I recently had to make some trips to and from Shanghai...sick daughter and some exploratory job interviews. All of my trips, as it turned out, were on the much-ballyhooed fast new "bullet" train.
It's called the "CRH", which stands for "China Railway High-Speed". I don't know if "CRHS" just didn't sing for the Marketing people, if they save money by only having to paint on 3 letters instead of 4, or if they just couldn't think of a catchy shorter name, but there it is. Here's a photo, courtesy of
China Daily, minus the impressive nose cone they remove to hitch 2 8-car trains into one 16-car train:
It's currently on its maiden route along the Golden Crescent between Shanghai and Nanjing. With top speeds of around 250 km/h, it makes the Suzhou-Shanghai trip, platform to platform, in 24 minutes- down from the 48-70 minutes the old trains need. The Shanghai-Nanjing run is now 2 hours- down from the 3.5 or so it took before. (These times vary with the number of penny-ante two-bit no-count diddley-sqattin' chicken-scratch staring-intensive farm towns, such as Kunshan and Wuxi, one is forced to endure stops at along the way.) Runs between Shanghai and such areas as Beijing and Hangzhou are under testing and construction.
It's an interesting experience. A lot of passengers are still videotaping and photographing the trains' arrival. The cars are gleaming new and clean, almost to the point of being blinding. And it's
classy train travel again...apparently the higher ticket prices (The Suzhou run is 25 RMB (~$3 US) for 2nd class, as opposed to 22 RMB for the old soft seats and 15 RMB for hard class) have deterred those local cognoscenti who normally choose to board trains clutching plaid plastic bags full of live pigs. (For more on Chinese train travel, check our Library area!)
The outer car doors open on both ends, so you no longer have to board on the Seat 1 end to fight your way down to Seat 118. There are little touches like diaper-changing tables, handicapped-accessible toilets, and canteen areas. Don't worry, though, there are still a few of the ubiquitous China Railway pushcarts hawking their wares along the aisles. Best of all, there doesn't seem to be any standing-ticket sales on these trains, so the aisles and endcaps are actually clear instead of bursting with swarms of miserable humanity as seen on the old trains.
China Railway seems to be working hard to instill the ambience of flying in its CRH train experience. In many ways the passenger cars resemble the cabin of a jetliner. There's even an airsick bag!:
As with an airliner, the CRH is profusely documented. There are several informational pamphlets in the back of the seat in front of you- a set of which I, with my superior foreign manners, immediately kyped.
Of course, only the finest English talent available has been pressed into service on these documents. The opening of the Service Manual's train introduction (quoted here verbatim; I can't write Chinglish this well) makes key points perfectly clear: "You are aboard the "harmonious" motor train unit, which is a high speed train that China owns the brand, was produced by independent innovation based on matured high speed train technology introduction from abroad." (In other words, "China may have gotten basic and inferior train technology from other countries, but don't even
think those countries have anything to do with
this baby! Hunh-unh!")
Big strides call for big promises...and big sentences: "With humanized design, automatic lavabo, toilets for the handicapped, infant care table and so on a series of modern facilities and services, the compartment provide you fashion, elegant, ingenious combination of quality services, make you feel that taking train is no longer a simple travel, it has been sublimed as a more comfortable, more fashionable, more environmentally and more wonderful experiencing of life of moving."
Fairly takes the breath away, doesn't it?
The CRH isn't a maglev...it's the compromise China went to when they got a load of what it would cost to install a maglev train system beyond a showboat line between Pudong International Airport and the nearest inhabited fringes of Pudong (Pudong is the easternmost and newest district of Shanghai). It's a good old-technology train with a dramatic, high-tech shell wrapped around it, riding on more carefully-installed track. But it clearly IS a significant step forward in train travel in China.
Hope you yahoos in other towns are riding one soon!
