China Focus: Travelers in China increasingly favor high-speed trains for convenience, reasonable cost

by Xinhua writer Wang Aihua
BEIJING, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) — During the just-concluded Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Mr. Wang, who lives in Shanghai, had to take extra days off work to visit his family in neighboring Jiangsu Province because train tickets were so difficult to buy.
“I tried all the online platforms to buy train tickets for the day before or first day of the three-day holiday, but to no avail,” he told Xinhua.
Data released by the Ministry of Transport on Wednesday showed some 629.56 million passenger trips were handled by the transportation sector during the holiday that ran from Sunday to Tuesday, of which 42.57 million were made by railway.
Boasting the world’s largest high-speed railway (HSR) network, China is seeing more travelers opting for HSR as their first choice to get around the vast country and navigate its challenging geography from mountains to deserts.
According to the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd., Chinese railways handled a record 887 million passenger trips during this year’s summer travel rush from July to August, up 6.7 percent from a year earlier. The summer school break usually sees many Chinese parents taking their children on vacation.
Ms. Liang, from Zhuhai in southern Guangdong Province, said she was relieved that her summer trip, with two young children to mountainous Guizhou Province in the southwest, was smoother than she had expected thanks to high-speed trains.
“From the provincial capital Guiyang, we took trains first and then used ride-hailing apps to reach the famous scenic spots scattered across the deep mountains,” said the woman. “Although still tiring, it was much better than if we had chosen to travel by bus.”
Guizhou is known for its fascinating karst landform and a pleasant summer climate. However, transportation has long been a challenge for many travelers.
Libo, a scenic area to the southeast of Guiyang, has welcomed a surge in tourists since a new high-speed railway linked it with Guiyang and neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region a year ago.
Yu Jijun, head of the Libo railway station, said they now operate more than 70 trains a day to transport over 20,000 passengers at peak time. “At the beginning, there were only some 20 trains carrying around 4,000 passengers each day,” he said.
TravelChinaGuide.com, a major online tour operator in China, listed a series of reasons why people in China prefer to travel by high-speed trains. The platform hails such trains as being fast, punctual, convenient, reasonably priced, comfortable and safe.
China’s high-speed trains are presently operated at speeds of 200 to 350 kilometers per hour. The operating mileage has reached 46,000 kilometers, ranking first in the world and covering 99 percent of cities with populations over 200,000.
Last month, a new railway section was launched in Sichuan Province, southwest China, offering direct access to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Jiuzhai Valley by bullet trains from the provincial capital Chengdu within two hours. Previously, tourists could only reach the highly popular scenic area via a bumpy flight or lengthy coach journeys.
In the more developed coastal areas, high-speed sleeper trains linking Beijing and Shanghai with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region commenced operations in June, reducing travel time between the capital and Hong Kong to 12 hours and 34 minutes, and between Shanghai and Hong Kong to around 11 hours. In particular, with the new services, passengers are able to travel between the cities overnight.
According to TravelChinaGuide.com, in addition to accessibility, high-speed train tickets are also “cheaper than a flight ticket most of the time,” and the carriages are much better equipped than in the past, “rivaling the facilities of an airplane.”
Foreign travelers from developed countries have marveled at the ticket prices for high-speed trains in China compared with their homelands. For instance, tickets for trains running a distance of nearly 100 kilometers between Shanghai and its neighboring city of Suzhou cost just four U.S. dollars.
Emily, a tourist from France, even ventured into a mountainous village about one hour away by train from Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province known for the Terra Cotta Warriors. “High-speed trains make it possible for us to see a diverse China,” she said, sipping a cup of iced coffee at a local farm-based resort. ■