Riding China's High Speed Rail



Our train pulling into Wuxi East Station

 Larry, my Chinese colleage and I flew Wednesday from Shenzhen to Wuxi, and had to be in Shanghai that same night.  Larry had no car to use for the 2-hour drive to Shanghai - this is a blessing as two hours of Larry's driving is agony for me.  Instead, we rode one of China's new high-speed rail lines.  China has built the worlds largest high-speed rail system over the last decade, linking all of its major cities. 

Unlike American passenger rail service, the Chinese system uses dedicated tracks, not sharing the road with freight traffic and apart from one well publicized and tragic accident last year, the system appears to work well.

This was my first time on a train like this one, and I am quite impressed.  The train arrived exactly on time at the Wuxi East Railway Station, built specifically for this train line.  We also departed on time and arrived at the Hongqiao rail station (pronounced "hong chow") in Shanghai in only 29 minutes.  Even counting the taxi ride from Hongqiao to the hotel, the entire trip was only 1 hour - half the time it would take to drive given typically horrendous Shanghai traffic and equally horrific driving by Larry.  According to the display in our coach, we reached a top speed of 300 km per hour, that's 186 mph!  From the inside, the ride was smooth and quiet.  If you did not look out the window, you would have no indication you were traveling at such velocity.  Check out the video I took with my phone at the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFuVbLrdzwc

The best part, no security line, no removing my liquids, laptop or shoes, and the fare was 50RMB, a whopping $8.00.  Including the cab ride, I traveled from Wuxi to my hotel for under $17.00 - far less than it would cost to drive.