For our August 2018 visit to China we decided to travel between Shanghai and Beijing by train.  When trying to find out about or book a train anywhere in the world I commend you to look at seat61.com which is a fantastic site with all the information and help you’re likely to need.  From that site I learned about the different types of high speed train on the route and which timetabled services were operated by the China-built CRH400 “Fu Xing” which is currently the fastest train in the world.  I booked our tickets quite easily online for train G4, leaving Shanghai Hongqiao station at 14:00 and arriving Beijing South at 18:34. (BTW Hongqiao train station and the airport are right next door to each other)

Seat 61 told me that the ‘classes’ of travel on the G trains were Standard, First and Business Class, with the latter unusually being the top level, offering a small private cabin at each end of the train and large cocooned airline style lie flat seats in a 2-1 configuration, and that’s what we decided to go for, at a total of £406.70 for two people. That’s eye-poppingly expensive by China Railways standards, but it’s less than business class by air, and a lot more convenient.  We booked through Trip.com which had a link from Seat61’s site, and which I found easier to use than other linked sites.  They send you a confirmation email once the seats are booked, which you hand in at any Chinese railways station before your journey.  Our hotel provided us with a lady to help us at the enormous Shanghai Hongqiao station, so I can’t actually vouch for the ease with which a foreigner can exchange the email for tickets. The train station staff didn’t appear to have much knowledge of English.

Shanghai Hongqiao station is very big, and on a Friday afternoon, really busy (but, as we found out later, Beijing South is even bigger and busier.)  Bags are security screened on entry.  We walked through crowds in line for their departure gate, but when we got through our gate Mr A realised his passport was missing. He dashed off retracing our steps while I tried to get the gate staff to call the police, as I assumed Mr A had been pick-pocketed. But ten minutes later Mr A retrieved his passport at the Lost & Found counter without any fuss or form-filling.  I was amazed and impressed with someone’s prompt honesty to hand it in and the efficiency of its retrieval.  Well done China!

We made it onto the gleaming silver, red and black train with moments to spare, as it departed bang on time (to the second, in spite of Tropical Storm Jindari).  We made ourselves comfortable in the small, full, exclusive cabin with three other passengers. An attendant passed around slippers and took orders for tea or coffee, served promptly with some weird and mostly horrible snacks, and for dinner which was served an hour before arrival in Beijing.   I passed on dinner, but Mr A thought it was better than the food we got in China Southern Airlines’ First class a couple of days earlier.

When I went for a walk I saw that First class looked very comfortable in a 2-2 layout and even standard class had refining seats and decent legroom in its 3-3 configuration. But the whole train was completely full, so do book ahead.  The service was operated by two 8-coach trains joined together, so I reckoned there were about 1,000 passengers on this trip. There was a buffet car on each train and near the toilets at the end of the carriages (very clean, with western toilets) was a hot water tap which people used to make their pot noodles.  Carriages were all pretty calm and quiet; no screaming or unruly kids.

Like on Japan’s Shinkansen, all seats face the direction of travel, and at the end of each carriage is an LED information display which tells you, inter alia, the current speed. The highest speed I noted was 352 Km/h (218.2 mph!).  It’s a very smooth ride through China’s Northern Plain, it’s agricultural heartland, punctuated by occasional nests of high-rise apartment blocks which are springing up all over this growing mega-state.  When another express passes in the opposite direction it takes less than 3 seconds to pass its 16 carriages at the incredible closing speed.  Onboard wi-fi is available, but I found it hard to connect to because of the Chinese instructions.

The train stopped twice en route: at Nanjin and at Jianin. The train is all non-smoking and each time we stopped a few passengers jumped onto the platform for a cigarette, but they only managed a few puffs before we were off again.

In spite of going through the heavy rains of Storm Jindari, and arriving into a Beijing heatwave, we arrived 7 minutes early at 18:27.

The train is a great way to travel in China: it’s safe, clean, reliable, comfortable and reasonably priced by European standards. And you get to see something of the countryside. I for one was amazed to see so much greenery, so many solar panels on houses and apartment blocks, a wind farm and only one steaming power station.  10/10

We had a nightmare once we arrived in Beijing South, as we couldn’t find the driver we’d arranged. Walking around a huge, disorienting, and very foreign station in 35 degrees wasn’t fun.