. It's amazing that you hardly feel the train moving when it's going faster than 300km/h.
The more interesting adventure that I got to be part of last night was that there was nothing open on the Beijing Railway station when I arrived at midnight and I decided to stay here until it all opened in the morning. An old woman came up to me, she looked tired, wore worn out clothes and carried around a bunch of big pieces of cardboard. She was homeless. She looked at me, asked me something in Chinese and I understood on her body language that she wondered what I was doing there. I tried to explain that I was going to sleep there. She shakes her head at first but when I insisted, she gave me one of her cardboard pieces to sleep on and a blanket to keep me from freezing. Just this gesture itself made me warm! I fell asleep pretty fast with the old woman sleeping next to me.
At 2 am, I was woken up by the police. They yelled at the woman and pointed at the door out. I understood that we weren't allowed to sleep there. What was weird was that they just looked at me confused but didn't say anything. Maybe they weren't confident enough to try to communicate with me. The woman and I packed away the cardboard and went to a closed off area to hide from the police because we had no plans of going out onto the street. After a while, the police were gone and I followed the woman up the stairs and into the Railway Station's garage. I thought: "Seriously Sandra, call a hostel or hotel now, this is ridiculous." But that thought was followed by another and I told myself that if these people can do this night after night, I can manage at least one. I saw it as an interesting experience, to see what it was like to live like the homeless women of Beijing for a couple of hours. We had now been accompanied by yet another woman, this one at least 70 years old. We made our beds yet again, the women gave me a good spot and put an umbrella in front of my face so the police wouldn't see me right away if they came in. I looked at the two old women as they started to fall asleep. I wondered what had happened to them. What had made them end up here?
I fell asleep on the hard concrete floor in the cold garage, now empty of cars. I felt safe having these women next to me. I woke up around 6am, I had slept for 3 hours. I got up, the women were still asleep. I put my bags on, pulled my wallet out and put a hundred RMB-bill in front of each of them. This woke them up, they looked at me, smiled, saw the money and they both started crying. They hugged the bills as if it was the most beautiful thing they'd ever seen and the whole moment was so emotional that I started crying too. They thanked me, I thanked them and I left, knowing that I'll never see these people again.
For me, this was just a 6 hour long experience, for them this is everyday life. To sleep in cold garages, to be yelled at by the police, to not be looked in the eyes by the passengers getting off the train when they desperately try to get some money for food. I'm glad I didn't check into a hostel or hotel last night. This was a good experience and I'll carry the memory of it with me forever.
The two wonderful ladies and I preparing our "beds" for the night!