Since the Fuxing, it only takes 4 hours and 32 minutes to reach Beijing by high-speed train from Hangzhou. Even I, who have been extremely insensitive to numbers since childhood, can sense the changes brought about by speed through this information: Beijing has become a place where you can travel for a day.
Humanity's pursuit of speed, like the ancient emperors' obsession with immortality, has never stopped. On the track and field, even if it is 0.0X seconds better than the original record, people all over the world will cheer for another breakthrough in the limits of human beings.
However, what we ordinary people are most concerned about is not how hard these famous generals run and how far they jump, but ...... The mobile phone in my pocket is not fast enough. From 4G to 5G, this Double 11 can't be snatched up in seconds, don't blame the network.
And, of course, whether the means of transport we took were fast enough. The most accurate time calculated by the workers is probably the distance from getting up to the time when the card is played, and the subway that is fast and does not jam the traffic is of course more favored by the diligent workers.
Regarding the change in speed in transportation, it is intuitive to look at the railway. This point may be more felt by our elders.
In the past, when the speed of 200 - 300 km/h could reach the speed of bullet trains and high-speed trains, the frequent passengers on the railway were pure digital trains, its maximum speed was 60 km/h, and the time was pushed back, and gradually there were trains starting with K, T, Z, and the top speed could reach 140 - 160 km/h.
Now our best Fuxing, it is said that the test speed can reach a maximum of 420km/h. If you drive at this speed, you can get from Hangzhou to Beijing in about 3 hours, while the same distance, the green car with the prefix of K needs to drive for more than 20 hours.
The speed has increased, and the whole world has become smaller under our feet.
However, fast = efficient ≠ the only option. There are still people who are willing to live a "slow" life under the general trend of "fast".
For example, I spent 1,000 yuan to buy a soft sleeper ticket, and at a speed of 160km/h, I took 55 hours from Chengdu to Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia.
How crazy is this decision?
If you buy a ticket in Shanghai, you only need to spend 560 yuan and fly for more than 3 hours. Let me put it another way to describe it more intuitively: obviously we set off together, you are all ready to go home, and I have just arrived.
Time and money are more than doubled. As my title says, the people who choose to sit the whole course are definitely not ordinary people, but people who "have other plans".
What am I trying to do? I thought about it for a moment, it must be the spirit of rebellion. In this fast-paced era, you want to do the opposite.
The uncle, who was in the same carriage with me, got on the train from the second station and got off at the terminal Hailar. He and his family were on the train, and the elders came to pick up their daughter, who had just given birth to a dragon and phoenix fetus, and returned to her parents' home.
They felt that it was too much of a toss to take the baby plane + back and forth in the car, so they simply chose the slow train that could return home in the laziest way, and the newborn and the new mother could have a relatively private space on the car.
See, it's slow, but it's still needed.
So how did I fall in love with K998 at the time?
Let me take a look back at my journey.
(The following photos are not beautified with filter APP, Fujifilm XE3 Classic & Vivid mode is straight out, except for NOMO)
During the Chinese New Year last year, "Embarrassing Mother" brought fire to the Trans-Siberian Railway. You can go all the way from China to Russia, passing through Mongolia in between. A train, passing through the three countries, crossing 1/4 of the circumference of the earth, can be called a feat in ordinary life.
However, due to the epidemic, this cross-border railway is temporarily out of contact with us. PSSSS, let's turn our attention around and look at the country.
Travel is all about rituals, so I searched for the "best" according to the two dimensions of time and distance, trying to make this trip have a well-known name.
So the search results are as follows: the longest running time is the K726 train, which takes 67 hours and 14 minutes.
The longest distance is Z264, which runs from Guangzhou to Lhasa, with a total length of 4,976 kilometers and a run of 53 hours. If this line is straightened, it can go from the westernmost point of China to the easternmost point (the mainland is 5000 kilometers long from east to west), and the cow!
After dozens of hours on the train, I definitely had to spend a few days at my destination. But Lhasa and Harbin are not very attractive to me at the moment.
So I decided to take the destination as the first criterion for selection, so the K998 train came into my field of vision, which ran from Chengdu to Hailar.
The starting point is Chengdu, a food paradise, and it is not a loss to fly to eat a few meals; the terminal is Hailar, that is, Hulunbuir, and it is very good to go to the grassland at the wrong peak, and the border city of Manzhouli that I have always wanted to go to is next door to Hailar.
Then I looked at its route, passing through 36 stations, the whole journey is 4123 kilometers, and the operation is 55 hours and 42 minutes, which can also rank among the top five in China in terms of time. And half of the sites are in Inner Mongolia, so I wondered if I could see more grasslands.
So I patted my head and decided, and it was it!
Then the itinerary was developed according to our own travel preferences:
1) Hangzhou flies to Chengdu early in the morning, leaving 2 days and 1 night, mainly shopping and eating;
2) Take the train from Chengdu to Hailar, get on the train at 10 p.m. the next day, and start a 55-hour carriage life;
3) Get off at 6 a.m. on the fifth day and stay in Hailar for 2 nights;
4) Take the train from Hailar to Manchuria and stay for 3 nights;
5) Fly back to Shanghai from Manchuria
What's it like to live on the Green Train?
Except that it was good not to be able to take a bath.
I have to be honest, when I dragged my suitcase into the car and walked down the aisle, I really felt that the space around me was cramped more than I imagined, and the excitement of waiting for the bus was half extinguished.
It took a long time to put our two 24-inch suitcases in the carriage, and when everything was arranged, we took off our shoes and lay down in the bed, and suddenly felt that everything was spacious again. Human feelings are really a ...... Very mysterious thing.
Breaking through the level of space, the second level is the washing level.
We stayed in car 1, next door to the "washroom", which is quite retro. The inside is cleaner than I thought, it should be said to be neat, although it is also littered, but there is no peculiar smell. OK, wash your face and brush your teeth.
The third level is the most difficult toilet level I can imagine.
The nearest toilet to me is a toilet type, which is a large space, but I really can't sit down, and I have to exercise my thigh muscles with a horse step.
There is also a toilet at the other end of this carriage, which is much smaller, but it is squatting. Ok, I pick you, there is a little smell after closing the door, but it is generally acceptable, and the hygiene on the ground is okay.
If there are no problems with these three levels, then everything else is trivial.
By the time I got off the bus, I had already established my own order in this temporary dormitory of a few square meters. What is most convenient to put and how to adjust the posture during the day. People, don't underestimate your ability to adapt.
In the food part, this train does not provide good service. I'm not a picky eater, so I went to the food truck and ordered a fried mein, emmmm, and the taste is indescribable. Dumplings and lunch boxes are okay, but if I had a choice, I would never buy them.
/ The little red wine you bring with you can't restore this shocking taste
Fortunately, the scenery outside the window is beautiful and delicious.
I could feel the change of vegetation outside the window and the change of seasons as the train moved. My coordinates on the map moved all the way north, and the train seemed to travel through time, taking us from early autumn to late autumn.
There are hills, sandy lands, grasslands, and rivers...... It reminds me of the Qinggan Grand Loop a few years ago, when it was the first time I knew that the scenery on the road could be so wonderful.
When the train enters Inner Mongolia, you will occasionally encounter cattle, cows, sheep and sheep on the grassland. Farther away, the flock is scattered like white dots on a yellow cloth.
It's so cute and really tasty. The sheep here grew up eating weeds and wild Chinese herbs on the grassland, and the uncle in the same carriage praised us more than once for the mutton of his hometown.
When I woke up one day, it happened to be sunrise. The eyes were staring straight at the sun, watching it slowly rise from behind the mountain and reflect on the earth-colored earth. I want to feel the vitality of today's share everywhere I am illuminated, including me.
But most of the time, it's just an unremarkable sight outside the window. I just got out of a tunnel, and I didn't see light in front of me for a few seconds, and then I got into the next tunnel.
When passing through the township, 99.9% of the crops you can see are corn. Corn was so permeable everywhere I walked through it, that even the seemingly unattended wasteland was planted in rows.
When we stop for a long time, we get out of the car and take a few steps to breathe, and by the way, we can feel what season we are in through the temperature. The car is always heated, and losing perception of the outside world for a long time can make people inexplicably panic.
Hohhot is a big station, and there are obviously a lot more passengers getting on and off the train. The eldest brother who got on the train together in the carriage said goodbye to us happily at this stop.
He was a soldier in the border area of Hohhot, and this day happened to be the end of his vacation, and he had to separate from his wife, who worked in Chengdu, and return to the border to live the most familiar life in more than 10 years.
In this carriage we live in, there are also a few cute children with their own social skills. Walking to the next compartment, looking at the newborn of the uncle's daughter, he asked his brother what his name was.
Every time in the aisle, the three of them could always be seen getting together and chattering about something. After a few days of hard work, it seems that I have become familiar with everyone.
The night after the soldier got out of the car, the three girls got off the bus in Qiqihar.
In the more than 20 minutes of stopping, the conductor was busy cleaning, not even under the bed of the carriage, because at this station they were about to change shifts.
In fact, the conductor is responsible for the cleaning work on the train every day. They come to each carriage to collect garbage, clean the washrooms and toilets regularly, and sweep the aisles. This is our temporary dormitory, which is also theirs, and the conductor has the duties of a dormitory aunt.
Because our carriage is close to the conductor's lounge, we can occasionally hear their small talk. A is complaining to B: "A person came up just now, he actually said that he was a passenger in this carriage, I don't know the people in my carriage, eighty percent of them came up from the fare evasion, and they played tricks with me......
When I heard this, I actually felt a little emotional turmoil in my heart, and I was moved by the feeling of "we are a family".
On the last night on the train, I sat in the aisle for a while, watching everyone line up to get off the train, watching the conductor go about his work, and by the time the train started, it was already 11 o'clock at night, and everything was quiet.
And the next day before 6 o'clock in the morning we were about to get off the bus, one I was a little reluctant to, these people who met in Pingshui, this train may not take the second car, and I was a little excited, after sleeping this night, I could finally go to the hotel to take a shower and wash my hair.
Ordinary days
You have to learn to have some fun on your own!
Just looking at life on the train, it must be a bit boring.
There was no entertainment on the bus, and the radio was for reporting stations, not for broadcasting. In addition to the dining car, there are beer, drinks, melon seeds that are sold back and forth in the cart, and there are 9981 Tianshan blueberries sold in a day.
Fun is created by the hard-working hands of workers. At least at the time, I was looking forward to every day in the car.
The night before we got on the bus, we brought some bread on the bus and served it with our own instant coffee in an attempt to create an elegant breakfast time. It turns out that on the train with few supplies, ordinary food on weekdays can make us very happy and feel better than Michelin.
What I look forward to more than bread is the self-hilarious pot, unpacking, putting ingredients, pouring water, and on the train where everyone is making bubble noodles, the small hot pot in my hand looks more shining.
I bought two kinds of Haidilao and Dezhuang, and made a cameo appearance in the food evaluation. I prefer Haidilao, which has richer ingredients and more exquisite packaging. The most obvious difference between the two is that the soup base in Dezhuang is more inclined to old hot pot.
In the car, we finished watching "We're a Little Wrong", which was downloaded in advance, and the appearance was sky-high, but the plot was really bloody. I want to watch movies and dramas at the next point, especially if I usually can't calm down to watch it, as soon as I press the play button, the time will pass like flying.
When I was packing my luggage at home, I put 2 books in my school bag, but I didn't finish reading any of them. Because, the Internet in the car is so good that you can surf 90% of the time. There is an independent socket in the soft sleeper compartment, which is very convenient for charging, hey, contemporary young people still can't get rid of mobile phones.
In the lives of most young people, in addition to mobile phones, music is inseparable. I am witty, and I also bring the necessary weapons - noise-canceling headphones and portable Bluetooth speakers.
When there are people in the carriage, put on noise-canceling headphones and enter your own little world, and when there is no one in the carriage, turn on the Bluetooth speakers, and the whole carriage will be your dance floor and concert hall.
Oh yes, you can't take a shower in the car, but you can soak your feet. At night, take out our folding basin and pour hot water, oh open, cool!
I found that all the happiness of the days on the train will be magnified, and people will become more grateful.
In our lives now, we don't lack anything, we have everything. Because everything comes easily, there are fewer reasons to be happy.
This 55-hour experience is shared here, and I will definitely continue to take long-distance trains in the future. For me, the carriage is another world, a place where I can temporarily break away from the world, do nothing, and harvest the scenery outside the window is the only task.
If you are also interested, you can pay attention to this China Railway Map Network, which draws each section of the railway in detail
It can check the number of trains, and it can also check a single station, which can be regarded as a reference.
Green cars, especially long-distance ones, are bound to become less and less in the future. A few years ago, there was a Hangzhou-Aksu train, which was originally intended to be done, but this year, when I checked, I found that it had been cancelled.
If you don't do something, you may never have the opportunity to do it again, cherish every encounter.
In the next article, I will tell you, why did the driver of Hailar give me a free fare? What makes me scared more than walking into a haunted house? And how to play in Hulunbuir, can I still play in winter?
If you want to know, remember to like, watch, and share three times, and give me a little motivation to even change!