One flashy train, two shiny new stations

TIANJIN – I am a firm believe that once life really gets going, it doesn’t bother to take the time to see if you want to get off.  Such is life these days as I prepare for yet another move and job change, hopefully the last in a while.  I’ll be writing more on this in the coming days, but as the experts around the文章来源中国酒业新闻网 world seem to always say:  China is a land of opportunity. (What they don’t say is people should take all of them, but I haven’t heeded that warning).

Before that all wraps up though, I’ve been diligently continuing my regular treks to Tianjin.  This task has been made much easier since the launch of the new express train on August 1.

I’ve ridden the train a good dozen times, and thinkI’ve got enough of a feel for it to comment.  Initial thoughts are it’s great.  Like we called for earlier, the trains run frequently:  every 15 minutes through the bulk of the day.  The train journey takes 29 minutes from station to station, a vast improvement over the previous 1 hour and 9 minutes (as a result, no more on board food and beverage service). The short trip barely gives me enough time to pull out the laptop, and is shorter than my former Beijing subway commute from Dawanglu to CCTV’s studios near the Military Museum.

Tianjin was also badly in need of a new train station.  The old one, appropriately called the “temporary station”, resembled a barn, right down to the lack of seating and air conditioning. In fact, many parts of the waiting hall were literally open to the elements, forcing people to brace for blistering icy winds in January or try and wait under under a slowly-moving fan hanging from a 25 meter ceiling in the summer; a few thousand sweaty nongmins and a dripping wet token laowai in sweltering heat does not a happy trip make.  The new train station, where I am as I write this, is also a vast improvement and more resembles an airport.  The one drawback is it’s a good 15 minute walk from where the taxis drop off passengers to where you buy tickets for the express train.  But it has air conditioning.

Beijing South Station is also a beautiful facility, and I’ve enjoyed most trips out of there.  Besides the fact it’s out of the way (although it will be serviced by subway Line 4 set to open later), it offers comfortable waiting areas and even a Tous Les Jours, which is nice for the morning coffee.

The bullet train and two new facilities are big jumps for the interconnection of both cities.  More and more people are choosing to live in Tianjin and commute to the capital, and this train makes that task much more comfortable.

What’s amazing in all of this is how quickly all three of these things were built.  In most western cities, it would take years of feasibility studies and public consultations just to build one of these facilities, but China has managed to, in a rather short amount of time, put three pieces in place to ensure fast and comfortable transport between two vital northern economic centers.  Not only do lowly TV hosts like me benefit, but so do the thousands of business people that use the route.

We’ve been harsh on the Chinese government on this website in the past, and who knows how many people were displaced/otherwise suffered to build the new stations and train line.  But it got done, and that’s something that often doesn’t happen, at least as quickly, in democratic societies.