Fast Trains, Slow Trains

Most people in China travel between cities by train.  Flying is possible, but too expensive for most.  Also, though China is roughly the same land area as the U.S. it only has about 1/10th the number of airports.  So planes may not go where you want to go.  There are lots of new roads and new cars, but with them come terrible traffic jams.  When you add it up, trains are most often the best way to get from here to there.

Two weeks ago, we took the fast train for our trip to Nanjing.  The Shanghai - Nanjing High Speed rail service has been in operation for a little over a year now.  It passes through Suzhou, stopping at the old train station downtown as well as at the brand new railway station in the Suzhou Industrial Park.  We've taken it before to Shanghai....a 23 minute ride that otherwise would take two hours by car (with traffic).  The trip to Nanjing took about 1 1/2 hours.  I suspect it would be at least 3 hours by car.

The fast train is like taking a plane....but the ride is more comfortable, quiet, and smooth.  Until a few months ago, they ran the fast trains up to a top speed of 350 km/hr.  They've slowed the speeds down since an accident earlier this summer.  But they're still running at near 300 km/hr, or nearly 190 miles/ hour.  Also, in stark contrast to air travel, it requires no time to check in and the security check takes 30 seconds.  You can show up at the station 5 minutes before your departure time and still make your train, without ever needing to remove your shoes or belt.

The cost for a one-way ticket to Nanjing was about $16.  Though this is reasonable in a U.S. frame of reference, it is still out of the price range for blue collar working folks.  Consequently, they still run the slow trains, where you can buy a hard seat ticket for the 4 hour ride for about $5.

 Last week, we took a trip to the city of Xi'an by slow train.  In truth, it was an Express Train...which can hit top speeds close to 100 miles/hour.  The truly slow trains run only about 60 miles/hour.  (There are all flavors of trains on the rails in China.)  The express trains are meant to cover long distances, like the 800 miles from Suzhou to Xi'an, with relatively few stops.  We left at 7pm on Friday evening and arrived at 8am the next morning.  There were 28 of us - Aussies and Brits and Germans and Finns and Yanks - on a trip organized by the Expat Association of Suzhou.

If the fast train is like an airplane, then the slow train is like......well, it's like a train.  It's like the trains you see in the black-and-white movies from the 30s and 40s...or like the trains you see in the Westerns (but with carpet and without pot bellied stoves).   I've taken Amtrak before, and hesitate to say that it is similar.  The Chinese train was a much smoother ride and there was no clickety-clack of the rails.  They Chinese rails are bolted to concrete cross-ties and not spiked to wooden ones.  Also, these rails are used mainly for passenger service and not heavy freight. 

We bought a ticket for a soft sleeper.  This ticket entitles you to one bunk with a mattress, a quilt, and a pillow.  There are four bunks to the cabin.   Soft sleeper is the premium ticket at a cost of $75 for the trip.  ($3 less if you buy the upper bunk.)  Budget travellers have other options for lower cost...they can buy a hard sleeper (6 to a cabin), or a soft seat or a hard seat. 

If your travelling alone, then your ticket for a soft sleeper also buys you the opportunity to share a cabin with three total strangers.  It's like the lottery to see who will show up for the other berths.  Earlier in the summer, two colleagues (males) booked an overnight sleeper trip to Beijing.  We joked with them in the days before the trip about who they would get for bunk mates.  Maybe a couple of migrant workers that hadn't had a chance to shower for two months.  Or maybe a chain-smoking pair of old men.  The heavens smiled upon them.  They cabin mates turned out to be two Polish female 21 year-old college students.

If you really want to travel cheaply, then you can buy a standing ticket.  I've been told these are common during the Chinese New Year Holiday, when tradition obligates everyone to return home to visit with family.   During this period, there are more people than seats.  Imagine if everyone in the United States went to the train station at the same time.  That is what happens in the week before Lunar New Year.  People will suffer any hardship to get home.  You hear stories about people standing, packed in like sardines, for 24 hours or longer.   

There were people on our train that were standing for the whole 13 hour trip.  The door between their part of the train and our part of the train was locked.  But we could see them through the glass, crammed into the aisle ways.  Compared to their journey, ours was luxurious.  The mattress was hard and room was cramped and the toilettes were a bit dicey.  But all things considered, it was a pretty posh trip to travel in soft sleeper.  It's a good way to get around in China.