Trains in China

Well, I'm not much of an expert on the subject, but the train here was actually pretty nice. I know this is a bit out of order, I've actually been in Nanjing for over a week now (8 days) and I'm just posting about the train ride over here. Ashley found out from her work that we could ship our bags to our destination city for a pretty reasonable amount... luckily, after all the drama, it worked out. I only shipped one of my bags (just in case it never made it, I wanted to make sure I had things with me too!) it ended up costing about 170 kuai (about $28)... and I'd say my bag weighted every bit of 70 lbs, probably more. And it arrived the next day (!!) by noon! How's that for service?

Anyway, it was much less stressful to tote one massive bag and a backpack through the train station than 2. I'm so glad I paid the money to ship the other, because the escalator in Nanjing was broken and I had to lug my 60+ lb bag up 50 or more stairs. Imagine that with 2 bags. Not fun, but I made it. I took a couple pictures at the train station, and then I borrowed a few others of the actual train/inside the train so you all could see what it was like.

Be proud--I actually went to the ticket office and purchased this ticket on my own without speaking any Chinese. I know, I'm more impressive each day ;) I actually found a website with the ticket info listed, then I had a Chinese person write Shanghai and Nanjing in Chinese, and I looked up the word "tomorrow" in the handy dictionary and I was all set to go.

 

That's my actual train ticket. I've labeled it for easy reading :)

There's me at the train station, and a couple of pictures of the waiting area. I failed to take pictures on the train as I was a bit occupied with all my junk, but I found some on the internet instead.

By the way, the G train is one of the fastest in China. It reaches speeds of over 300 km per hour.