Lost in translation on my way to Xi`an

The world is suprisingly small. I spent my last day in Beijing (for now) having breakfast with two Norwegian girls from my home university before I spun off to the silk market to get a pair of shorts. (I`ve been wearing jeans all week, I`ve been warm.) I managed to insult the local salesmen with my haggling, so I take it I got decent prices. Finally managing to get all my stuff together, I caught a taxi to the Beijing West Railway Station--possibly the biggest railway station I ever saw, to catch my train to Xi`an, in the Shaanxi province, somewhat mid-east in China. Getting on the train was easy enough with a ticket marked in Chinese, nods and shakes. I had booked a hard sleeper, and was told I`d have the top bunk. As it turns out, the Chinese know how to do railway interior to fit in a lot of people; every sleeper carriage had ten compartments with six beds in each, three on top of eachother. There were no walls apart from the ones needed to keep the bunks in place, but along the open corridor there were little tables and folding seats. At the same level as the top-most bunk there was a long, continuous luggage rack. Today (Sunday) is the Moon Festival, an occasion when the Chinese gather with their family to eat Moon Cake, so the train was packed...and seemingly noone spoke a word of English, so I figured I`d be left alone for the 12 hour ride. However--knowing my train would arrive in Xi`an in the middle of the night, I pulled out my guidebook to figure out how to ask for the arrival time, so I could set my alarm. Puzzling together the given phrase "what time will the ... arrive in ..." with the signs for "train" and "Xi`an" I must have looked like a little kid trying to learn how to write all over again. As I finished one of my neighbouring passengers read what I`d written out loud (not sounding one bit like the pinyin I would have attempted if I`d spoken it) and started a conversation with me by writing in Chinese signs and then pinyin on a sheet of paper, so I could use my dictionary to look up the meaning of the words. Going on for about an hour or so, the five men travelling in the bunks surrounding me complemented my writing of Chinese signs, asked me how old I was, where I was from, told me they thought I`d been given a horrible bunk and that I`d made my tea too strong (then giggled)--and that I was a pig? The latter was cleared up when a Chinese woman working in Dubai joined the conversation and explained they meant the year of the pig, from the Chinese zodiac. We also clarified that 1982 is in fac the year of the dog, before they taught me how to say "one world, one dream" in Chinese. Then we all ate noodles, in an amazing display of individual Chinese people with a collective idea of how to do things when on a train: Wear slippers, bring bottle of tea, fetch noodle box from luggage shelf, fetch hot water at the end of the carriage, hum while you wait, slurp noodles. Chatter happily with neighbours inbetween. By 9 pm the entire carriage was calmly asleep. I got off at 4 am, already one hour delayd. Arriving at the hostel, it was easy enough to find--but alas, the door bell was out of service, and the 24-hour open reception was dark and closed. I tried to make a racket, but noone heard me, so I read for a while then slept outside the inner gater for about an hour before some early birds checked out and I got a bed at 6 am. Having slept in and had a lovely breakfast I am now headed out to ride a bicycle around the city walls, as recommended by Maja.