How to…travel around China

With an area of nearly 10 million square kilometres and a population of over a billion, a good public transport system is essential to China. We have been surprised and relieved at how easy it has been to get around.

Trains
Travelling by train in China is the best way to see the bits in between; the real life away from the sights and cities. However, catching a train is manic and buying a ticket a trial. It’s a very Chinese experience.

You can only buy tickets from the city you are departing from. In Shanghai main station this is at window 43 and in Beijing main station it’s at the window labelled ’foreigners’. You can also buy tickets at ticket booking offices in town or from your hostel, for a small commission. Staff at train stations rarely speak English so get a local (such as hostel staff) to write down your destination and desired class of travel in Chinese before you go. You can find train routes and timetables at http://www.chinatripadvisor.com/ or http://www.china-train-ticket.com/.

There are five classes of train travel: soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, standing. The quality of each depends on the age of the train. The Z trains are the best, with T and D being the next best. We went for soft sleeper on a Z train, or should I say hotel on tracks, from Shanghai to Beijing. We were sharing with Mr Chair and a woman who’s husband lived in Shanghai (she lived in Beijing), in an air conditioned berth with clean, crisp sheets, duvets, towels and two pillows each. You are given complimentary slippers (useful in the rather sloppy toilet) and a flask of boiling water to make tea and pot noodles [475yuan, 12 hours]. From Beijing to Xi’an we took another Z but this time an older model and only managed to get beds in a hard sleeper carriage. It’s not called hard because the beds are hard (they’re not) but because it is hard to sleep. You are squeezed in with five others in a cabin that doesn’t have a door. Not great for security or slumber. Only one pillow this time and no slippers, but the flask of boiling water remains. Our third and final train was a K from Xi‘an to Kunming. Steam engines may have gone out in 2000, but the rest of this train was pure 80’s. We were in soft sleeper with one pillow, no towel or slippers and a lot of Trans-Siberian Railway style chintz. The problem wasn’t so much the cabin as the brakes. This wasn’t a hotel but more of a chicken shed on wheels. To slow down or stop the brakes would be suddenly clamped on lurching everyone forward. In my disturbed sleep I imagined us dropping off a cliff. That said, this was the best journey of them all. Forty two hours watching China change as we headed north to south. We passed people ploughing paddy fields with water buffalo, men smoking skinny pipes on the stoop, tiny coal mines, smoky factories and deep limestone ravines eaten away by jade rivers. Further south women were carrying pails of water on yoke sticks, farmers harvested corn in the fields and set the chaff ablaze into the night sky. There are so many people here to watch and as Paul Theroux noted ‘a hill is not a hill in China, it is a vertical way of growing rice.’

Soft seats are normally recliners, hard seats are wooden benches and if you can’t get anything else you can buy a ticket to stand in the hard seat carriage. Upgrading looked to be an easy process. On our journey from Xi’an to Kunming most of the train disembarked at Chongching giving us the cabin to ourselves. A stroll down the train to an empty bed you fancy and a chat with the carriage attendant should enable you to upgrade.

There is reams of information on how to prepare for the Trans Siberian Railway but very little on the Chinese Railways. So, bring toilet paper, soap, food and drink. Hot water is available for tea and noodles and a food cart is wheeled up the corridors regularly selling meals and snacks. The meals are good. In hard sleeper cabins there is only one light so take a torch to read and ear plugs and an eye mask to block out the light and piped music, which starts early.

When catching your train leave plenty of time get to the station (city transport and roads are unpredictable) and to go through the departure procedure. Allow 30 minutes to an hour before boarding time to put your bags through security scanners and to work out where to go in the gargantuan train stations. The neon board will give the departure lounge number for your train. From here you will be told thirty minutes before departure which platform you need and then the scrum beings. This is a remarkable and unforgettably Chinese experience. A trainfull of passengers all pushing, shoving and elbowing their way to their carriage so that they can be the first on the train. The scrum is all over in ten minutes and then you can leisurely stroll on and find your berth. I don’t understand the rush, all tickets are numbered. Once the train has departed the carriage attendant will swap your ticket for a plastic card. She will then wake you up an hour before arrival to swap it back again. Another unfathomable feature of train travel in China.

Buses
Where there are no trains there are buses. Big ones, small ones, express ones and sleeper ones. During our limited travels in Yunnan province, the roads were pretty good and the buses frequent and adequate. Turn up at the station on the day of travel to buy your ticket. The sleeper bus is a new phenomenon to me - beds instead of seats on a bus. It’s not as bad as I thought although I offer the following tips:
*Board at the point of origin and arrive early to get seats at the front of the bus (minimises the impact of bumps) by a window (for views and to control air flow);
*Take a pillowcase or T-shirt to put over the pillow. The mattress and bedding are filthy;
*Use the seatbelt. It’s the only way to stop yourself being propelled into the air over every bump (we were at the back). I fastened it tight around my waist and arms and slept on my back;
*Use the duvet as a pillow/padding to prevent your head being bashed against the sides when cornering; and
*Don’t drink very much. The bus has no toilet but does make occasional stops.
As a bonus on the bigger buses and journeys over 3 hours you will normally be treated to a film that features at least three kung-fu sequences.

Around town
Beijing and Shanghai have excellent, if not heaving, underground networks. City buses are slow but to the point and can be packed to a rib crushing density. Taxis are affordable, but of course, bike is best.