Twenty years ago, I lived in Tianjin. Tianjin (TJ) is a large port city about 80 miles southeast of Beijing (BJ). At that time, there was no highway connecting the two cities . . . only surface streets that would take three or four hours to cover the distance between the two cities. The highway was opened in late 1990, but it still took two hours to travel, but with the addition of motion sickness being added to the experience. (Note: when you don't travel in a car very often, you can easily become car sick when you do travel in one!)
The preferred mode of travel was the train. Taking a train from TJ to BJ meant getting to the train station an hour or so early to try to buy a ticket. You could buy a hard seat ticket or a soft seat ticket. Soft seat tickets were priced at four or five times as much as the hard seat tickets so most people, including myself, just bought the hard seat option.
Hard seat was the way to go. If there weren't enough seats available, you would simply buy a standing ticket. It was better to stand for the two hours instead of waiting another two hours for the next train. Actually, it didn't matter if you had a ticket for a seat because that rarely meant anything. People got seats on a "first-come, first serve" basis and if you weren't at the front of the pack, you were out of luck.
Hard seat cars were always packed to the brim with people who smoked, ate and drank their way through the journey. They were always noisy. Chaos was the "norm" and I was always amazed at what seemed to be lack of common sense. One thing that stands out in my mind is the memory of the train attendant mopping the aisle floor as the train approached the station. Not a big deal . . . except that the mop was always being pushed in FRONT of the attendant and the wet floor was walked on by the attendant pushing the mop. Also, this mop job was always done just as the train pulled into the station . . . with all the passengers trampling all over the wet floor as they exited.
Sometimes, the best place to be on the train was the connecting area between the cars.
Last weekend, I went to Beijing and I took the new bullet train to Tianjin. What an amazing experience! Clean . . . really clean trains, both inside and out! No smoking! No food! There were bottles of water available for passengers! You could buy tickets for instant departure! If you missed one train, no worries . . . the next one would leave in 10 or 15 minutes! No standing tickets sold. No overcrowding. No pushing and shoving. Plus, the train station for the bullet trains was so clean and modern. It was hard to believe I was still in China.
More than that . . . the trip is now only 30 minutes. Only 30 minutes! The train topped out at 330 km/h . . . 206 mph. WOW! It took me longer to get to the train station in Beijing than it did to get from Beijing to Tianjin.
Progress. It's an amazing thing. I vaguely remember hard seat tickets being 14 yuan (I'll have to look it up in my journals one day) which would have been about $2.66 US at that time. I paid 58 yuan for the high speed train, about $8.50 US. Not too bad for inflation!
I'm not sure if the slower trains are still available. I should check it out. I'm sure there are those in China that are unable to spend 58 yuan on a train ticket for such a short distance.
