Fast Train from Shanghai to Beijing

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 Courtesy of Lindsey Dawson.

After I got back from China people kept asking, ‘So how was it on the train?’ I went by rail from Shanghai to Beijing. One of the world’s fastest, the train rips along at around 300kph though is capable of even more.

For some reason they let it idle along at 186mph, about the take-off speed of a 747.

As a bullet-train virgin (never even done the Eurostar) I was so excited about stepping aboard, but have to say that as the speed builds you feel kind of – nothing.

It’s so very fast, so very smooth and so very ordinary at that humungous speed that before too long it’s no more exciting than your average bus ride.

I put my water bottle on the windowsill as we hummed along and the liquid’s surface did no more than slightly shimmer as we tore north to China’s capital city.

The land is very flat and there’s little to see other than hundreds of miles of cropland (China has a lot of mouths to feed, after all) interrupted occasionally by outcrops of high-rises as you race past provincial towns.

The route is 1318ks or so, somewhat more than the distance from Auckland to Invercargill , and the 9am train on which I rode did the distance in 4 hours, 48 minutes.

The journey time can vary a little, depending I suppose on the vagaries of scheduling trains that leave at short intervals – somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes apart.

Around 220,000 passengers take the route every day, which is somewhat astonishing. Imagine how many planes you’d need to carry that many people!

When we flew back the other way it seemed to take about the same time once you allowed for airport hassles. Certainly, the locals prefer the train because it’s so easy and a great opportunity to just chill out, doze, read or mess about on your laptop.

We went first class (sounds grand but actually was less spiffy than business class). It cost 935 yuan (less than $NZ200), which gives you big red velvet armchairs to loll about in but not much in the way of food except for packaged snacks.

These are however preferable to the airline food on the return journey, which starred a plastic dish of congee, which is glutinous rice porridge – about as appealing to us as Vegemite must be to Chinese tourists in New Zealand.  

One small tip – hang on to your ticket. You need it to get onto the departure platform, to be electronically clipped during the journey, and finally to let you squeeze through the beeping turnstile on arrival. Guess who lost hers somewhere between steps two and three… embarrassing but not punishable, fortunately.

My little video below gives you a sneak peek at the train – and the two cities at either end of the line.

Air New Zealand flies direct to Shanghai five times weekly.
For more info visit airnewzealand.co.nz

By Lindsey Dawson