It was worse than I could have imagined. We travelled for 16 hours on hard seats, and sometimes without any seats at all, and we lived to tell the tale. Let me start from the beginning. When we got to the train station, Josh figured out how the lines were moving and he figured out the best place for us to stand so that we would be the first people to the platform. He was brilliant! Unfortunately, it didn't matter. Jinzhou was the third city en route to Qingdao, and it was already completely packed. Every seat was taken, and every square inch of standing room was occupied, but still more people got on. We couldn't even sit on the floor because there just wasn't enough room. The train started moving at 7:30 Saturday evening, and we were in for a very long night. Josh stayed put and I went to try to buy tickets with seats. The business counter was two cars away, and it took about fifteen minutes to walk there, pushing my way through the crowd. A woman who was sitting near the business counter spoke a little English, and she volunteered to help me. "Mei-yo," the ticket agent told her, meaning that they were completely sold out! This woman was so nice, she walked with me the entire length of the unreserved section, looking for someone who would be leaving soon. It was no use. No one was getting off before 6 a.m. Back in our car, Josh was making friends with some college students from China Medical University. They were nice, and they made some room for me to sit down. There was only room for one of us, so we had to trade back and forth. And because Josh is such a gentleman, this meant that I was able to sit for most of the night, but he had to stand. I would estimate that for our first eleven hours of travel, I stood for about four hours and Josh stood for about seven. A sign inside the passenger car said that it had the capacity to hold 118 people. Based on the number of people standing near us, I calculated that there were more than 200 people crammed in. Some of them were filling up the bench-style seats, and some of them were standing in the aisle. Every fifteen minutes, a food cart would come down the aisle, and we all had to stand on top of each other so that the cart could pass. Most of our fellow passengers were students on their way home for the holiday, and there were also a few families. As far as I could tell, no one on our train was obviously poor. These were members of China's growing middle class. Most people had luggage that they stacked in the racks overhead. In China, to have luggage is to have money. The laborers carry their belongings in bags that look like rice sacks. We were travelling with the people, but only with the people who could afford to travel 1500 km for a holiday. There was no livestock on the train, but one woman was carrying her new puppy, and he was extremely cute. At six-thirty in the morning the train finally emptied out. We were able to sit down together before the new passengers filed on board. The trip was 16.5 hours long, but only the first eleven hours were in the ninth circle of Hell. Sunday morning we were still alive, with our sanity intact. We sat by the window, which we could open to let in the breeze. We watched the landscape roll by. It was 70 degrees and sunny. We passed fields of corn and wheat and fruit trees. It was beautiful. And it was all worth it when we saw Qingdao. I'll tell more tomorrow...