Railway station in Beijing.   This and Shanghai’s station is bigger than most airports!

Its just as formal and requires all the security prerequisites as well, scanning your luggage, showing passport and documents of where you are intending to go.   This is a departure louge which the gate takes you to the railway platform.

Nothing too intense but China pretty much expects you to have detailed list of where you going, this isn’t a place where you can make it up as you go.

Finally to the platform!

I bought two tickets online to go each way from Beijing to Shanghai before I left the UK, this was US$85 each.

This journey takes 5 hours, there are only a handful of stops.  There was a screen on the wall of the train that were travelling at 306kph (190mph) most of the way.   What better way to go between two mega cities on the Chinese own showcase high speed rail system?    This doesn’t feel fast, as the train track is raised up and you just glide gloriously smoothly.  This isn’t even the fastest train, the Chinese have another railways elsewhere which uses Japanese technology at 400kph.

I took my laptop and watched some films, this might of got me into trouble, I watched a video about Brother Yun with headphones.   Before I left I copied this off to Youtube to MP4 and saved to a hidden folder of my Chinese made Lenovo laptop.  Brother Yun is best known as the father of the modern Chinese church, having escaped from prison after being locked up for the crime of being Christian.

15. Beijing train museum

17. Chinese street food breakfast