A working train journey through China

Being sent to cover a conference in a very hot and humid Guangzhou, Guangdong province, earlier this month also involved something of a personal experiment.

While not wanting to confuse the expenses department too much (never a wise move here), I decided to fly there courtesy of Air China and take the Gao high-speed train back.

I was there to attend the second Investing in Africa Forum, and during a late-inthe-day interview with a former minister of a West African country over a gin and tonic (for him, by the way, and not me), the most animated response I got was when I mentioned this. So much for my incisive questioning on development model options.

“You mean you are going back by train!” he boomed.

That it is difficult to go anywhere by train in most parts of Africa since there are none probably elicited this startled response.

I was beginning to wonder myself whether it was a wise move. Why swap a convenient two-and-half-hour flight (the journey outward was certainly untroubled) for a nine-and-a-half-hour marathon, 2,338-kilometer journey from almost one end of China to the other.

While not wanting to make out this was like anything out of a Jules Verne novel, it was actually to be my longest single rail journey ever.

Never having done the Orient Express, or much traveling on European railways (apart from in Italy), my longest previous journeys would be on the Chinese railways from Beijing to Shanghai and Xi’an.

My own country — the United Kingdom — is just not big enough. My longest single journey there being perhaps from Dundee to London King’s Cross, a mere 756 km, as it happens. This was to be as far as London to Moscow.

So I boarded the G70 at Guangzhou South Station fortified by cold cans of coffee for my 12:50 pm departure and took my seat in the comfortable red leather seats in a compartment I had mostly to myself.

The vague purpose of my experiment was to see whether I could get more work done this way. It is never easy to balance your laptop on your in-flight tray

It was also about whether you could get a better sense of the vastness of China. The journey is so long the climatic conditions would actually change.

Hurtling through the Chinese countryside at 303 kilometers an hour listening to Dmitri Shostakovich string quartets that seemed appropriate at the time on my iPod not once did the journey drag.

By the time I had reached Changsha, Hunan province, I had read 100 pages of a book I needed to read for an imminent interview, written up my notes from the forum and was about to start memorizing 20 new Chinese characters for a test I had the following day.

While you might think I am some sort of masochistic workaholic, all this was somehow smugly satisfying and therapeutic.

I arrived at Beijing West Station precisely on time without any sense I had just completed a long journey.

I actually had occasion to meet up with my African politician friend two days later. He told me that his flight back from Guangzhou had been heavily delayed because of bad weather.

Maybe he might soon be enquiring about Chinese investment in railways in his country. If so, the forum will have lived up to its name.