by draintree
I just got back from my first trip to China where I got to sample five different rail systems and experienced a near-disastrous freak accident. I also had one of those traveler's moments where you discover something breath-takingly weird and wonder why it isn't big news back home.
Flying over the pole, we were in the air for a little over 15 hours, which I find depressing. It just doesn't seem right that going from New York to Hong Kong should take only about 45 minutes longer than the trip from Penn Station to Toledo, Ohio, though it was neat seeing the polar icecap, Siberia and the Great Wall from the air (if I hadn't nodded off, I would have also gotten to see parts of Mongolia). Hong Kong International is a superbly efficient airport and I made it through customs in about fifteen minutes.
The airport opened in 1998 and with it a brand-spanking new dedicated rail line linking it with the Kowloon peninsula and the main island at Victoria. The train runs every 12 minutes and takes 20 minutes to cover the approximately 20 miles to Kowloon. The fare is $90.00 HK which at present works out to just under $12.00 US. It's almost everything an airport express ought to be. It's easy to get to, runs frequently, is neat and clean, moves fast and is a one-seat ride from airport to downtown. In other words, it ain't American. Compare that to Newark International where you have to go up two levels to get to the monorail which, though it looks futuristic, is agonizingly pokey and, unlike the Hong Kong train, isn't particularly easy to find. Then you have to change to New Jersey transit which runs about four trains an hour but spaces them inconsistently so you often have to wait over thirty minutes before one finally shows up after you've lugged your bags from the Monorail over what seems like two football fields and down yet another flight of stairs. The one immediate drawback to Hong Kong's system was the lack of ticket machines accepting credit cards, which were in a small, hard-to-find minority. I don't like getting local currency at the airport but had to here.
The train was bright and full of "Peanuts" characters to celebrate the train's fifth anniversary. Most of the seats had TV screens so you could check on the news and weather, the train route, or check out local attractions. There were also stylized maps over the door areas keeping track of the train's progress so you'd have some idea of just how far away you were from your next station. Everything was in English and Cantonese.
After detraining the first thing I discovered was that I couldn't find my way out of the station. I spent about fifteen minutes wandering the place before breaking down and asking someone for help. Apparently, it's considered unthinkable to leave by any other means than public transportation. After walking through a parking garage, I finally came up for air and discovered, of all things, a driving range. It's probably a pretty good guess that there aren't too many cities of over six million people where you'll find something like that upon exiting one of its major train stations.
After a night at the Star Guesthouse whose manager is named — and I swear I’m not making this up — Charlie Chan (I was tempted to sign in as Mantan Moreland but had to show them my passport), I headed over to the modern Hung Hom Station of the Kowloon Central Railway (KCR) to pick up my ticket to Beijing. Then, after shopping for food to picnic on along the way, I went back to the station and waited since I had a large heavy bag and nowhere to check it.
After spending about three hours knocking back cappuccinos in a Starbucks to help beat my jet lag it was time to go into the waiting room for passengers going through customs — Hong Kong being part of a special administrative zone for this ostensibly communist state. Because of SARS, the first thing that happened after having my visa stamped was getting poked in the forehead with an instant thermometer. Then, I sat in a dim, simple and not entirely pleasant waiting room, with a fast-food counter and a duty-free shop.
About a half-hour before leaving, we were allowed get into our cars. You could see that the train was well staffed because almost everybody was outside standing tall in dark blue outfits that looked a lot like police uniforms to welcome us aboard. Because I could afford it, I took soft sleeper and had not just the compartment but the entire car to myself. I tried to leave the curtain of the window across the hallway pulled back and my door open so I could see outside both sides of the train but this offended the sensibilities of the attendant who pulled one back into its original position and closed the other.
The compartment looked new and clean and had four berths. There was a little table just under the window and, under that, a plastic garbage pail and a stand for what in China is the inevitable thermos of hot water. The beds have sheets and pillows for you to lie on but just a large comforter to throw on top. The rest rooms were at either end of the car. At the Hong Kong end it was American style, albeit with a wooden seat with the grain arranged in a way that was aesthetically pleasing in a recognizably oriental fashion. On the Beijing end it was Chinese style, which is to say, a hole in the floor. It was a very nice, clean and modern looking hole in the floor. It was a flush hole in the floor. But it was a hole in the floor. How Chinese.
The trip up is about 1,400 miles and takes 26 hours, including a 40-minute layover in Gaungzhou (pronounced, near as I can tell, Gwan-JOE) for customs.
You'd think a place as notoriously cosmopolitan as Hong Kong would look less like the China of your mind than the interior of the main part of the country but exactly the opposite is true — at least based on what I saw out the window of my train. Despite having more tall apartment buildings than I've seen anywhere, including New York, I also saw more rice paddies cared for by people wearing coolie hats per mile leaving Hong Kong than anywhere else in China. And Hong Kong is mountainous like it is in all those beautiful tapestries and paintings. Most of the trip between Hong Kong and Beijing is as flat as Kansas and chock full of nuclear power plants.
Dinner in the diner was greasy but not unpleasant. I had to get up a couple of times because it turns out my seat also doubled as storage space. The beers were large but tasted like weak…um… well never mind. The staff spoke English and translated the menu without being asked. When I was short one yuan to make exact change on a beer, the waitress let it go — despite there being no tipping.
At Beijing West I went through customs again where they confiscated my oranges. Beijing West is easily the largest train station I've ever seen. I'm not coming close to kidding when I tell you that you could fit 10 Grand Centrals inside the thing. I find it hard to believe even now as I type this but I remember measuring it in my head while standing outside. It's huge and has a gate out front that's nothing short of monstrous.
The Beijing subway system now has three lines and though not exactly attractive runs with utilitarian smoothness. The fare is three yuan or about 40 American cents. The fare collection system is decidedly low-tech. After sometimes forcing your way to the front of a mob (the Chinese are not big on patiently standing in line), you buy a paper ticket which is then ripped by a minder in front of the stairs leading to the platform. Everything, including the announcements is in Mandarin and English. Trains will take you to both the north and south of Tianamen Square. To the north is the Forbidden City. That was a genuine wow.
The way back was, as you can imagine, had a lot in common with the trip up except this time there was one scary new wrinkle. We had just left Gaungzhou and were on the last two-hour leg to Hong Kong. Did you even notice how sometimes when two high-speed express trains pass each other, there's sometimes a little thump due to a momentary increase in air pressure? Well, this time the thumps were louder, which impressed but didn't particularly worry me. Since we were close to our destination, I decided it was time to start packing. I was, therefore, quite fortunately at the far end of my compartment when we passed another express train. This time, instead of there being a mere thump, the force and repeated stress apparently caused the window to explode into my compartment as a fusillade of assorted glass chunks came flying in my direction followed by one hell of a draft. My clothes, food and baggage were covered. Still it could have been a lot worse. If it had happened when I was blissfully sitting next to the window admiring the scenery, I could have easily been blinded in both eyes. It was both a freak accident and a narrow escape. The chances of that particular window blowing in on that particular trip must have been astronomical. The chances of it happening during daylight hours at one of the few moments when I was out of range were even more astronomical. I yelled for my attendant. He showed no reaction, simply opened the next compartment and moved my things in. I noticed, however, that workmen were pointing at my car as we passed them.
Once back in Hong Kong my temperature was taken again, only this time using an infrared scanning device so as to invade our personal space less invasively and I passed through easily before heading across the peninsula to grab a ferry to Macau which I found tawdry and depressing but with incredibly delicious Portuguese food.
In Hong Kong I took the MTR subway and the ancient double-decker streetcars. The subway was the very latest in the technology. For one thing they were long articulated units with no doors between cars. Not only does this give them a wonderful feeling of openness but it also allows a cooling breeze to gush through the train. In addition there are glass barriers between the platform and the track, which open only when a train is in the station. That's got to cut way down on accidents, murder, litter and suicides.
The trolleys were great. There's no better way to a quick yet somewhat intimate overview of a city than taking a streetcar through it. Mine headed east until it turned off the main line and went down a street bracketed by butcher and fish shops. The fish were so fresh they were still flopping. One depressing note is that despite being ancient and despite going down the middle of the street, they were generally a lot faster than the new NJTransit line now operating between Hoboken and Bayonne. It's sort of absurd how slow modern trolley lines are in this country. It was the same with the line going from BWI to Penn Station in Baltimore.
One more thing. While in Beijing I dropped by Mao's mausoleum. Love him or hate him, he was definitely an important figure in history, so I thought I'd like to have a look at the remains. Was I in for a surprise. It isn't bad enough that they keep him out in all his embalmed glory like Hitler's brain at a carney show. It's not bad enough that they have the Chinese communist flag tucked up to his chin like a giant bib. What really threw me is that they main light source for the room where he now lies in state is emanating from, of all places, his head.
In other words, they turned him into a lamp.
I suppose that's encouraging, if you really think about it. Despite being the dead prophet of a discredited political system and despite being remembered as a brutal dictator who tormented his people to punish them for his own grandiosity, Mao, nevertheless, continues to illuminate.
Flying over the pole, we were in the air for a little over 15 hours, which I find depressing. It just doesn't seem right that going from New York to Hong Kong should take only about 45 minutes longer than the trip from Penn Station to Toledo, Ohio, though it was neat seeing the polar icecap, Siberia and the Great Wall from the air (if I hadn't nodded off, I would have also gotten to see parts of Mongolia). Hong Kong International is a superbly efficient airport and I made it through customs in about fifteen minutes.
The airport opened in 1998 and with it a brand-spanking new dedicated rail line linking it with the Kowloon peninsula and the main island at Victoria. The train runs every 12 minutes and takes 20 minutes to cover the approximately 20 miles to Kowloon. The fare is $90.00 HK which at present works out to just under $12.00 US. It's almost everything an airport express ought to be. It's easy to get to, runs frequently, is neat and clean, moves fast and is a one-seat ride from airport to downtown. In other words, it ain't American. Compare that to Newark International where you have to go up two levels to get to the monorail which, though it looks futuristic, is agonizingly pokey and, unlike the Hong Kong train, isn't particularly easy to find. Then you have to change to New Jersey transit which runs about four trains an hour but spaces them inconsistently so you often have to wait over thirty minutes before one finally shows up after you've lugged your bags from the Monorail over what seems like two football fields and down yet another flight of stairs. The one immediate drawback to Hong Kong's system was the lack of ticket machines accepting credit cards, which were in a small, hard-to-find minority. I don't like getting local currency at the airport but had to here.
The train was bright and full of "Peanuts" characters to celebrate the train's fifth anniversary. Most of the seats had TV screens so you could check on the news and weather, the train route, or check out local attractions. There were also stylized maps over the door areas keeping track of the train's progress so you'd have some idea of just how far away you were from your next station. Everything was in English and Cantonese.
After detraining the first thing I discovered was that I couldn't find my way out of the station. I spent about fifteen minutes wandering the place before breaking down and asking someone for help. Apparently, it's considered unthinkable to leave by any other means than public transportation. After walking through a parking garage, I finally came up for air and discovered, of all things, a driving range. It's probably a pretty good guess that there aren't too many cities of over six million people where you'll find something like that upon exiting one of its major train stations.
After a night at the Star Guesthouse whose manager is named — and I swear I’m not making this up — Charlie Chan (I was tempted to sign in as Mantan Moreland but had to show them my passport), I headed over to the modern Hung Hom Station of the Kowloon Central Railway (KCR) to pick up my ticket to Beijing. Then, after shopping for food to picnic on along the way, I went back to the station and waited since I had a large heavy bag and nowhere to check it.
After spending about three hours knocking back cappuccinos in a Starbucks to help beat my jet lag it was time to go into the waiting room for passengers going through customs — Hong Kong being part of a special administrative zone for this ostensibly communist state. Because of SARS, the first thing that happened after having my visa stamped was getting poked in the forehead with an instant thermometer. Then, I sat in a dim, simple and not entirely pleasant waiting room, with a fast-food counter and a duty-free shop.
About a half-hour before leaving, we were allowed get into our cars. You could see that the train was well staffed because almost everybody was outside standing tall in dark blue outfits that looked a lot like police uniforms to welcome us aboard. Because I could afford it, I took soft sleeper and had not just the compartment but the entire car to myself. I tried to leave the curtain of the window across the hallway pulled back and my door open so I could see outside both sides of the train but this offended the sensibilities of the attendant who pulled one back into its original position and closed the other.
The compartment looked new and clean and had four berths. There was a little table just under the window and, under that, a plastic garbage pail and a stand for what in China is the inevitable thermos of hot water. The beds have sheets and pillows for you to lie on but just a large comforter to throw on top. The rest rooms were at either end of the car. At the Hong Kong end it was American style, albeit with a wooden seat with the grain arranged in a way that was aesthetically pleasing in a recognizably oriental fashion. On the Beijing end it was Chinese style, which is to say, a hole in the floor. It was a very nice, clean and modern looking hole in the floor. It was a flush hole in the floor. But it was a hole in the floor. How Chinese.
The trip up is about 1,400 miles and takes 26 hours, including a 40-minute layover in Gaungzhou (pronounced, near as I can tell, Gwan-JOE) for customs.
You'd think a place as notoriously cosmopolitan as Hong Kong would look less like the China of your mind than the interior of the main part of the country but exactly the opposite is true — at least based on what I saw out the window of my train. Despite having more tall apartment buildings than I've seen anywhere, including New York, I also saw more rice paddies cared for by people wearing coolie hats per mile leaving Hong Kong than anywhere else in China. And Hong Kong is mountainous like it is in all those beautiful tapestries and paintings. Most of the trip between Hong Kong and Beijing is as flat as Kansas and chock full of nuclear power plants.
Dinner in the diner was greasy but not unpleasant. I had to get up a couple of times because it turns out my seat also doubled as storage space. The beers were large but tasted like weak…um… well never mind. The staff spoke English and translated the menu without being asked. When I was short one yuan to make exact change on a beer, the waitress let it go — despite there being no tipping.
At Beijing West I went through customs again where they confiscated my oranges. Beijing West is easily the largest train station I've ever seen. I'm not coming close to kidding when I tell you that you could fit 10 Grand Centrals inside the thing. I find it hard to believe even now as I type this but I remember measuring it in my head while standing outside. It's huge and has a gate out front that's nothing short of monstrous.
The Beijing subway system now has three lines and though not exactly attractive runs with utilitarian smoothness. The fare is three yuan or about 40 American cents. The fare collection system is decidedly low-tech. After sometimes forcing your way to the front of a mob (the Chinese are not big on patiently standing in line), you buy a paper ticket which is then ripped by a minder in front of the stairs leading to the platform. Everything, including the announcements is in Mandarin and English. Trains will take you to both the north and south of Tianamen Square. To the north is the Forbidden City. That was a genuine wow.
The way back was, as you can imagine, had a lot in common with the trip up except this time there was one scary new wrinkle. We had just left Gaungzhou and were on the last two-hour leg to Hong Kong. Did you even notice how sometimes when two high-speed express trains pass each other, there's sometimes a little thump due to a momentary increase in air pressure? Well, this time the thumps were louder, which impressed but didn't particularly worry me. Since we were close to our destination, I decided it was time to start packing. I was, therefore, quite fortunately at the far end of my compartment when we passed another express train. This time, instead of there being a mere thump, the force and repeated stress apparently caused the window to explode into my compartment as a fusillade of assorted glass chunks came flying in my direction followed by one hell of a draft. My clothes, food and baggage were covered. Still it could have been a lot worse. If it had happened when I was blissfully sitting next to the window admiring the scenery, I could have easily been blinded in both eyes. It was both a freak accident and a narrow escape. The chances of that particular window blowing in on that particular trip must have been astronomical. The chances of it happening during daylight hours at one of the few moments when I was out of range were even more astronomical. I yelled for my attendant. He showed no reaction, simply opened the next compartment and moved my things in. I noticed, however, that workmen were pointing at my car as we passed them.
Once back in Hong Kong my temperature was taken again, only this time using an infrared scanning device so as to invade our personal space less invasively and I passed through easily before heading across the peninsula to grab a ferry to Macau which I found tawdry and depressing but with incredibly delicious Portuguese food.
In Hong Kong I took the MTR subway and the ancient double-decker streetcars. The subway was the very latest in the technology. For one thing they were long articulated units with no doors between cars. Not only does this give them a wonderful feeling of openness but it also allows a cooling breeze to gush through the train. In addition there are glass barriers between the platform and the track, which open only when a train is in the station. That's got to cut way down on accidents, murder, litter and suicides.
The trolleys were great. There's no better way to a quick yet somewhat intimate overview of a city than taking a streetcar through it. Mine headed east until it turned off the main line and went down a street bracketed by butcher and fish shops. The fish were so fresh they were still flopping. One depressing note is that despite being ancient and despite going down the middle of the street, they were generally a lot faster than the new NJTransit line now operating between Hoboken and Bayonne. It's sort of absurd how slow modern trolley lines are in this country. It was the same with the line going from BWI to Penn Station in Baltimore.
One more thing. While in Beijing I dropped by Mao's mausoleum. Love him or hate him, he was definitely an important figure in history, so I thought I'd like to have a look at the remains. Was I in for a surprise. It isn't bad enough that they keep him out in all his embalmed glory like Hitler's brain at a carney show. It's not bad enough that they have the Chinese communist flag tucked up to his chin like a giant bib. What really threw me is that they main light source for the room where he now lies in state is emanating from, of all places, his head.
In other words, they turned him into a lamp.
I suppose that's encouraging, if you really think about it. Despite being the dead prophet of a discredited political system and despite being remembered as a brutal dictator who tormented his people to punish them for his own grandiosity, Mao, nevertheless, continues to illuminate.