On taking a train from Shanghai, and visiting tourist attractions in China

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One of the surprising benefits of Shanghai is its efficient transport links. In Vietnam, the roads and railways are so poor that it takes an age to get anywhere. It's less than 80km from Saigon to Mui Ne, the nearest 'nice' beach resort, yet it takes over 5 hours by bus and a similar time by train to the nearest station - Phan Thiet. It's even about 3 hours by private car/taxi. Shanghai has a metro running in the city - now the biggest in the world apparently, and to many places in the suburbs and high speed rail links to the surrounding towns and cities. You can even travel the 1,500 km journey to Beijing in five hours. Can you imagine how long that would take on Vietnamese rail?

Our first sightseeing trip out of Shanghai was to Suzhou, a water town suggested by Lonely Planet for a daytrip. We decided to make a weekend of it and stay overnight.

How (not) to get a train from Shanghai

Most of the highspeed trains out of Shanghai leave from the Hongqiao transport hub, made up of one of the two international airports in Shanghai and a railway station. It is immense. The station alone looks like an airport, all white and shiny with security to scan your bags and you. The sheer size makes the usually simple task of buying tickets and getting on a train quite time consuming.

We got off the metro and went up to the ground floor of the station. There are English signs, but they directed us to multiple ticket windows in all directions. Where did we get the tickets to Suzhou from? The first desks were labeled for the high-speed Beijing trains (which do stop at Suzhou). The queues were huge so we moved on. The signs took us up to the next floor where again signs pointed in all directions for tickets. We decided to follow those for the 'information' in the hope that they could tell us where to go. A helpful girl there pointed us to one set of windows. Seven windows in a row, with different Chinese symbols above them, and no translation. Each had a queue of over ten people waiting.....

...Which queue should we join? We took a guess and chose the middle one (never choose the shortest, it always takes the longest).

And we waited.....

.....And waited.

.....And waited.

Another caucasian couple joined the queue behind us, but we realised from evesdropping on them that it wasn't because it was necessarily the right queue, but because it was the only one with obvious foreigners in it.

Eventually we got to the front, slightly nervous in case it was the wrong desk and we were waved away to the back of another long queue. But no, the friendly English speaking guy on the desk sold us two return tickets to Suzhou and was able to help us choose our train (by the way, you need your passport to book train tickets in China). The next available train left an hour later, so we went into the departure area.

In the departure area, there are numerous gates that you have to go through to get on your train, very similar to the departure gates at an airport. After consulting our helpful girl on the information desk again, we found which one would take us to a train (it's one of the numbers on your ticket) and sat down to wait. Close to the departure time, another enormous queue amassed in front of the gate, so we joined it and once it opened, used our ticket to get through the barrier and made our way to the platform. Another of the numbers on the ticket is the carriage. This is important to note because the trains are looooongggg and thus so are the platforms. Trains don't stop at each station for long so you need to be waiting at the correct position for your carriage (helpfully displayed on the platform) to push your way aboard.

We took a D train, the next highest speed after the Beijing G train, and less than 30 minutes later we were in Suzhou, less than 80km away. If you remember above that it's the same distance from Saigon to Mui Ne, you can see how much more efficient Chinese transport is.

However, it had taken quite a long time, if you start from arriving at the station and finish when we arrived in Suzhou. Navigating the station, buying the tickets and waiting for the train meant that it was early afternoon when we arrived, which would have been annoying had this been a daytrip. There are various ways to book train tickets in advance which I'll talk about on another blog, and I'd recommend doing that in future.

Who knew Chinese gardens were all about rockeries?

That's enough about trains, I'm beginning to sound like someone who takes a flask of tea and a cheese sandwich to hang around at the end of Wigan station in an anorack. Let's talk about Suzhou.

The main railway station is near the old town and an easy walk, but you need to know how to get out of the station and onto the main road, so we spent quite a while wandering around the various entry and exit lanes of the station looking for a way out. If I remember rightly, just walk out to the square and then go to the right and there's a footpath.

Suzhou is quite a big city, but it's the old town that you want to see. It used to be the capital of one of the old Chinese Kingdoms sometime BC, and it's famous for it's gardens. By gardens, it means the grounds of old Chinese residences, which almost all have an enormous rockery in the middle, bonsai trees, a pond/lake/water feature and then various wooden buildings and pavilians containing ornately carved wooden furniture. These buildings sometimes display ancient Chinese writing sets, carvings or performances on traditional instruments or opera.

To get between the various gardens you wander down narrow stone streets beside the multiple canals that crisscross the old town. There are lots of cute stalls and shops selling various trinkets and foods.

As well as the gardens, we visited the North Pagoda, mainly because it was at the end of the street where our hotel was. We climbed the ten staircases to the top where there is a view over the whole city, with the old streets in the foreground looking out towards the new modern city in the distance.

"There are nine million tourists in China" (sung to the tune of that Katie Melua song about bicycles in Beijing)

When you read about visiting Suzhou online, people critisise it by being a disappointment, suggesting that it's not what people imagine when they want to visit a Chinese water town, and that the development has spoiled the old town. I have to disagree. We found it to be a cute town with those pretty views that you picture when you think about old China. Yes, it is developed. There is McDonald's and Starbucks and there are lots of factories and skyscrapers. But you can't expect people to keep things traditional just so we tourists can go and enjoy it and experience the 'China' that we have seen in the movies. There has to be compromise. And yes, it is busy. Very very busy. Like every tourist attraction in China, there are thousands of domestic tourists visiting it on tours, so coaches pull up to each garden and a guide with a megaphone will lead out 50-odd people wearing matching caps displaying the name of the tour company. As I said, this happens at every tourist attraction in China. The bottom line is that there are ALOT of people in China, and as my students would say 'with the development of the economy' many have more money now and want to explore their country. That's obviously great, but it means that everywhere is crowded. You have to deal with it. However, these tours tend to take the same routes so if you get stuck behind one and it bothers you, just duck off down a side street and try to avoid them.



On Saturday night we followed the Lonely Planet advice and found the so-called 'Pub Street' Shiqian jie. We found one bar, called Jane's, that was friendly and had cheap beer and decent food. However, the others.....well, we were looking for the English bar and the Australian bar that were had found via the internet that were on the same street. During the day we couldn't see them. When it got dark, we found several narrow rooms with a wooden bar down one side, three chairs and a fridge of beer. The 'Australian' bar had a picture of a kangeroo on the wall and the 'English' bar had a picture of London. Other than that they were identical, down to selling incredibly overpriced small bottles of Tsingtao beer and having too many scantily clad bar staff fawning over the old, male customers.

Later a Chinese guy we know said that the name of the street more-or-less translates as

'sex street'.

Of course. Bloody Lonely Planet. Vietnam ones have had some dreadful suggestions for nightlife too.

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Photos

North Pagoda
From the bottom

making animals out of sugar
They seem to do this at all tourist attractions, but these were the best we have seen.

Couple's Garden
Pavilian

Statues
They love these statues around Shanghai. They are everywhere.

Comments

[Donna and Neil]

Train spotting
Come on, admit it...you like nothing more than hanging around Wigan station in an anorak with a flask of tea and a cheese butty ;) We remember those ticket windows in Chinese stations which are unintelligible and hoping we had the right queue!

[Beata and Tomek]

Lovely
oh how we loved Suzhou!!! thanks for bringing lovely memories Guys B&T

[D MJ Binkley]

Learning the trains
You've learned to navigate in your short time there. Thanks for sharing your impressions.

[RENanDREW]

Expectations...
I have to admit that when I think of chinese water towns, my mind's imagery is borrowed from ancient watercolour paintings... I think I'll have to readjust my expectations before we visit :)