Written by: Feng Yang
Posted on: May 15, 2018 | 
| 中文
Locals enjoying the high speed train
When transport is convenient, trains are not the fastest choice for long journeys. High-speed trains, however, always brighten up a travelers’ day on middle and short distance journeys. The convenient travel conditions make trips within reach. The breath-taking scenes visible from the windows make every trip a unique experience. As Mark Smith, a British traveling writer, once said, “A quality trip on a train includes three components - the beautiful sceneries outside, the wonderful experience inside, and one’s encounters.”
The changes that high-speed trains bring to tourism are not only about making it more convenient, but more importantly are about linking up former individual resources and regional tourism circles.
“Transport wasn’t very good before, so it took half a day on the bus to go to Huangshan. Now the high-speed train makes it more convenient and it only takes about 1 hour 20 minutes to travel from Hefei South to Huangshan North. We can visit the mountains easily on weekends now,” says Wang Nali, a Hefei citizen who is at the Hefei South Station, waiting for her trip to Huangshan with her family.
In the morning of Dec 11, 2017, at the exit of Nile Station along the Yunnan-Guilin Railway, Liu Yijia’s son Xiaoran was very excited. Liu’s mother, Zhang Fengyun, took off her hat to enjoy the sunshine and remarked, “I don’t even have to wear my feather jacket, for it only takes three hours!” Liu is a white collar worker, working for a big private-owned enterprise in Guiyang. Thanks to the convenience of the high-speed railway, she can enjoy the charm of Yunnan easily with her mother and her child.
In recent years, with the opening of several passenger lines such as Hefei-Fuzhou, Beijing-Shanghai, Shanghai-Kunming-Ningbo, Beijing-Guangzhou, Hangzhou-Shenzhen, Hefei-Bengbu, Harbin-Dalian, Xi’an-Chengdu and Qing Rong Intercity Railways, tourism circles and living circles have been formed, including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei One-Hour Tourism Circle, the Yangtze River Delta One-Hour Tourism Circle, the Pearl River Delta Two-Hour Living Circle, Guangdong-Guangxi-Guizhou-Hunan Four-Hour Economic Circle and the Sichuan-Shaanxi Three-Hour Tourism Circle. The neighboring provincial capitals in China will form one-hour or two-hour economic circles, and the provincial capitals will have half-hour or one-hour living circles with their neighboring cities. The network of high-speed trains greatly shortens the distances between cities, while enhancing the same city effect and improving the recreational activities between cities.
In the era of tourism up-gradation, high-speed trains link up regional tourism circles. One may get up in the morning, take the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway to Beijing, take a walk in Shichahai Park, go shopping in Nanluogu Lane at noon, go grab a bite of authentic Beijing snacks for supper at Huguosi, and go home at night on a train with Peking ducks for the family. If one wants to go somewhere on weekends and experience the temperament and details of a city, a trip on a high-speed train, taking just a few hours, brings one close to the destination and shortens the time. This has been realized, and has already become a way of life in many places.
The fast popularization of high-speed railways influences the development of tourism. At present, the length of operating high-speed railways in China is more than 20,000km, giving births to many “high-speed railway scenic spots,” that are changing the tourism pattern in all the places involved. The highly developed public transport systems of high-speed trains in China include the Yangtze River Delta Circle (mainly around the Shanghai-Ningbo-Hangzhou area), Beijing-Tianjin High-Speed Railway, Guangzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, and the most developed one, Nanjing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway.
Besides, more and more high-speed passenger lines are providing services to ordinary people. Not very long ago, several tourism lines were opened in Fujian and Zhejiang. Together with the lines opened in Beijing and Shanghai, tourism railways are now expanding nationwide.
The recent years have also witnessed the foundations of regional tourism unions formed along high-speed lines, such as Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Tourism Union, Beijing-Fuzhou High-Speed Railway Tourism Union, and the Yangtze River Delta High-Speed Railway Tourism Union. Regional economy is stimulated by high-speed railways. For example, the Beijing-Hebei-Shanxi-Shaanxi High-Speed Railway Tourism Union has abundant tourism resources. Thanks to the high-speed railways connected to each other, tourists can now spend less time and money on traveling through all the scenic spots, in all these four provinces and municipalities.
In addition to that, some scenic spots also provide “high-speed train ticket + scenic spot entrance ticket” coupons. The New Year’s Day of 2018 was the first holiday celebrated after the opening of Xi’an-Chengdu High-Speed Railway, so Zhuge, an ancient town in Shaanxi, provided a special “New-Year’s-Three-Kingdoms-Tour” price, to cope with the sudden increase of tourists, who could buy the ticket to both the Temple of Marquis and Ma Chao’s Mausoleum at half price, with the high-speed train ticket and the ID card in their hands.
The continuous improvement of the high-speed railway network changes the tourism transport pattern. By 2020, an independent passenger lines network will be formed, and will cover the major cities and towns in the three economically developed and populous areas - the Bohai Sea region in North of China, the Yangtze River Delta in East China and the Pearl River Delta. Meanwhile, in South China, with the opening of Lanzhou-Xinjiang and Xi’an-Chengdu high-speed railways, the high-speed networks in Middle and West China are taking shape. Therefore, for Middle and West China that are endowed with abundant tourism resources, the expansion of their tourism circles is at hand.
Translated by Zhu Siyu
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