I traveled to Lhasa last September by taking the newly-opened train from Guangzhou. I would like to release my travel review here for potential travelers' reference. This review mainly concentrate on this new train, a huge masterpiece of Chinese people.

When we got out of Southern China and into the Tibetan border regions, the sceneries outside the windown started to change. The train journey itself was long, tiring but also pleasant. Everything outside the train window is beautiful. The train crawled and creeped through the countryside, mountains, villages and when we entered Tibet, gorgeous view of long flat plateaux and frozen rivers and snow mountains came to your eyes. Very touching, you will never see that in any other parts of the country. As the train climbed higher, the pressure increased rapidly. My facial cream was squeezed out of the bottle when I opened the lid and I started to have some difficulty by breathing. Also I had a slight headache and hard to fall asleep. On the first night, it is because of a screaming baby in the cabin next door. On the second night, it is because the high altitude. Then I curled up the curtain to look outside. I never saw the stars so bright and shining. Couldn't be more beautiful. I lied on my berth and tried to worked out which were the few constellations I knew, this helped me get back to sleep.

The toilet in soft sleeper cabin is western-styled, the rest are all Chinese holes in ground which are as evil as could be. The hard-sleeper beds are soft, but very space-limited, like only about 18 inches wide. I dare not to turn around when I was on the bed to avoid falling down on the floor. Although the train was said to be non-smoking, I was surprised to find that between the cabin, there were at least a half dozen men smoking. The staff or police did not seem to pay any attention to this, and if you sit in the restaurant cabin you can see why: nobody seems to smoke so much as the police. The trainmen seem quite like their job. There were about 8 on board, all they did is sit, eat, smoke and chat. There are no doors in hard-sleeper cabins. The most infuriating Chinese music was played at full volume from about 7am through to about 10.30pm, with very few breaks. The same four or five songs played over and over again.

As the train headed further into Tibet, a set of three audacious recorded messages were replayed repeatedly, to make sure you are aware of three things:

1) The Qinghai Tibetan Plateau Railway is the greatest feat in the history of railway development, designed to help the minority peoples integrate with mainland China (this would be more plausible if the Tibetans were actually allowed to leave Tibet).
2) Contrary to certain suggestions, the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau Railway actually helps the local environment, as the government spent quite a lot of money on developing 33 corridors for wild antelope to frolic and mate in.
3) "You may be curious to know how much the workers were paid to work in these difficult conditions": well, no figure is given. But we are reassured that the government installed heaters in the workers' toilets so that they didn't catch a cold while working.

So long as you have the patience to sit at the window, the sceneries won't disappoint you, really exhilarating. I'd definitely recommend the train journey if you have time to take it. It is also a good opportunity to learn some Mandarin or Tibetan.

Client's information:

Mr.Matt  2008-4-9 10:42