All Aboard

With air delays in China worsening and its high-speed rail network developing at breakneck pace, should you swap planes for trains?

- Louise Cowell

Not long after the gleaming high-speed train departs from smog-smothered Urumqi, China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang spills out into an empty, alien landscape. Martian red earth stretches for miles to the distant flaming mountains, interrupted only by flocks of white wind turbines with swan-like blades that turn gracefully.

This is a far-flung corner of China that, despite being rich in key resources such as oil and natural gas, has for decades been notoriously difficult to access by land.

In 2014, however, the groundbreaking Lanzhou to Xinjiang high-speed rail (HSR) line linked this remote region to China’s ever-growing high-speed rail network, which now has tentacles from Harbin in the northeast to Kunming in the southwest.

The 2,000-kilometre journey from Urumqi to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, now takes just nine hours (slashed from nearly 20) and covers some amazing scenery.

Add to that the spotless Western-style toilets, comfortable seats and crystal-clear windows, and it speaks volumes about the money China is pumping into its rail network – RMB801 billion (US$117 billion) last year alone, with an equally generous budget for 2018.

Train travel in China – even in sleeper class on regular overnight trains – has been turned into a highly palatable experience and is quite possibly the country’s best-kept secret.

LEADING THE WAY

Then again, in 21st-century China, fast journeys on plush trains are nothing to write home about.

China has held the record for the fastest commercial electric train in the world since 2004, with the Shanghai Maglev (short for “magnetic levitation”) able to run at a top speed of 431km/h, surpassing Japan which famously pioneered the world’s first bullet train – the Shinkansen – in October 1964 for the Tokyo Olympic Games.