"Feel the difference" - a Chinese reserved seat car (how it is better and worse than ours from Russian Railways). How does the Chinese reserved seat work and what is its difference (photo) Chinese cars
In our opinion, the train is the best means of transportation in China. It's clean and pleasant for the most part. They go every day, with very rare exceptions. It is quite comfortable to be at the stations, and the employees of the railway are neatly dressed and friendly, however, like all Chinese. In addition, the train is a great way to get to know the country from the inside, just looking out the window at the passing landscapes, or talking to people. We were amazed at the sociability of the Chinese! Chinese trains are of different types, seats can also be of different comfort. And now in more detail. This information will be useful to you when planning an independent trip to China.
Categories of Chinese trains
1. Type G trains — 高速 “G” Trains (High-Speed)
The fastest and fastest trains with the fewest stops, the most expensive. There are only seats here. And what's the point of doing recumbent, if it's only 5 hours to go?)) They accelerate to 350 km / h and more. For example, the distance Beijing-Shanghai such a train flies in 5 and a half hours and costs in this message from 550 yuan. The fastest train in the world - the Shanghai Maglev, accelerated to 486 km / h!
2. Type C and D trains — 城际“C” Trains (Inter-City)动 “D” Trains
Type C train
Also very fast. They have slightly more stops and are slightly slower than Type G trains. They have both lying and sitting places. For example, the train travels the same distance Beijing-Shanghai in 8-9 hours and costs from 408 yuan.
3. Type Z trains — 直达 “Z” Trains (Direct)
Type Z train
High-speed trains connecting Beijing with other major cities in the country. These trains are usually overnight and run non-stop. There are different places: seated, reserved seat, coupe. The Beijing-Xi'an distance travels in 11 hours and costs from 275 yuan.
4. Type T trains — 特快 “T” Trains (Express)
T-type train
Also regular trains. There are all types of places. Xi'an-Urumqi (2500 km) arrives in a little more than a day and costs from 280 yuan. These trains run all over the country.
5. Type K trains — 快 "K" Trains (Fast)
Type K train
Those are the ones we went to. They go a little slower than T-type trains. Usually the cars are red. There are also all types of places. Xian-Urumqi (2500 km) overcomes in a day and 10 hours and costs from 273 yuan. Late, sometimes by 10 minutes, sometimes by an hour….
6. No letter prefix — No Prefix (Common)
Trains with numbers without letter prefix
The slowest and therefore the cheapest type of train in China. But it is quite possible to go, as there is everything you need for your stay.
Types of carriages in Chinese trains
There are 4 types (classes) of wagons:
1. hard seat- an analogue of the Russian train, that is, ordinary seats. Can shake the psyche of stress-resistant people. But ... it depends on how you treat it. If you like comfort, then ride in higher class carriages. The trick is that when the seats run out, at the box office they start selling tickets without a seat, i.e. standing. Our friend took such a ticket, and he has 2 days to go! But nothing, he returned alive and well))
Schematic map of Chinese railways
And finally, a little video about the new highway connecting Beijing and Guangzhou. It's already built!
We hope this article was helpful! If you have any questions, ask, we will try to answer.
Look around China and beyond.
A sort of predator of railways with an elongated rounded muzzle. And although such roads in China are really developing rapidly, nevertheless, most ordinary Chinese travel by ordinary "slow" trains. And at least half of them move in second-class carriages. They are not like ours - three-tiered and with a passage, and this is a whole road world with its own laws.
To be honest, at first I was afraid of the reserved seat there. To plunge into a dense human sea of a completely unfamiliar composition is quite exciting. It seemed that everything there was full of poor Chinese and everything around was incomprehensible. So on the first expedition, almost to the very end, I traveled either on high-speed trains or in compartments. And just before leaving (from Yan'an to Beijing) he ventured for the sake of interest to pass in a reserved seat. It turned out - quite normal, and not scary at all. Yes, there are some nuances. But they are surmountable.
In the Second Chinese Expedition, the platzart had to be faced already tightly. I didn’t have pre-purchased tickets for most of the route, and I had to decide a lot along the way. There are no tickets for 1-3 days for many destinations, except for a reserved seat or seatless. It's like in the USSR: there are a lot of trains, the traffic intensity is very high, and the turnover of tickets too. Therefore, the reserved seat really helped out - during the travels I had to use it six times and save a lot of overnight stays in hotels. The main thing is to try to take down or in the middle. Along the way, I also broke the template that in the Celestial Empire only losers from the lower social strata move on the reserved seat. Nothing like this! Mostly those who are simply not lucky to take a coupe at the box office go in the reserved seat. And not those who want to save money.
So now I will tell you in pictures about the Chinese reserved seat.
And about how their own local road world is being built there.
The Chinese reserved seat is not the same as ours: three tiers of shelves and an aisle with side seats
2. Well, let's fast forward to the stuffy autumn island of Hainan and at Haikou station late in the evening we will sit in a reserved seat to go to Guangzhou?
3. So, the first car I got in the Second Expedition was car No. 17 of the K1168 train. I took it literally an hour and a half before departure, because until the last I hoped that I could find a ferry directly to Guangzhou with an overnight stay. But, having passed both ports in Haikou, he broke off and had to change the plan. The passenger on the train is given just such a card for the duration of the trip. Car number (17) and section number in it (13). The section indicates the place with a hieroglyph. As you can see, I have a lower T with a dash.
4. The very first thing the Chinese do after landing is to start eating as soon as possible. 70% is kuksa, doshirak or something like that. Because of this, there is a specific pungent smell in the car after departure. True, it quickly disappears from air conditioning and becomes barely perceptible. But it never disappears. Another specific smell that never completely disappears is the smell of jasmine tea.
5. Quite convenient in the reserved seat there is that the owners of the upper shelves can sit on the side seat. By default, it is believed that the passengers of the lower shelves do not apply for these seats, but those who sit on them are from above or from the middle. It is now late (our train is loading onto a ferry across the Qiongzhou Strait), and almost all the passengers have gone to bed, but during the day the seats are almost completely occupied.
6. There, the uncoupled neighboring cars are visible in the window. Now we'll ride the waves for half an hour.
7. The regime in the reserved seat is observed quite strictly. Better than ours. At night, everything is literally cut down, except for section numbers burning in the dark. So you can sleep well. In addition, thumping, loud chatting, playing music or fidgeting in your section at night is not encouraged: such a process can be interrupted rather rudely by Chinese conductors, because the rest of the passengers must rest. This is quite a big difference from our orders, they are more liberal in our country.
8. Linen in the reserved seat is made in advance, and is always included in the cost of the seat. Sometimes it turns out that underwear is "transitional": if you sit down at a small intermediate station, no one will just re-lay it for you without a reminder. You can go to bed in the clothes of the previous passenger :) However, when you specifically remind the conductors, they come and re-lay immediately. But without a reminder, nothing will happen.
9. An important sign of any section in the reserved seat is a huge thermos with "Chinese" boiling water (temperature is about 70 degrees). Without drinking bowls and thermoses, the Chinese cannot exist at all.
10. This photo shows the section numbers below the window. In the dark, they glow red so that passengers can quickly find theirs.
11. Passage of a reserved seat car. It is designed to ensure that a cart with groceries or a person passes normally and freely along a person sitting by the window.
12. The third shelf is located high, and it is not easy to climb there.
13. They usually climb there from the side, along such a ladder.
14. Here the passage is already filled with people, late in the morning and many have a snack.
What kind of contingent moves by reserved seat in China?
At first I thought they were people who wanted to save money or who didn't have the money for a compartment, much less a bullet train. However, it turned out not to be so: those who are relatively poorer (mostly residents from the provinces) in the reserved seat are no more than a third. The main part of reserved seat passengers are those who simply could not get a ticket for a higher category. That is, the contingent strongly overlaps with compartment cars, it’s just that those who have taken a ticket either much in advance or caught it via the Internet are traveling in a compartment. Tickets are now sold in China in 20 days, and earlier (most recently) it was only 10. This is especially true for popular destinations or public holidays: it’s impossible to get a ticket for five days already, the demand for them is so great. Because of this, I also could not get to Chongqing, which I had to miss - and precisely because of the lack of suitable tickets.
So in the reserved seat you can meet a student of the capital's university, and an engineer from Manchuria, and dockworkers from coastal ports, and a wild peasant woman from a remote province. In a word, a real hodgepodge.
What is the difference between a reserved seat and a coupe, except for comfort? Greater freedom of communication.
In principle, the people here are friendly, there are few “merchants-rogues” (through whom a typical opinion is formed about the Chinese in a standard tourist), and they immediately look at the laova with great interest, especially if he travels in the direction from the outback, and not from a large center like Shanghai. During my seven trips in the reserved seat, I managed, for example, to learn the hieroglyphs of food very productively - and during the day I gathered five “fans” in my section who diligently taught me to pronounce the words correctly, and at the same time demonstrated the difference in pronunciation in different provinces. Or, another time, get a master class in writing hieroglyphs with a pen. There is a whole art - where to start, and how to add lines. True, I didn’t really remember anything from this - but nevertheless, it was interesting.
Sometimes there are those who try to impose communication, but usually, if the interlocutor does not want, this is stopped quickly enough by the neighbors themselves. Of course, my observation refers to the "laowai-Chinese" relationship, and not to intra-Chinese communication.
15. Since the linen in the car is always made up and by default, the Chinese do not particularly bother sitting on someone else's linen, like ours - he folded a corner there, sat on a bare shelf, so as not to get dirty with clothes. The Chinese simply jumped off and sat down.
16. Take pictures in a reserved seat very difficult: the first hour and a half you are the subject of everyone's attention. Then they watch you for some more time - the very fact of laying in a reserved seat is very unusual for the Chinese. And only after about half a day you become part of the interior, they finally get used to you. So I had to pervert as soon as possible: stealthily, with a swivel screen and only a small camera. The mirror immediately attracts attention, and the naturalness disappears.
17. The aisles between the cars are always open, this is a feature of Chinese trains and I talked about them separately.
19. And here - an afternoon full house. Who could, went down from the upper shelves and all the seats in the aisle are occupied.
20. Approximately every three to four hours, a conductor passes through the car and cleans it. It passes twice: first with a broom, then with a plastic garbage bag, where everyone throws packages and so on. It’s impossible otherwise: the Chinese litter incredibly much in their lives, and if they don’t clean up all the time, they will quickly clog the entire car with waste. And so - the car remains relatively clean.
21. The Chinese drink as much as they eat. Actually, I also drank a lot there. The nature of the food is highly conducive to fluid intake.
22. Passengers have a lot of various gadgets, probably many times more than in our reserved seat in the provinces (except for the St. Petersburg - Moscow line). Seeing a book or a paper newspaper in someone's hands is a huge rarity, mostly they read text or pictures from tablets and large smartphones.
23. Nevertheless, a specific ambush is often found in the reserved seat - de-energized sockets throughout the car. In the compartment they monitor this, and there I didn’t run into such a thing. And here - three times, almost half of their trips. So there is nothing to recharge your devices with, and you arrive in a new city without energy. According to the standard, sockets in a reserved seat are like eight - four paired blocks, through a section.
24. It's time to eat, and the massive smell of doshirak with soy sauce :)
25. At the top you can see a shelf for the things of the upper passengers. She's almost up to the ceiling.
26. A wash compartment in a reserved seat is always for 3 seats (in a compartment - 2 or 3). Here it gets dirty faster - there are one and a half times more passengers.
About toilets. They're dirtier than the coupe. Sometimes even at the end of the route they are flooded with water (a couple of times it hit).
This, unfortunately, is the inconvenience of the reserved seat. But it also depends on the train. If it is category T, then the toilet is clean. If K or below, then alas. But there is also useful advice: if the neighboring car is a compartment, go there. The conductors do not care, and the passage is open around the clock.
28. Three or four times a day, starting at 9 in the morning, a "nourishing" aunt rides along the car, with a cart. He speaks loudly and in a singsong voice, and if you hear it, you will have time to buy it. On the way, it is worth taking ready-made hot meals packed in film, or vacuum-sealed packages. It is better not to take open pieces from trays (I did not risk it). There is a complex snack there in the region of 15-20 yuan (the second with meat or chicken, salad, drink). Do not forget to wash your hands constantly, before and after, and generally more often.
About a quarter of the passengers take hot snacks, take another quarter with them (if the train does not come from the capital or Shanghai), and about half make cartons with cookies (this is the most massive train meal in China).
29. Thermojuice in hand with you almost always. Without a thermos-column, a Chinese is not quite a Chinese :)
30. Chinese railway workers outside the window. A lot of manual labor, less small-scale mechanization than we have.
31. The problem of protection from the sun is solved in a very interesting way. If we have taken the path of abolishing curtains, and there is only a complete closing of the window with a tight latch, then the Chinese also put blinds on the windows. It is from the sun, but without completely removing the light. Approximately half of the reserved seats also have LCD screens, however, they are turned on only in the evening and centralized films are played. Beginning without fail with party-seasoned ones, and then all sorts of tearful melodramas and kung fu a la bruce li.
32. The second passage of the conductor through the car with a plastic bag. About half a bag of garbage is collected at a time, the Chinese are masters at this.
33. You have to drink Chinese tea on the road, which is brewed at 70-75 degrees. Our large-leaf Ceylon at this temperature is underbrewed. To be honest, after three weeks of being there, I really want our tea, and not the Chinese flower-herbal aroma. The ubiquitous jasmine is especially infuriating. When I returned home, I could not get drunk on our ordinary tea for a long time :)
34. Chinese hard workers from the installation of power lines. We drove from Xi'an somewhere near Beijing. I managed to talk through a tablet and a google translator with that guy far away, who also had a translator on his gadget.
35. Climb to the top shelf, evening. The ordinary life of a Chinese reserved seat.
36. Tambour for smoking. With the smell of smoking, there is also an ambush here - for the reason that the inter-car crossings do not close and the tobacco smell sips inside the car. Therefore, if possible, it is better not to take the first 2 sections from the washroom. It is best to ride in the reserved seat closer to the middle.
* * *
In general, I must say this for independent travelers: there is no need to be afraid of a reserved seat in China.
This is quite an adequate form of transportation, although with its own nuances. Unlucky to take in a coupe? Take a seat. Try to take seats down if possible, it turns out almost like a coupe in terms of comfort. The middle is worse. The top is inconvenient, except for the option "to go only at night, and get off in the morning." You can draw the hieroglyph of the desired place to the cashier on a piece of paper, the bottom place is T with a dash on the right, see photo No. 3.
The pictures were taken on different flights of the expedition, I just combined them here into one story for the convenience of showing different sides of the trip.
They accelerate to 300 km per hour and allow you to quickly and expensively travel around the country. By the end of 2015, China had more than 19,000 km of high-speed rail, and by 2020, the Chinese are going to build another 23,000 km (at a cost of 2.8 trillion yuan) and connect all major cities in the country.
Last year, the Chinese even offered to build a high-speed railway to Vladivostok, but this idea has so far been stuck at the level of negotiations. Apparently, the Chinese do not want to invest their own funds in the corridor for our shuttles, demanding also Russian participation, and this is now difficult. By the way, in China itself, that the leadership of the PRC spends a lot of money on railways.
It is not yet possible to cover the whole country with local copies of Siemens and Bombardier. Most of western China, where there are mostly mountains and deserts, has not yet been conquered. In the south, there are also branches that are not duplicated by high-speed ones. So there are ordinary trains in China with compartment cars, lace curtains on the windows and tea in cup holders. On one of these trains I went from Dali to Kunming - only 250 km, but the journey took 7 hours!
01. Chinese stations are huge multi-storey buildings with offices and shops.
02. Railway Station Square 
03. Parking is a complete mess, it is impossible to approach with a suitcase. 
04. Everything is packed with cars very tightly. 
05. Policeman's booth on the forecourt. So that no one would get the policeman with questions, he fenced himself off with a ribbon. 
06. There is a paid waiting room at the station! It costs 20 yuan (220 rubles). 
07. For this money they will pour boiling water, take luggage for storage. 
08. This is what the hall looks like. 
09. Luggage storage at the station. The cost of storage is 15 yuan (160 rubles) for two suitcases. All things are checked on the scanner. 
10. There are no elevators at the station, instead, such ramps are made in the middle of the stairs, it is impossible to use them. 
11. Shop 
12. You can buy alcohol on the road. 
13. Only passengers with tickets are allowed into the station, at the entrance everyone is checked by their passport and entered into a computer, things shine through, passengers are searched. Everything is like at the airport. 
14. Free waiting room 
15.
16.
17. They let you out onto the platform only when the train has arrived, you can’t go down earlier. 
18. There are also no normal ramps or an elevator to go down. 
19. Wagon 
20. Everything is like ours) 
21. Sticker with the route. 
22. Chinese railway worker 
23. Coupe like ours 
24. Carpets are beautiful, with patterns! 
25. The linen is clean (I would like to think so), immediately filled. 
26. Trash bowl. There are no outlets, they are in the hallway. 
27. Before departure, they carry food. 
28. And this is an economy class car, like our reserved seat. 
29. There are no doors in the compartment and 3 rows of shelves instead of two. 
30. In the vestibule - open washbasins. Conveniently 
31.
32. Arrived at the final 
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34.
35. Cleaner 
36.
37. Exit from the station. In general, it is not easy to navigate at Chinese stations for those who do not know Chinese. 
38. Here, street vendors sell food with might and main. 
39. Early breakfast 
40.
22.04.2019 , 10:30 19877
In the summer of 2017, a new type of second-class train was launched in China, which successfully serves the Beijing-Shanghai night route. These two-story trains with comfortable carriages and personal space for each passenger fell in love with both the Chinese and the guests of the Celestial Empire. 
To realize the most daring ideas of Chinese engineers, it was necessary to increase the internal volume of the train by 37% and raise the ceilings higher. 
The first thing that strikes in the new Chinese reserved seat is the absence of any division into wagons. Inside the train there is a long corridor along which you can walk from the head to the very tail of the train. The border between the cars is purely conditional - there are toilets, washstands, vending machines with free drinking water. And no vestibules familiar to us. 
The seats on the train are organized conveniently, each passenger is provided with a personal space. All the shelves in the new reserved seat are located in the direction of the train, due to this the corridor seems more spacious than in the old type trains with a longitudinal-transverse arrangement of sofas. 
There are no luggage lockers under the lower shelves, but there is enough space for the heaviest bags and suitcases. For each passenger, disposable slippers, environmentally friendly pillows with buckwheat filler, and a set of fresh bed linen are prepared. A soft adjustable orthopedic backrest is screwed to the wall, which you can lean against to look out the window or read a book. 
Each passenger has his own closed table without drawers and shelves. From the side of the neighboring compartment, your table is a comfortable niche for legs. Such an innovative organization of space made it possible, with a consistently high level of comfort, to increase the number of seats on the train to 880 units. 
A passenger can separate his seat from the corridor with a corrugated textile curtain and find himself in a cozy little room with individual lighting, clothes hangers, a USB connector and universal sockets that fit European, American and Chinese plugs. If desired, a personal window can be closed with a dense opaque curtain. 
In the corridor on the ceiling there are ring-shaped LED lamps, from which a soft, but quite bright light comes. At night, the lights are turned off, leaving only a yellowish night light built into the lower shelves. As for personal lamps, their light does not interfere with fellow travelers, because they are in the “right” place. 
Particularly noteworthy are the ladders along which you can climb to the top shelf. They consist of two deep metal steps recessed into the partition and a handy handrail, thanks to which the top passenger does not have to step on someone's feet, a dining table or bed linen. Everything is thought out to the smallest detail and made for the convenience of people. 
There is no conductor's compartment in sight. But there is a mini-bar with Chinese noodles and drinks. So the passengers of the train will definitely not remain hungry. By the way, noodles are a Chinese alternative to fried chicken, so popular on Russian trains. 
The train moves smoothly and almost silently. The level of noise and vibration in the car is comparable to that in the car. The distance between Shanghai and Beijing, equal to 1318 km, it overcomes in just 11 hours. It moves at a maximum speed of 250 km / h. 
The cost of tickets for this train is just over 6,000 rubles. This is the most expensive reserved seat that you can buy in China. However, if you book tickets in advance, you can buy them cheaper.
And you can see an overview of the new Russian Railways reserved seat cars.
