Hardly have I started this year with so little time to prepare for what’s going to be quite a bit of new developments in the year.
The most important development is what I call The Chinese Rail Briefing. This is going to be a new, permanent project. The idea is that I’ll be giving weekly briefings about the Chinese railways world.
Updates come in at 12 noon UTC (that’s 20:00 Beijing time) — I picked this time because I’m aware interest in the rail network in China is global — and so it “accommodates” people awake from Sydney via London and Zürich all the way to the US East Coast and Brazil.
Podcast
The podcast will be coming soon. (Link to come a few hours before launch.)
Substack
The main bit here is the Substack newsletter. It’ll be my first paid newsletter and it’ll be a permanent fixture.
Coming weekly on Mondays, I’ll update you on the developments of the network. In particular, what I’m sure you’ll come to love are the updates in English about upcoming network expansions.
I’ll be updating this page in the next few days — I’m personally taking some time off on 1st January with the family, but will always have digital devices close to hand…
Within 24 hours, I had crossed territorial borders six times (in and out), by air, road (bridge), and sea (hydrofoil), with two more to come within the next 12 hours (rail). The end of Zero Covid in Mainland China and the unconditional opening of its border (no Covid tests except if coming from abroad in the past week, no quarantine) was a huge impetus in getting me across not just provincial, but quasi-national ones. (I say quasi-national, because in spite of them having their own Customs & Immigration systems, Hong Kong and Macau are, and remain, special administrative regions of the People’s Republic of China.)
My Macau trip saw me ride on the LRT system there, where I spotted a problem — the network itself was virtually unpromoted. In spite of never actively gambling, I don’t think those who want to take chances with their cash would also want to take chances with transport — whilst stepping off the light rail train doesn’t give that oomph as stepping off a limousine, the problem the world faces is a too car-centric transport system the world over (especially in the US). Cotai West station was really very poorly connected with public transport in spite of it being close to shopping centres and entertainment venues alike, whereas its more “eastern” counterpart, Cotai East, was far better — it had hotels and the like within minutes from the LRT stop.
Hong Kong’s new East Rail line extension across Victoria Harbour might appear trivial, but it’s an extension bringing a transport revolution. The much-loathed interchange at Kowloon Tong is no more; customers travelling to and from Hong Kong Island into the eastern part of the New Territories (Sha Tin, Sheung Shui etc) now don’t need to bother first getting on a Tsuen Wan line train, then changing to a Kwun Tung line service (even if it’s a cross-platform interchange), and finally walking up and down levels at Kowloon Tong. It’s now effortless to go between Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories.
Crossing the Hong Kong-Mainland China border at West Kowloon was effortless, but one major issue with the station is a changeover to an all-China Railways ticketing system. The ticketing system remains split between an MTR system and a China Railways one, with the machines not clearly labelled, and thus it was hard for me to pick up my Mainland Chinese expenses ticket when I stumbled upon the wrong type of machine. Staff, too, were of limited use when it came to helping me. A welcome addition, however, was a new set of boarding and security gates at the beginning for customers in First, Premier, and Business Class.
This whirlwind trip was timed to fit right down to the last minute, and it’s likely I won’t repeat one on such a tight deadline. Next time, I’ll sit down on Hong Kong trams and try the entire system and all its routes. Then, try the newer stations on the Tuen Ma line, as well as the new Peak Tram. In spite of the city being sapped of its liveliness for the best part of four years (2019 protests plus 2020-2022 under Zero Covid), I’m confident the city can survive and even revive. I’m headed to town more often by rail, and it’ll be exciting to see how it grows its rail network.
Peking station. Terminus for trains from Mongolia, North Korea even, and of course, Europe — that’d be Moscow. The Vostok coming in every so often, and also China’s equivalent, Trains K3 and K4. Just a few years back, the biggest headache for Beijing would be replacing the K3/K4 service’s 1990s rolling stock.
Today, the question is if these trains can run again. On 24 June 2022, I boarded, for the first time this year, a non-Suburban train from the main Beijing railway station, to find the station intact — and completely empty.
An Unwelcome Welcome at the Ticket & ID Check Gates
I’m one of the very few expats granted permanent residency in China, so like most locals, I can just book a ticket on my Green Card and touch in on my ID like most Chinese citizens. Right?
Wrong. Although it’s a good thing they’ve redone the Ticket & ID checkpoint gates, with most of these moving on to an automated solution, it’s still very frustrating for people who aren’t Chinese citizens of the mainland and have a completely mainland Resident Identity Card.
Ticket and ID checkpoint gates at Beijing Railway Station
In addition, I was also required to show evidence of a recent Covid test — which I do virtually every single day now, and have done so since the start of May 2022. I think the problem must have been due to the fact that my Green Card showed no evidence of a negative test, as all tests were registered on my passport — as required by the Beijing Covid Pass (Health Kit). I find it odd, but not unexpected, as locals have all done on their national ID — and I need to use two different ID documents.
Before moving on, I’d like to actually congratulate the station for achieving nationwide listed status. Indeed, not every single station in China needs to look like something so amazingly novel that they outdo the likes of the ÖBB (Austria), NS (the Netherlands), or Renfe (Spain)!
Congrats, Beijing Railway Station, for achieving Listed status!
Inside an Almost-Empty Station
I’ve status in the railway station lounges operated by YueTu, a third-party premium services provider working with the railways, but I wasn’t able to get into the lounge this time — as it was closed, victim of Zero Covid. So I spent much time instead looking at what has now become a completely empty Beijing main station.
The views were horrific. No, nothing scary like dead bodies or Dracula, but to see this super-busy hub now reduced to this…
…was scary. This used to be an international hub with trains to exotic destinations across countries, continents even. No longer…
However, one visible improvement was the signage, although I wasn’t very sure if the excessive use of colour was to the benefit of the ridership — or too much, really. In the 2009 norms, “just” white type would be used on signs themselves, against a dark blue background (or turquoise for the exits, or dark grey for station services).
Gate 4 inside Waiting Room 4 would be where I would board the train. It remained desolately empty, although this time, my Green Card worked on the ticket gates, and I would be good to board the train — down this time tunnel, it almost seemed.
Meanwhile, the “8” gates — inside a long corridor labelled as “Waiting Lounge 8” — were all completely cordoned off. They were an extra set of gates to allow passengers to board trains directly — no need to go into a separate waiting room.
Beijing Railway Station from Level 2 upstairs
About this post
This post was written on 24 June 2022 (with subsequent minor edits) in Beijing, China mainland.
For a long time, I have been very interested in counting the number of miles – kilometres – all that, for all rail journeys I’ve made. However, so far, these were for the national, territorial, or regional train systems I’ve travelled in.
Although I’ve been a very active user of metro systems and trams – Beijing has the largest subway system in northern China, and one of the biggest in the world, and Zürich has a genuinely expansive tram network – I’ve never really incorporated mileage done on the systems as part of my “trains mileage”, until lately. The rationale appeared simple: it didn’t make sense to keep track of your metro and tram travels, because they will just be used for the short sprint around town, and not to get you from Portugal to Singapore (or at least so in the future)…
Inertia to count metro and tram miles as part of train miles was slowly building, and I felt the time was right to slowly incorporate them in after many first journeys on very new metro systems around China; but they’re now part of a new set of record I’m keeping – instead of spending months or even years trying to re-calculate existing journeys. Of course, I will continue to subsequently calculate previous venue, but I’m slowly “getting up there” – and so will probably be missing out on a few journeys done at a much younger age.
The new set of rail records – which I’m calling New Train Records (NTR), surprise! – will be far more accurate than any other I’ve done before. They will incorporate national rail, metros, trams, as well as just about any other form of rail-based travel the world over – regardless if it’s just a hop across the street, or across an entire continent.
I’m starting this from an almost empty Platform 8 at Beijing Railway Station (no I’m not, I’m dictating this into my recording microphone subsequently at home!), and it’s actually quite fitting as I reset an incredibly existing lifetime global record of over half a million kilometres (this lifetime global record will continue to be kept and updated as needed). Apart from me and three other members of platform staff, it’s pretty much a case of zero on the platform – as I board the train with zero miles done and just one station visited in the NTR. ( China’s extreme Zero Covid lockdowns have absolutely decimated domestic travel – and made international travel all but impossible). Hopefully, one of these days, Corona will revert to being merely the name of a beer – and we can genuinely celebrate when I have completed my millionth – both lifetime global, and NTR.
Is the Xiongan New Area (雄安新区) finally the northern China equivalent of Shanghai and Guangdong’s mega-development areas? If you are looking at infrastructure development in that part of northern China, you might be tempted to conclude that it is indeed the case.
The project itself has been hugely controversial — critics have claimed that it’s basically trying to make something disproportionately colossal in a part of northern China that’s vastly underdeveloped. Optimists say that this could be the solution to finally solving Beijing’s almost never-ending growing pains.
I’m sure that both camps were there on board the first train to Xiongan, which departed from — anywhere else? — Platform 1 at Beijing West railway station on 27 December 2020. Unfortunately, we didn’t seem to be able to travel in the special train reserved for that very intercity line — however, it was nice to be back onboard an inaugural run — the first one for me since the Covid-19 pandemic; and, in my case, the first one where I bought my railway ticket using a Chinese Green Card, after being granted permanent residency earlier in the spring. What the standing I had in the rail community in China, it would only be a matter of time before the microphones and cameras from the media found me onboard the train…
Xiongan railway station at self was well-designed — probably “too” well-designed, and too colossal at that. Parts of the railway station actually did not look like a rail station at all, both to my delight — and also to my disappointment, as signage was missing in a lot of positions. There was also a lot of random mistranslations – “Net Car“ seem to be a poor replacement for “ridesharing”, for example. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that the departure gates were at the very same level as the entrance — in too many railway megahubs across China, you had to go up or down a level – but this no-nonsense design at Xiongan station really made it stand out.
Lots of Xiongan itself still very much remains a work in progress, so there was no way I could go into really “central” Xiongan for now. They are, however, planning it as a key hub station on a number of very important high-speed routes across China, including a new easterly route from Beijing to Hong Kong, planned also to extend to Macau, and to Taiwan — the latter, probably in the remote distant future.
In the meantime, if you wanted to go there today — you might have to take the plane. And of course, on the very same line is Daxing International Airport. You can get off there to connect to the world… that is, if they let you cross the border these days during the pandemic…
Just a few days back, the city of Beijing announced an end to inbound quarantine for all domestic travellers from the rest of China coming into Beijing. To me, this was a great chance to finally get some mileage on the rails.
Unlike my very last journey in late January 2020, the facemask is now a standard requirement to get any length of mileage on board the rails. However, it was also seen as a sign of solidarity — between citizens alike, as well as between me and the rest of the railway family. So I donned mine on with a special feeling of pride, the fact that we were fighting this virus together.
Today I got to meet with the people behind Badaling Great Wall railway station — a station I briefly visited in very early 2020. We went around the entire station looking for where we could improve signage, what facilities were alien to staff, as well as many other things.
Meeting station staff, platform level, Badaling Great Wall railway station
Before we arrived at the station, I also gave Qinghe terminus in northwestern suburban Beijing a good look around, in particular at the underground ticket office — now retermed an “integrated service centre”. I also had my recording kit around — so I could record content for rail staff to take a look at, for them to improve their English ahead of the 2022 Winter Games.
The Beijing-Zhangjiakou HSR is indeed a very new line, with many station facilities never trialled before on other lines around the Chinese capital, at the very least. I look forward to going to many other stations on the line, in particular the intermediate stations outside Beijing. Meantime, I’m happy to finally be back with people I know in the real community, and hope this pandemic will end sooner than later.
Just before 07:00, my wife and I arrived at Hong Kong West Kowloon railway station by High Speed train.
But this would be an arrival like never before. It would be the first time we would cross borders inside a railway station itself in East Asia. Furthermore, media attention just made it an even bigger event.
I gave what was probably my first meeting interview inside the border crossing itself on the day — media from both mainland China and Hong Kong were very much interested in how this globetrotting Swiss citizen on the rails thought about this very new addition to the network. This being a border crossing area, security staff were pretty much everywhere — so it almost looked like a celebrity appearance!
There was indeed a question I was asked which got the ire of mainland Enforcement – the fact that some in Hong Kong just didn’t like this station, as it had a part of it under mainland Chinese legal jurisdiction. I answered back saying that this being the first day of rail services, it was too quick to jump to conclusions — plus, the notion of crossing borders at the railway station was not alien at all — take, for example, the juxtaposed border checks on Eurostar (or what we used to have at Basel railway station between Switzerland and France).
Hong Kong media even invited me to pen an Opinion piece on my feeling of being on the very first train to enter Hong Kong by High Speed Rail. Being the pro-rail person I was, I tried not to go off the rails with lavish praise — but indeed, I was very happy that I would now be able to visit Hong Kong using only the rail network — no more long delays at Beijing Capital Airport to be expected!
The new station finds itself with connections to three local city lines — the Tung Chung line, the West Rail line, and the Airport Express. Of course, these are all in the “Hong Kong port area”, which you get you after exit the “Mainland port area”, having completed Customs & Immigration. I was delayed for a slight bit at immigration, because my Swiss passport had part of the polycarbonate info page snapping… a serious design fault that seemed difficult to rectify… I was allowed to cross the border after being advised to replace the passport next time I return to Mainland China. Hong Kong officials, on the other hand, had no problems at all with the passport.
The best part about this HSR connection into Hong Kong is that it links directly to the rest of the national High Speed Rail network in mainland China. Thus, by using Train Connections (and getting onward tickets), you can virtually get to any station in mainland China on the high-speed network.
I look forward to visiting Hong Kong again by HSR — meantime, please allow me to cheat my way out, for now, using air miles which are just about to expire…
