Krysztov In China!

As I mentioned before, Rachelle had a conference in Wuhan, and I was coming with her because I’m better than she is at exploring the Great Chinese Unknown. To get there, we decided to take the high-speed rail line, since it provided a nice balance between cost and time. In fact, it was the fastest (planes go faster, but are almost always delayed, not to mention the check-in and security procedures), and while more expensive than the slower trains, it would get us where we were going in about a third of the time.

Rachelle likes to get places early and leave late, so we woke up before dawn and found a cab just waiting outside the south gate. Lucky us! We headed towards the southern train station, watching the skyscrapers and high-rise apartment blocks give way to smaller and smaller buildings, until the only major feature in sight was the rail station, dominating the horizon like some kind of giant land-mollusk. Hardly anyone else was there at the time, since the station was just opening for the morning (we were taking the first train, after all), so we took a few moments to look around and wonder if our good luck so far was just to set us up for a catastrophic failure later.

The south station is very open and easy to navigate, unlike the east station. We walked through the metal detectors, picked our bags up on the other side of the scanners, and promptly found our waiting area. Since we had over a half hour to wait, and hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, we stopped by the McDonald’s on the upper level. There was also a KFC next to it, and they were the only two vendors we saw open at that time. Moreover, the KFC’s breakfast menu included what appeared to be octopus congee. This amused but did not surprise me.

Boarding was pretty easy—there are two lines based on the color of your ticket (ours was red) and the workers scan/punch your ticket as you pass through, and go down the stairs/escalator to the train. Find your car, find your seat, and wait for departure.

Rachelle and I were amazed at both how fast and how comfortable the ride was. The train travels at a top speed of around 300 km/h (over 186 mph), and the seats have far more legroom than any airplane I’ve flown on, even that one time I got a first-class upgrade. I got a tiny bit motion-sick, although Rachelle didn’t feel anything. The train also has a dining car in the middle, but I didn’t get up to explore this time. I’ve heard it’s a great thing to have, though, when you’re taking the nine-hour trip to Beijing.

So, this is now our favorite means of transportation so far, and it will make traveling around China in the future much easier.