Train-ing in China!

Beijing, China (2006)

In Chinese trains, a passenger has two options while deciding how to travel, sometimes three. One is the regular seats (not found in all long distance trains) and the other two options are the soft-sleeper and the hard-sleeper. While planning my trip, I was adviced against using long distance trains within China, specially the "hard-sleeper" berths, as the journey would be long and difficult. I took two trains, the first from Beijing to Guilin (23 hours) and the second was from Guilin to Shenzhen (12 hours). I chose the hard sleeper on both, as I did not want to shell out the extra 40-50% for the tickets on the soft sleeper. I was pleasantly surprised. The berths were very clean and comfortable, with soft pillows and comforters provided! It wasn't hard, neither was it soft, but it was nice and I had no complaints! You can see this from the pic above, which I took from my comfy middle berth!

But thats not all. The hospitality and facilities on both trains was out of this world. As the picture below suggests, each compartment had a crisply uniformed female attendant/ticket collector on duty(all extremely beautiful as well, I might add!). She had her own small cabin which doubled up as an office. Throughout the journey she was always around to ask for help, though in my case we were both helpless as I did not know Mandarin. But again, the language barrier is usual in China anywhere!

I found out that the Chinese are very fond of instant noodles during long journeys, so there is always boiling hot water through a tap in each compartment to prepare your noodles! There are LCD TV screens for each coupe which feature short programs or Chinese MTV, and digital display signs flash the current temperature, date and next destination. Each berth bed has a small hanging lamp and coat hook provided and there is a flask and waste bin for each set of 6 berths in a coupe. Soft Chinese music is played from the morning to evening, and its volume can be regulated in each coupe if you want to. All lights except the night lamps are switched off at 10pm precisely, after which one can use the lamps provided. There are common washbasins whose decor can rival any restaurant's, but the toilets are basic and are cleaned every hour or so. I did find a few toilets uncleaned and was not able to enter!

Hawkers are not allowed inside the trains, but there is everything from perfumes to coke sold inside by licensed, uniformed sellers. A full fledged restaurant compartment can also be found. The security inside the trains is impeccable. At most stations, there are large boards displaying the current time and the departure time of the train on the platform, with corresponding alarm bells and warning whistles to alert the people who left the train to buy something. A few minutes before the train departs, the stairs collapse into the floor of the compartment and all doors are automatically shut using a special key by each attendant. Very sophisticated, and the journey was fast!

So were there no problems at all, you ask? Well there were a few. For starters, the smoking! I took a pic of this official sticker on a train compartment wall and found it very amusing! The Chinese are generally very heavy smokers and it gets annoying after a while. Smoking in trains is allowed only between compartments, but since the doors were always open the smoke always wafted in to my berth, which unfortunately was the first in the compartment. Also, another great pass time for the Chinese is playing cards or board games, and if you are unlucky, you might end up having a small crowd in your coupe playing or observing a game seriously. But all in good fun!

The trains are slower than a flight, of course, but what better way than to journey ACROSS China than by a train? Most importantly, both trips, inspite of these excellent facilities didn't cost a bomb.

And that's the beauty of travelling in China!