Transport in China

To get there: flight with Aeroflot
We flew with Aeroflot from Paris to Shanghai with a stop in Moskou. All of the really negative feedback online had scared me quite a bit. However, the flights were on time, the flight attendants were very friendly, the food wasn’t worse than expected and warm. The transfer in Moskou went smoothly and our luggage was sent immediately to our final destination. For those who wonder: you don’t need a Russian transit visa if your waiting time is under 12 hours. The in-flight entertainment is very limited (only a few screens with only 1 movie playing), but we heard about this beforehand so we took our portable DVD player – problem solved!

Trains
In China we travelled by train so we didn’t use internal flights because we wanted to see the landscape and also it’s cheaper. The trains are really easy to book:
1. look online (www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains) to find the train you need
2. write the information in English (train number, number of persons, timings, and whether you want a hard seat, hard sleeper or soft sleeper)
3. ask someone in the ho(s)tel to translate in Chinese. No one ever refused this to us, even when the ho(s)tels charge between 20 and 50 yuan to book 2 train tickets (a service we obviously didn’t use)
4. go to the train station, hand over the piece of paper. They show you on the screen what the different options are, you point at the one you want, pay and it’s done!

We tried both the hard seats and the hard sleepers, not the soft sleepers because they were ridiculously expensive (same price as a flight).

Hard seats
Hard seats are described online as the hell on earth and they are not. You are just sitting close to lots of Chinese people, mostly students and people who can’t necessarily afford the sleeper tickets. Most of the train wagons are hard seats. We did a 20-hour train trip on a hard seat, which included a night and that was a bit tough because the lights staid on during the entire trip. But for a day trip, the hard seats are fine. By the way, the seats aren’t hard, but soft, so don’t worry about that. It’s a great way to observe the Chinese :) - and don’t worry about that either, it’s perfectly ok in China to stare at people (we think, because we got stared at a lot – although that may also be because my husband wore shorts in November – something that seemed to be a first in China as we had people taking pictures of him and old ladies pointing their finger at his legs in surprise…).

Hard sleepers
Hard sleepers indicate wagons that have compartments with 6 beds in. We chose the upper and middle sleeper, not the lowest one because then you need to be very social and while that is cool for a bit, it’s a bit more difficult when you’re on a 10 hour trip and just want to read rather than practice your sign language with a nice old Chinese man. It was easy to sleep on the middle or top bunk. The lights went out around 23h and they come and wake you up when you’re approaching your stop.

The only downpoint of the trains are the toilets, which are just a hole in the ground and when you’re not used to this it takes a bit of practice (balance mainly). These “squat” toilets are also common in public places, but in all of our ho(s)tels the toilets were western. Btw did you know that in Dutch we call those "French toilets", whereas the French call it "Turkish toilets" :) Wikipedia says "squat toilets are also known as Arabic, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Iranian, Indian, Turkish or Natural-Position toilets"!

Tube
For trips in Shanghai and Beijing we used the tube, which is very modern, easy to use and cheap. The ticket machines have an option to translate everything in English. You just indicate your end stop on the screen and pay (usually 2 yuan per person per trip). You get a card which you use to get through the gates (like the Oyster in London) and at your end stop you insert your card. Easy!

What you do need to know about the Chinese is that it is extremely important for them to conquer a place to sit in the tube. So the moment the doors open, they don’t let people out first, they just storm inside and try to get a seat. The first time it’s weird, and then you just do as the Chinese. When in Rome…

Bus
In the smaller cities without a tube, we used buses very frequently. It’s again very cheap (1 or 2 yuan per person per trip) and the standard travel guides provide all necessary bus numbers. We usually did take the name of our destination with us written in Chinese just to make sure the bus went to the correct stop. I would say that the bus is for the adventurous traveller. A few examples… Our guide book said to get off at the end stop. However, the bus was going in a loop and we noticed too late so we got off way too late, at a busstop which didn’t have the corresponding bus with no one around who spoke any English. We started walking until we found a very nice hotel where someone could indicate us the direction of the correct bus stop. On another occasion we went on a day trip. We took the bus at the train station, but in the evening the bus didn’t go back to the train station, but to a bus station, at at least 1 hour walking distance from the train station… so we walked. Don’t take the bus if you can’t stand surprises like this. We didn’t mind because we had the time and again, because it allowed us to travel like the Chinese.