About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

All Aboard!

So we made it. Into the thing that’s supposed to do 350 km/h, Beijing-Tianjin, 30 minutes, zippy fast, laser speed… vomit comet? (We picked that one off Twitter.) That’s the thing. See, the Harmony (和谐号，CRH China Railway High-speed) was designed with smoothness in mind, and although it’s not as smooth as the Swiss trains (running at about 200 km/h, tops), it’s still extremely smooth to ride in.

Getting onto saner things, we find ourselves in one of those trains that — like Beijing South Railway Station, was made with someone who obviously was airborne a lot more than — rail-borne. First Class in the Harmony looks like — First Class on an airplane.

We are talking about reclinable seats, headphone ports (although many just carry an iPod to listen to their music), footrests, everything. All that’s missing are the kitchen sink, and — of far more use to your productivity-mad co-blogger — power ports for the laptop. (But just how much work can you really pull off in just thirty minutes?)

 Top Speed: 348 km/hr

We have to admit one bad thing about the Harmony, though: the buzzer noise these doors make when they’re opening and closing are vomit-inducing enough. (And they don’t come with control buttons — better not crash!) (Nobody likes being stuck in a derailed train, unable to flee.) If you have fallen in love with the tweet-ish-sounding Line 5 door alerts, the ones on the Harmony are — well, less than harmonious. (We hope this article doesn’t get “harmonized”. But oh well, we digress.)

With the doors now sealed, it took less than about six or seven minutes for the train to speed up to incredibly fast speeds. Within about five minutes, we had passed Beijing’s 5th Ring Road — remember, this is the kind of stuff that only express trains can pull off! (Ordinary car drivers have to put up with incredibly long jams, blahdy blahdy blah.)

By the time the train reached the Jingjin Freeway in Tianjin (with gorgeous scenery next to the freeway no less), the display read: “Current speed: 348 km/h“. This thing was doing its thing (pardon the pun). Within a few minutes, the train stopped at its only mid-point station — Wuqing, Tianjin,

It’s interesting to note that trains that go all the way up to 350 km/h will kind of “breathe” halfway through and take a quick doze in either Yizhuang High-Speed Railway Station or Wuqing High-Speed Railway Station. The train will stay at the station for up to five minutes before reattempting speeds that give the TGV potential nightmares.

My trip to Tianjin was — well, optimal and sub-optimal. Next to me was a guy with an iPod touch (a Mac compatriot) who unfortunately seemed to yak on the phone a bit too much and boost too much musical oomph out from the earphones. Oh well — included in the train ticket is a speedy, smooth ride — not included is an indication who might be travelling with you!

Destination Tianjin Railway Station (天津火车站)

“This isn’t clicking in with me. We’re at our destination in just 30 minutes! I’m gonna have to get used to this kind of thing!”

The passenger sitting next to me on the return trip (a lot more enjoyable — almost sleep-inducing) had a hard time getting the time right. A to B — 100 miles plus — 30 minutes.

Once in Tianjin Station, you’re pretty much treated to a bit of the same old, same old, a la Beijing South. You leave the station underground, and head for the exit.The funny thing is that Tianjin Railway Station is much more magnanimous with its offering, station square-wise. It’s no secret that the front of the station is — well, almost yawning empty. And yes, Tianjin is in Olympics mode, like its northernly neighbor (northwesterly, if we’re to be geographically accurate).The inside of Tianjin Station is no less spectacular on the outside. There’s plenty of room for what must be thousands or even more passengers.Unlike Beijing South, though, where you board the station through two side access gates, in Tianjin, it’s a single access gate. They do give you two more faregates, though, but a little maths shows Beijing’s at 6 in all per platform; Tianjin has only 5 per platform. Once you’re past them, however, you’re safely back in the Harmony. Next stop: Beijing South. (Once again.)

Bits and Bobs Worth A Mention

• The announcements on the return journey did seem to be a bit on the loud side — and rambling side; we were treated to no less than about 10 to 15 minutes of official blahdy-blahdy-blah.

• If you’re on a wheelchair, you’re given access to wheelchair-friendly toilets in Car 7, right along with the First Classers. (Now that’s really nice!)

• The Chinese are big believers in cooked, hot water (白开水, bai kai shui), so the train’s also equipped with these. (They’re not in the 1st class carriage, though.)

• Doors between the cars open and close based on sensors.

• Seats can be rotated 180°.

• Both stations are without Subway links at the moment — what a downer! Lines 4 and 14 are promised for Beijing South; Tianjin, though, has outdone the nation’s capital with planned links to Lines 2, 3 and 9.

• Finally, good to know (even though we’ve mentioned this before): return tickets cost you an extra CNY 5 if you buy them at the same place (but where the “From:” location is different).

So is this 350 km/h-er for everyone? Giving this one a try never really hurts. (Apart from hurting your pocketbook, really, but hey…!)

Beijing South <-> Tianjin High-speed Train Time Table

• Depart from Beijing South Railway Station

• Depart from Tianjin Railway Station

Source from here published at July 30, 2008.

File this under: super-fast, super-fast, and super-fast again. It’s the kind of stuff that gets many a Swiss train enthusiast (namely yours truly) excited about. Will we finally see a train that takes the Swiss Federal Railways to task? In terms of service, convenience, and — speed, will we see a more Swiss train in China?

Indeed, these were the big questions swirling around many a Beijing train enthusiast’s mind on August 1, 2008, when the new Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Express (Jingjin Chengji Gaosu Tielu, 京津城际高速铁路) started operations from Beijing South Station (Beijing Nanzhan, 北京南站 ).

Beijing South Station: More Airport-ish Than Railway Station

The designers who made the new Beijing South Railway Station possible obviously clocked in more mileage airborne than by rail. (Yours truly actually managed to update his Dopplr profile right after writing the previous sentence, so sorry for that long yet invisible break.) The new airport — uhh, railway station — looks like — an airport.

(No kidding. Except for the fact that the new station has no customs control checkpoints yet.)

While we won’t exactly conclude that Beijing South is an El Cheapo copy of Terminal 3 (of Beijing Capital International Airport fame — and which is enough to make those who did Heathrow 5 feel better), this is probably one of the most airport-ish train stations you’ll probably ever go into. Getting Your TicketsMind you, Beijing South is impressive, but you’ll probably never get any mileage, so to speak, unless you fork out cash for some train tickets. The current Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Express comes in two flavors: first class and second class.

First-class one-way tickets go for RMB 68; second-class ones are CNY 10 cheaper at RMB 58. You can also nab your tickets by means of the ticket machines, which take all banknotes except for RMB 1 ones. There’s also something else to note: if you buy your return tickets in Beijing, you get charged an extra CNY 5. (We think it’s worth it!)

What’s To Come: Subway Connections

Beijing South is getting a massive Subway system linkage in just around 4 years’ time. Coming next September (2009) is the new Subway Line 4, which links the station to central Beijing at Xuanwumen and the Xidan shopping area. (Yours truly envisages romantic couples travelling from Xidan on this line all the way via high-speed rail to Tianjin, only to outdo themselves in more shopping fits in the Tianjin version, at Jinjie.) Three years after that, it’s time to get ready for the arrival of Subway Line 14, a west-east connection which is more for out-of-central-Beijing passengers and those headed for the CBD (as Line 14 is expected to run under Xidawang Road, a core CBD through route).

There’s also a very non-Subway related link coming to Beijing South in around 2012-2013: the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway (Jinghu Gaotie, 京沪高铁). It’ll take you around 5 hours to get from Beijing South to Shanghai Hongqiao.

Please Get Ready For Your Arrival

Your arrival in the waiting hall, rather. We should have changed this to read: Please get ready for your departure.

The departure hall’s where the action’s at if you’re heading out to Tianjin. The one at Beijing South, though, looks very different. No longer the enclosed rooms a la Beijing Railway Station, the departure hall fills pretty much the whole station.

For those who want to get productive — they unfortunately don’t do wifi, and the UBC Café, a café usually associated with free in-store wifi, isn’t rocking in action yet. (UBC’s wifi is nearly always free — even if you have to fork out about CNY 48 at Beijing Airport Terminal 1 for the orange juice to go along with it. Urgh.) I managed to tweet away in traditional Chinese thanks to this invention called GPRS.

I had a full two hours to kill (as I wanted a first-class ticket to Tianjin), but even so, time started rolling closer and closer to departure time. When departure time finally came, though, the station suddenly showed its more… Subway sides. Yes, indeed, in front of the platform gates are — ticket barriers.

Here’s the thing about the faregates: they actually let you keep your ticket even once you’ve exited the whole railway system (unlike the Beijing Subway, which takes your Single Journey Ticket hostage at the exit faregate once you leave the underground world). Once you’re inside and beyond the faregates, you get to take a look at the entire station from platform level. First off: this thing is big. But bigness is nothing without seeing what makes the thing big; so to speak, a station is of absolutely no use whatsoever unless trains actually pass through the thing.We now present you the Harmony. Think of this as the People’s Republic’s answer to the TGV of La Grande Nation, France. We’re holding the suspense here. Part 2 comes soon.

We’ll get back to the “regular” Mind the Gap articles next Wednesday (I can hear the moans, I know…), but this Wednesday, I’d like to remain a traveller, and get local… or, eh, domestic, rather. I recently (well, actually, just today) went on a trip to the “other” metropolis in the making — Tianjin, about 100 kilometers southeast of Beijing.

I tell you, ladies and gents, there’s quite a big gap between internationalized Beijing and still-internationalizing Tianjin. If you thought that Beijing was Western Capital-ist already (and nearby Tianjin, itself just a hundred magnetic kilometers away from the capital, is just as Westernized), well…

The first thing I noticed was that Tianjin was getting more and more — American. Those of you given to zipping away on your Interstate freeways probably recognize the font right away. The CBDOK, so Tianjin must be a city. And how do you define cities? At the kiddie level, a city must have “tall buildings”. The more, the merrier.

Here’s how the capital turns out in terms of stratospheric structures:

Here’s the Tianjin variant: OK — remember, when I first visited Tianjin back in May 2004, I saw a misty, somewhat spooky, and a little broken-down city back then. Just about a hundred miles from the capital, and I see that kind of stuff — you know, somehow, it makes me quite frown-ish. I was thinking, hey, this is Tianjin: it’s supposed to build stuff just as good as Beijing. They’re both municipalities. They’ve got the land. Tianjin’s even got the sea right next to it. Tianjin has to do better than that!Tianjin did do better — cranes in Tianjin are about to surpass those in the capital in terms of the sheer quantity.

Ah, but Beijing has the central part of the CBD still — unbuilt. Want to play catch-up, Tianjin? Beijing’s still thinking… of building better, and bigger, buildings…

And yes, at that, more and more jams…

The Subway

Having being stuck in horrible jams since Time Immortal, yours truly is now a devoted subway convert (and that’s the case more and more with Mozart in the subway these days — or did they remove it?).

The first thing I notice was just how similar Tianjin subway stations look to the Beijing counterparts. All cubes. The Tianjin one is, in fact, a glass cube through and through (given that, did Beijing play catch-up when it opened its “glass cube” entrance at Dongsishitiao recently?).

Meantime, the Beijing variant is still cube-ish, but not all glass: Once you’re inside, however, Tianjin seems to lose out. Here’s the standard set by your big bro — the nation’s capital: Tianjin’s reduced to just about this: I say reduced because two things were massively reduced: peace and quiet (they kept on playing some really annoying cartoons; when Tom and Jerry debuted on Line 5 in Beijing some time ago, they at least were a bit more quiet), and the platform screen doors (it’s only half and half — I have a tendency to absolutely abhor “half and half” things).Copied Names

Tianjin should be sued whole.

Either that, or I’m seeing Beijing names in Tianjin itself. Take, for example, Fuxingmen Subway Station. Both of these stations are on Line 1 in both cities!

Beijing’s variant is this:

In Beijing, Fuxingmen is an underground-only matter. It’s old, it’s got a central platform, it’s a bit dark at times, but it’s an interchange for Lines 1 and 2.The Tianjin version of Fuxingmen station looks like this:

Believe it or not, it’s above ground, new, looks like a Beijing Subway Batong Line station, and is — new (I think I just said “new” two seconds ago). And nope, no interchange facilities here.Scarier is the fact that you are reminded that this is a blatant rip-off of the Beijing Subway, station name wise, by the station signage:

OK — now out of the Subway, and back on the roads. It seems like the capital has indoctrinated the Heavenly Ford (that’s what “tianjin” (天津) really means in Chinese): we have Yuquan Road, too: Traffic LightsHaving being puzzled by Tianjin through and through (the roads were the worst: virtually nothing lies exactly due north, east, south, west, and stuff like that, unlike the capital’s grid), I looked for my escape outside this metropolitan madhouse.

That’s where the traffic lights got me. They’ve a “combo” traffic light system where they have only one centralized traffic light — but it’s one where the arrow changes colors. If you don’t look and are used to seeing the green in the rightmost part of the traffic light, you’re in big trouble:

At the end of the day, I made it out of Tianjin alive. When I saw the Beijing lights again, I knew that I had survived to live to another day in one piece…