Train journey to Qinhuangdao

When purchasing train tickets for the trip to Qinhuangdao, my wife argued for taking the regular train instead of the high-speed train, citing the closer station, price advantage, and a half-hour earlier arrival. All earlier HST trains were fully booked.

So we embarked on a four-and-a-half-hour journey from the beautiful Cangzhou station, instead of a nearly two-hour trip on the HST. The station is adorned with cultural elements, and a red Iron Lion watches the trains go by on platform 1 (for the symbol of the Iron Lion, see the explanation on my Cangzhou website: Lion City)

The fully booked trains show one thing: the 50,000 kilometers of high-speed railway infrastructure is being utilized well. Just a few days ago, I read an article by Chinese economist Li Xunlei, who lamented the large investment expenditures in infrastructure in China and the insufficient utilization in some areas. However, a look at the train booking occupancy and my experiences over the past years with train travel in China tells me a different story. Often, we have to book trains where our seats are scattered, as the occupancy does not allow for contiguous seating anymore.

And this even holds true for the slower regular trains, where we found only seats in the dining car last year from Baoji to Xi'an. Two years ago, when we arrived in Tianjin from our flight from Singapore, we had to wait for a while at the West Station before we could board a train for the only half-hour trip to Cangzhou. So on the train routes I have traveled so far, there is still room for investment growth.

A journey on a regular train always includes the experience of the rural simple population, as the train stops in rural areas and picks up passengers. And how can I describe the journey on the slow train? As expected: on a hard and uncomfortable seat, I observe people in the packed train who either sleep, look at their smartphones, talk loudly, walk up and down the aisle, and above all, always eat something. Either the train staff announce the next station or the snack cart vendors shout their food offerings.

At each station, this restlessness increases with the boarding and alighting of passengers. Since my tired wife also finds the journey tiring, I hope to strengthen my arguments for the HST trains significantly. In any case, we booked the fast trains for our return trip.

” More from China can be found on my blog China: At Ease in my Lion City Journal ”