China is a giant population country, when you experience your China Tours, you will absolutely feel it clearly. Since the air-tickets are not very cheap in domestic, people in China will choose passenger train for their travel. If you want to a deep China Travel, you must get on a China civil passenger train for your next destination in China.
Passenger rail transport is one of the principal means of transport in China, with 1.456 billion railway trips taken in 2008. It is operated by the Ministry of Railways of the PRC. The Spring Festival Travel Season is the peak railway travel season of the year. China is currently redeveloping its entire railway network to produce a modern high-speed network. By the end of 2009 China expects to have a railway network length covering 89,000 km, which includes both freight and passenger railway lines.
Every train route has an identification number of two to five characters arranged by the Ministry of Railways. The first character can be alphabetic or numeric, while the second to fifth characters are all numeric.
Trains are classified as up trains or down trains. Since Beijing is seen as the centre of the network, the train from Beijing is the down service, while the train towards Beijing is the up service. Trains that do not go to Beijing are designated up or down based on the railway they are traveling on. Railways that do not go to Beijing are up or down based on whether they are going in the direction that goes towards or away from Beijing. Train routes that change from up service to down service while traveling in a certain direction might use two different route numbers. For example a train from Qingdao to Xi’an begins as up service as it travels approaching Beijing and changes to down service when it reaches the point where its travel is away from Beijing all the while travelling westerly.
There are seven types of tickets that may be purchased,
- First Class Seat, used for CRH series EMU trains. There are 4 seats per row (2+2), just similar as soft seat.
- Second Class Seat, used for CRH series EMU trains. Similar as hard seat, there are 5 seats per row (3+2), the sitting area is relatively small.
- Hard seat is the basic fare, somewhat similar to the economy class on an airplane. On busier routes, passengers who cannot arrange for better seats because of overcrowding must also purchase this type of ticket. In some cases, tickets are sold with no seat assigned, which allows the railway to sell more tickets than there are seats in the car. Still, even the number of “no seat” tickets offered for sale is limited, to keep overcrowding within limits.
- Soft seat is one level above the Hard Seat. There are 4 seats per row (2+2), so it has comfortable seating similar to business class on airplanes.
- Hard sleeper is the basic accommodation for an overnight train. Despite the name, the bunks comfortably accommodate anyone below six feet. Bunks are arranged three on a side in a compartment – indicated by top, middle and bottom on the ticket. But there are no doors for the compartments.
- Soft sleeper contains a wider bunk bed in an enclosed cabin, two bunks to a side, and an entertainment system where movie channels are available for viewing through headphones and an LCD display for each bunk. These tickets are usually reserved more than a week prior to departure.
- Luxury soft sleeper is the top level sleeper that is only owned by a few trains. The ticket is also much more expensive than that of soft sleeper. It only contains two beds in a cabin, and there is an independent toilet in every cabin. Some of them have a shower cubicle in the car.
Most trains feature some kind of on-board catering service. Vendors with trolleys walk through the train selling snacks, drinks, fruit, newspapers etc. On shorter distance trains, there is a cafe-car selling light snacks, tea, coffee, beer etc. whilst long-haul trains have full service restaurant cars.
Smoking is generally not permitted in the accommodation or washroom areas of the trains but is allowed in the restaurant/cafe area and in the vestibules between the cars. On modern trains such as CRH or Beijing Suburban railway smoking is completely banned. On the Guangzhou-Kowloon cross-border train smoking is only permitted in the cafe car.
Just get one ticket for passenger train in China, and talk to local people on the train, you will definitely find a excellent time during your China Tours.
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