Part of our trip involved travelling on the Chinese equivalent of the TGV, seriously fast trains zooming across the country. I’m going to compare my experience with that of the actual TGV, because we use it from time to time. We travel in prole class on both.
The early versions of these trains resembled Siemans ICE trains, for the simple reason that that’s precisely what they were. The contemporary versions are thoroughly Chinese, with a very long nose which, to be honest, looks to my eyes to be more show than function, but the clearly have a strong Siemans influence.
We travel in prole class on TGVs, just as we did on the Chinese trains. The Chinese trains have more leg room. They’re also wider, with five seats across the carriage, unlike the four seats of the TGV. Here, you feel their ICE inheritance.
Despite the long distance travelled, these trains do not have a restaurant carriage. Instead, different people wander up and down the train selling their wares, much like my experience on slower trains in the UK. Unlike the UK, I have no clue what the Chinese staff were selling, except for the obvious differences between stuff to drink and stuff to eat.
One thing that amused me were the announcements. They were in Mandarin and English. The English was perfectly pronounced with a home counties accent (or, on a different line, what sounded to me like pure East Coast American) but the content was clearly computer generated Chinglish. I have to admit I did giggle a couple of times.
I was disappointed that the Chinese trains and the TGVs travelled at roughly the same speed. I had hope, with their ridiculously long noses, the Chinese might get rather a lot closer to the sound barrier—but no, they sailed the same speed as their French comrades.