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Overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai
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In China, there are four classes of train travel: hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper. Hard seat is just that: a wooden bench like the kind you find in parks. Soft seat is a reclining seat resembling that you would find on a Greyhound bus. Hard sleeper involves a thinly padded bunk in a train car filled with three level dormitory style-berths, with no privacy. Soft sleeper involves four fully padded, comfortable berths in an enclosed train compartment. It is rarely easy to buy train tickets, because, like Forrest Gump's Mama, you never know what you're gonna get. Many times the ticket or travel agent could tell you that a hard sleeper is just not available, but you are never sure if they are just trying to get you to purchase the most expensive ticket. We always prefer hard sleeper because you can meet and talk to a lot of interesting people that way. Because our family is so large, however, we always seem to get
"stuck" with soft sleeper -- I think becuase the ticket agents like the idea that we can all fit into one compartment (children under the age of about seven usually share a berth with a parent).
For our recent trip from Beijing to Shanghai, we arrived at the train station around 7 pm for an 8 pm train, and made our way through the throngs of people that are always gathered at the train station. Many people traveling from the countryside end up spending the night (or several nights) in order to get train tickets to their destinations, so the station is usually bedlam. Wrangling our five people and eight bags to any destination is quite a feat in such crowds. We saw a lot of people who were sleeping on the floor of the train station, all spread out on sleeping rolls and surrounded by their stuff.
The Z22 express train that we took was quite new, and the accommodations were quite comfortable. The train only offered soft sleeper and soft seat tickets. On each train berth is a fluffy cotton filled comforter, a pillow, and a pair of slippers. There is a small table at the center of the window, and on it there is always a thermos pot for hot water, a tray, and a fresh flower in a vase (!). Underneath the table is a trash can. We were each provided with a complimentary toothbrush, and the compartment had modern light switches and volume controls to turn down the canned music. Actually, nowadays people seem to prefer travel by plane to save time -- the cost of plane tickets is sometimes less than the cost of train tickets. I think they have revamped some train routes like the Z22 in order to attract more customers. I have also been on other (non-renovated, non-express) train lines this year and the experience was less than stellar.
In our past experiences, train workers have usually been cranky old men, but this time it seemed like the workforce had been overhauled and replaced by young women in their 20's. They were all professionally dressed and quite courteous, going through the cars reviewing tickets and offering drinks and snacks for purchase. Our car was even next to a dining car (never seen one before in China) where you could buy dinner and breakfast. I usually bring all sorts of good snacks and food items for the ride, but here we could order a freshly cooked meal. We ordered kung pao chicken and a nice bok choy and mushroom dish. It was all quite luxurious. When my husband started to take pictures of the dining car, he was almost tackled by one of the workers -- apparently for security reasons you are not allowed to take a picture of the dining car (but you are allowed to take pictures of the other parts of the train). I am not sure why the dining car was such a sensitive area.
We were all dozing by 11:00 pm. It was quite dark as we traveled along, but it was interesting to see the sights outside as they whizzed by the train. My favorite was when we passed military barracks where all the soldiers were standing at attention in their underwear, getting ready to get into bed in unison at lights out. The train is kind of wobbly as it moves, and we woke up several times during the night when the train was turning.
Around 6:00 am the lights came on and we were soon sold breakfast, which consisted of steamed buns, pickled vegetables, and rice gruel. All in all, I cannot imagine a more civilized way to travel.
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