So, from a certain point of view, I'm bankrolling all this nonsense by being a tourist in China.
But I can't help it. I like trains.
And China, it seems, is a Mecca for train travel.
I haven't yet had the chance to peruse Riding the Iron Rooster. Its author, Paul Theroux, has scribbled many notable travel books as well as some famous novels. He is my favorite train-loving, people-hating world traveler. Riding the Iron Rooster is an account of his trip through China as part of his circumnavigation of Asia by rail (documented in The Great Railway Bazaar, which I have read).
Perhaps it's best that I haven't read it. This way, the surprises will still be there. The wonders that Theroux witnessed will seem fresh and new to my eyes. And if there's anything he saw that I won't, I shan't be disappointed by its absence.
Anyway, enough about scenery and culture. Let's talk about trains.
China is home to two particular locomotives that I really want to bum a ride on. The first is the CRH380A.
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| courtesy of Wikipedia |
This is China's bullet train, and it's the fastest in the world. At 302 miles per hour, it's almost twice as fast as South Korea's KTX, which goes 187 mph. (Even the new KTX 2 only manages 219 mph.) Plus, China being so massive and all, the CRH380A really has room to belly down and run. I want to see the countryside whirl by in a blur as I head from Shanghai to Nanjing, or wherever. This train also has sound-dampening and pressurization, which suits my eardrums just fine. Even a 30-minute ride on the KTX has one's ears popping painfully whenever we whiz through a tunnel. There's no such problem on the CRH380A.
And then there's the Shibanxi Railway.
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| courtesy of...ditto |
One of the last narrow-gauge railroads which still chiefly uses steam power, the Shibanxi (she-BANKS-she) Railway winds through the mountainous terrain 100 miles southwest of Chengdu, in the Sichuan province of western China. (Good panda country, I hear.) A lot of the photos I found could be easily confused with the coal mines of Kentucky or Tennessee (though the climate in Sichuan is technically subtropical). In fact, that's the reason the Shibanxi line exists: there's a ton of coal mines and coking plants in the area, and the miners need locomotives to transport the goods. But that's not all. This part of China is so hilly and the roads are so terrible that rails are the best way to move stuff around. Those little-engines-that-could haul everything from coal to livestock. They even act as a moving service for people coming into the neighborhood. Budget shortages are the sole reason the Shibanxi locomotives haven't been converted to diesel yet. It must be said, though, that recently the Chinese government has realized the tourist draw they've got on their hands in Sichuan. They've refurbished some of the trains to attract foreigners. That's good news for geeks like me. I just finished devouring Around the World in Eighty Days. My imagination was stoked by Verne's tales of racing across Europe, India and America in puffing steam engines. I'd leap at the chance ride on the last commercial steam line.
(All this information is secondhand; I have no clue about its verisimilitude. Until I get new information, though, I'm going with it.)
This is good in more ways than one, actually. I'm fed up with cities. Everybody who goes to China visits Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and whatnot. I'll start out in those places, sure. But I can't wait to find myself in some forgotten corner of Sichuan, knowing that I'm in the foothills of the easternmost arm of the Himalayas, my heart bubbling with excitement as the Shibanxi steam engine chugs up a steep grade.
I'll report on it when the time comes.
2 comments:
I also love trains and would love to be able to dedicate some time to it. I have a list here somewhere, that includes many trips via train, that I'd like to take. I've checked off most of the Japanese entries, but not much from the U.S. yet. The CRH380A sounds like a fantastic train. Like you said, it also has room to run flat out for fairly long periods of time. Have yourself a great trip and take photos!
I've had an aversion to traveling to China since a friend went there and tried to see the back-country. She got on a bus where they insisted she stand in the back and got dumped off at some museum called Thousand Hells or something like that, full of pickled embryos and heroic body parts and dioramas of women being tortured. When she finally found her way out of there, she spent the last two weeks huddled in a corner eating watermelon so as to avoid the dishes with live insects in them. Call me provincial, but I think I'll stay home and read. You go, though, peaches!
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