Flights in and around China are quite expensive especially if you’re traveling on a student budget and you don’t have a Chinese credit card (because then you can’t book from certain discount sites). Flying from Hong Kong is considered international so it’s often cheaper to take the train to Shenzhen and fly from there. We bit the bullet and took a flight to Beijing, which turned out to be terrifying especially because we knew we weren’t on an international flight with that had a widely recognized brand image they cared about protecting!
After that the plan was to only take trains for the rest of the journey, but we hadn’t had the foresight to prebook. On our second day in Beijing we decided to forgo booking with the hostel and head to the train station…wrong decision! It was a national holiday and it seemed like every person in Beijing was headed there too.
When we’d managed to get to the ticket office it turned out that you need you passport to buy tickets in China so they make sure you don’t go anywhere your visa doesn’t allow at a time it won’t allow. After that we gave up and let the hostel do its thing- best $10 I ever spent! The only problem was that there were only seaters left… And that turned out to be the case for the rest of our train rides.
When you walk through the different classes of seats on Chinese trains I felt like I was able to understand the titanic just a little bit better, the soft sleeper was very reserved and clean, people kept to their compartments and there were even TVs and outlets to charge things- luxury! The hard sleepers were a little more crowded, families were eating their meals in the hallways but the garbage was contained and they at least had seated toilets. The seater section is where the lights are on the whole time, garbage piles up in the corner, human waste piles up in the squatting toilets and the remnants of chicken feet take up room on the tables. It’s not that bad but it’s just definitely not clean! There usually aren’t any westerners on the trains so I’ve had people taking pictures of us but the plus side is that if no one speaks English you can have loud conversations and not worry about anyone eaves dropping. There are also people with standing seats, which means for 14hr train rides they have no where to sit down and often end up perching at the end of your row of seats, which isn’t even annoying because you can’t help but feel bad for them! My friend and I ended up sleeping on the floor for some of the rides which is actually not too uncomfortable and at least you get to lie down, but you do have to deal with the occasional person spitting a seed into your hair…yum!
For our final train from Shanghai to Shenzhen most of our friends decided to fork out the money for a flight so there were just two of us taking a 17hr seater train, we knew it wouldn’t be pleasant but at least we were saving money because there weren’t any other seats available. The only problem is that we missed our train and when we tried to rebook ( with difficulty because even the English speaking counter doesn’t really understand you, especially when the customer in question is hysterical) they said the next train wouldn’t be for days. We managed to get through security and talk to someone else in the train station who spoke English and eventually ended up coming with us to the ticket desk to tell the sales people exactly what ticket we wanted because we were failing miserably at it! We were literally shedding tears of joy when she not only managed to get two tickets leaving that day but two sleepers, one hard and one soft, that arrived directly in Hong Kong… Bliss!!
Taking the train in China isn’t always pretty but it does give you a great feel for the country and the locals, and even though you don’t get the best nights rest you do get some pretty unique memories!
