At present, China is booming high-speed rail construction. With the support of the state and thanks to special measures, by the end of 2020 the total length of the high-speed rail network will reach 18,000 km. In technological terms, the organization of high-speed rail communication occurs through technology transfer agreements from reputable foreign manufacturers, such as the Canadian Bombardier, the French company Alstom, and the Japanese Kawasaki. By adopting foreign technology, China is seeking to make its own developments based on them, such as the development of the CRH-380A series trains, which set a record for China's high-speed roads, about 500 km / h. But I traveled by trains at a more modest speed - about 350 km / h, and I can say with confidence that if Chinese trains are not inferior in speed, for example, to the same Japanese shinkansen, then in terms of quality of service, cleanliness and comfort, of course, they still have some way to go...


Chinese trains vary in speed and class of service. To designate each train, a Latin letter is used (for example: D, T, K, C, Z) followed by the train number or, more rarely, just the train number. I took a picture of one of my tickets with instructions on how to figure out what is indicated on it.


Understanding the principle is not difficult, but it is very, very important to know - at which particular station of the city you need this train arrives !!! If there is a transfer ahead, then from which station the next train leaves. In Beijing, as it turned out, there are 5 railway stations !!!
I will give the Chinese designations of Beijing railway stations, in case anyone needs it, because I myself got confused:

• Beijing Central Station ( 北京站 )


• Beijing West Station ( 北京西站 )


• Beijing South Station ( 北京南站 )


• Beijing North Station ( 北京北站 )


• Beijing East Station ( 北京 东站 )

If you are planning to travel in China by train, the following information about train categories and types of carriages in China may be useful.
If the train number contains the letter G, D or C, then we are talking about high-speed trains and I advise you to use them when traveling, you don’t want to spend extra time traveling between cities, because these types of trains are one of the fastest and most comfortable.
Category trains G: The fastest and best, reach speeds up to 350 km / h, daytime trains.
Category trains D: Second fastest. On some night trains long distance compartment cars are available.
Category trains C: High-speed trains. They travel between neighboring cities.

After you decide on the train, you need to select the class of your seat, there are only 4 of them in high-speed trains: 2nd class, 1st class, premium and business. All seats are installed with the direction exclusively in the direction of the train, when the train changes its direction (I had this), the chairs are turned over 180 degrees. In the night high-speed trains of category D, there are compartment cars and luxury class compartment cars.
Advice (of course, based on their financial capabilities) - take a premium or business class, there are seats for one or 2 people similar to business class seats on an airplane, in other classes for 3 people, and you yourself understand which flavors you will have to be all the road and it will obviously be fragrances not from CHANEL. In addition, you will be given a bottle of water and a bag of snacks, and for a trip over 4 hours, a lunch with a choice of dishes is offered.


Safety!
Get ready to be safe in the zone railway station the relevant authorities are treated with maniacal responsibility. All things will be examined as when boarding an airplane, people are also examined with special care, tickets and passports - EVERYTHING is checked, and at some stations this check is carried out twice! In addition, seeing off and meeting people are not allowed on the territory of the station, so you will have to navigate the schedule, the train boarding area, etc. on your own.
Here comes the most interesting part of the "Marleson ballet"J As I would put it in China, everything is oriented for the Chinese, so the scoreboard will look like this.


Those. in the best case, you will be able to identify your train number with a Latin letter (if it is present, sometimes the train number consists only of numbers). Next is the number of the platform and platform - a guessing game in the Chinese style. However, for experienced travelers like us, even such a scoreboard has been deciphered, so now we can safely go to Mars!


They begin to let the train onto the platform no earlier than 15 minutes in advance, so you can orient yourself in advance on your own or try to find out from the non-English speaking station staff where to run with your clothes by pointing your finger at your ticket with a dumb question in your eyes (practice at home on just in case for a dumb question).
Keep your ticket all the way until you arrive at your final destination, because you will need to put it in the turnstile, and it will also be checked on the train itself.


They want trains exactly on schedule, minute by minute, parking at the stations is only 1-2 minutes, so I do not recommend smoking lovers to leave the car for this need. There were cases when tourists remain in this way at the closed doors of the train without anything at all, but with a pack of cigarettes.


And lastly, it is quite difficult to buy a train ticket without being in China. Therefore, either rely on "maybe" and buy tickets already in China at the box office of the station, but not for Chinese New Year- this is generally an impossible mission for any money, or use the services of a travel agency in your region, which will help you in advance with this issue.

Thinking out loud, opus no. 6. Trains are sometimes interesting to travel not only in terms of convenience. When you look out the window, you can see something that you don’t pay attention to when you are in the place of stay ...


Firstly, I was surprised by the perfect cleanliness throughout the long train journey, no garbage on the sides of the tracks at all. By the way, the cleanliness in China this time shocked me in general, not a speck, not a cigarette butt, not a piece of paper - ANYWHERE. It was interesting to know that since recently all janitors have been made civil servants, and this has always been extremely honorable in China. And after a year of such work, all the doors of other state institutions of the country are open to you, so people are extremely holding on to such a prestigious job, scrupulously cleaning everything around.


Secondly, agricultural fields are ideally sown up to railway, sometimes it even seemed that everything looked so perfect that you were going to Japan.


Thirdly, there are a lot of completely futuristic-looking industrial facilities, I was directly staring at them. In a word, you will not be bored on the road, and this experience will definitely complement your knowledge of the traveler.

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 over 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 wash basins. Comfortable

31.

32. Arrived at the final

33.

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.

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 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 considered 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 the 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 at all: 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, we have them more liberal.

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 the 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 lie down in the underwear 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. Designed to ensure that a cart with products or a person normally and freely pass 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 that these were those who want to save money or who do not have money for a coupe, and even more so for an extra high-speed 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 reserved seat passengers make up those who just couldn't get a ticket for more high category. That is, the contingent strongly intersects 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 popular destinations or public holidays: it’s impossible to get a ticket five days in advance, 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 a metropolitan 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 don’t 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 the devices, and you come to new town without energy. According to the standard, sockets in a reserved seat are 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 helpful 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 am, 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, it must be said that 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.

In our opinion, the train is the best remedy movement 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 help you when planning independent travel across the sky.

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 others major cities countries. 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- analogue Russian train, that is, ordinary seating. 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.

It seems that a person cannot do without comparisons. I've seen it so many times in myself and others. As soon as we encounter some new phenomenon, we begin to search in memory, and not whether we have met something similar. And if we find, then we immediately begin to look for differences between similar objects.

Apparently that is why, sitting in the reserved seat car of the Chinese train taking me from Manchuria to Beijing, I involuntarily noted to myself its similarities and differences from the Russian reserved seat, in which I happened to travel many kilometers in my native country.

First of all, it must be said that in China there are two types of trains: high-speed (in which there are basically no sleeping places, only chairs) and ordinary ones. IN regular train carriages are divided into three classes: soft sleeping (in our compartment), hard sleeping (in our reserved seat) and a carriage with seats. Ordinary trains are three times slower than high-speed ones: a regular train moves at an average speed of about 80 km / h, while a high-speed train accelerates to 300 km / h.

Before this trip to Beijing, I had already traveled on a Chinese regular train, but it was a seated car. Riding in a seated car on an ordinary Chinese train for 14 hours is a very difficult test. I hope never to repeat this. No wonder the places in such cars are called “hard seats”, because it is “tin”. Although for short distances the car will fit perfectly.

My past trips on a conventional Chinese train have shaped my inner fear of traveling in them, but this time, going into econom-class train, and seeing the usual rows of shelves, I felt calm. The car seemed to be quite acceptable.

The first difference that caught my eye is the lack of side seats. On my ticket, in the “seat” section, there was the number 10 and something was added with unfamiliar hieroglyphs. I found a compartment labeled 9/10. The bottom two shelves were already occupied by two Chinese, who completely filled the table with their food supplies, and the beds with their phones, tablets, chargers and jackets.

The men began to cackle and point their fingers up at the ceiling. Wow! That, it turns out, is why there are no side benches here, they have been turned into third shelves in the compartment, the same as luggage shelves on a Russian train.

The third shelf is the most uncomfortable in the car. The distance between the ceiling and the bench here is so small that it is impossible to sit on the shelf even with your head tilted. You can only crawl onto this shelf by climbing the ladder on the side, from the shelf you can only crawl out, but changing the position of the body while on it is quite difficult. I did not manage to sit down on the lower benches and use the table. The men made it clear that this was their territory. For the losers from the second and third shelves on the opposite side of the car there are folding chairs by the window and a narrow shelf - a miserable semblance of a table. Above them, a luggage rack stretched along the entire carriage.

Side chairs and table

Luggage rack

But I liked the bed: a neat pillow and a soft synthetic winterizer blanket. Everything is already laid out. There is no mattress, but even without it it is quite soft, even though the car is called hard.

There is boiling water in the carriage, as in the Russian train, but I did not find a socket for charging the phone. But the problem of toilets, which are always occupied in Russian trains, is quite well solved.

Here the toilet is always free. And all because there are two of them at one end of the car and washbasins are located in a separate room from them. But toilet paper is not allowed here.

Another nice difference from Russian trains is convenient transitions between cars. Here you can go from one car to another without even noticing it. In the Russian train, the passages between the cars are closed with doors and look creepy. Food vendors and all sorts of things also walk around the cars, only unlike Russians, Chinese sellers can put on a real show to sell some little thing.

At night, I noticed a significant inconvenience of the Chinese reserved seat: the shops here are a little narrower than ours. There are no shelves on the walls for essentials, they have to be kept right there on the bench, which makes it even cramped.

Weighing all the pros and cons of the Chinese reserved seat in comparison with ours, I did not come to the conclusion which one I like more. Probably, the one in which you are traveling in a pleasant company, with your friends or just with good fellow travelers is still better.

P.S. I was asked about ticket prices. Prices are about the same as ours.