I am writing this Blog Post during a long return trip across China by train, at the end of Labour Day Holiday (May 2nd, 2023).

The thing that impressed me the most during my first trip to China (2016) was SIZE. European people cannot understand it without experiencing it. It is difficult to explain it well, but you can really feel how large this country is, in every single moment. Single provinces are often as large and as populous as main European countries (if not more).

High Speed Trains are efficient and fast, but travelling from Taiyuan (Shanxi Province Capital) to Shanghai takes quite a long time (9.5 hours). Commuting time inside the cities to reach train stations, and walking time inside the train stations themselves (they are huge, too) quickly add up. Overall, around 11.5 hours to cross a relatively small part of China (around 1400 km).

As a comparison, the connection from Turin (Northern Italy) to Paris via High Speed Train takes around 5.5 hours (furthermore, a part of this trip is slow due to lack of High Speed Railway in Western Alps).

To be fair, also during this trip across part of China I will cross natural barriers such as Yangtze River, Yellow River, and some mountain ranges too. Yangtze River, in particular, is crossed in a relatively tight point near Nantong during the trip from Shanghai to Taiyuan (approximately 6 km, I will probably publish a short video about that in the future). A similar bridge near Nanjing will be crossed during the return trip. Natural barriers are usually not a problem for Chinese High Speed trains, which can reach even Tibetan Plateau.

However, even though Chinese High Speed Train Network is efficient and massively impressive (currently around 2/3 of the whole world High Speed Railway is located in China), it is much less dense than what we are used to in Europe. Just to give an idea, the closest city to the factory where I work (Changshu, Jiangsu Province, 1 million inhabitants) opened its first train station only in 2021. By contrast, many very small European villages have their own train stations (especially in some countries, for example Switzerland, Austria).

Chinese Transportation Infrastructure, and in particular High Speed Trains are a very interesting topic. I will definitely write one or more posts about it!