I sat, still shivering in the cold, and wondered when I’ll see the break of dawn. Luckily I was kept amused by reading the letters that Anton Chekhov had written to his family, complaining about why he couldn’t get to sleep:
‘I am sharing my cabin with a Chinaman, Son-liu-li, who chatters incessantly about how in China they cut your head off for the merest trifle. He was smoking opium yesterday, which made him rave all night and stopped me getting any sleep.’
At 7:59am, when the train arrived at Ishim, I decided to have a word with the train staff about my sleepless night. One of the Chinese conductors explained to me that it was because the rail company didn’t provide enough fuel to last the journey and so they had to be careful how much fuel they put in each night, to last the entire trip. There was nothing I could do, apparently.
‘You no good sleep!’ Urnaa noticed the dark bags under my eyes. I was in no mood to chat.
‘Tsai (tea)?’ Gunje kindly offered me a tea bag. In haste, I had forgotten to bring some tea bags from Moscow. I happily accepted the offer. As I went to fetch hot water for my tea from the top of aisle, I saw Mr Yan, one of the conductors, making doughs in his cabin at the front of our wagon.
‘What’s that?’ I curiously poked my head in.
‘Zhajiang mian (northern noodles in peanut sauce with cucumber on top)!’ he replied cheerfully. He was preparing lunch for the other Chinese staff. They have brought food provisions with them from China for the whole journey. ‘We could never get used to the Siberian cuisine!’ he laughed and said.
I watched his dough-making with great interest. Mr Yan pushed the rolling pin up and down to flatten the dough. ‘If you like, you can have some later!’ he offered. I was over the moon – a bowl of zhajiang mian would be heaven when you’re in the middle of Siberia and relying on food sellers outside your window.
Urnaa and Gunje watched with envy when Mr Yan knocked on our cabin door with a bowl of zhajiang mian - and a pair of wooden, disposable chopsticks - in his hands. I thanked him repeatedly, and in return gave him the instant Russian noodles that I’d bought from a kiosk in Yaroslavl station. ‘You can eat Russian food?’ Mr Yan was amused, ‘There’s no taste to it...’ Quite understandably, Chinese people believe that the Russian cuisine isn’t in the league to compete with the Chinese.
‘Yamar-un-teve? (meaning ‘how much’)’ Urnaa asked, thinking that Mr Yan might have sold me the noodles. How mercenary.
‘No, No! It’s free!’ I told her, sucking up the noodles hastily but aware not to make too much noise to intensify their envy.
‘I guess Mr Yan gave me this because I am a Taiwanese compatriot,’ I said, slurring with my noodles. Urnaa didn’t get the joke.
I have to say that this zhajiang mian is world-class. I didn’t have to shop in the stations for the whole day.
We crossed the Irtysh River and I saw the familiar giant cranes that I’d seen each time I came on this route. It told me that we have arrived at Omsk. It was 11:27am. And then the rows of grey concrete apartment blocks emerged. It is a city that has prospered on Russia’s oil boom. But few would forget that it was once a major dumping ground for exiles, too, including Dostoevsky who wrote about his time (1849-1853) here in ‘Buried Alive in Siberia’.
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