Travelling by train during Chinese New Year is, so everyone says, a nightmare. The station is like a refugee camp, they pack the passengers on trains like cattle, and if you close one eye, some ragamuffin will steal the other one.

Well it ain’t true. Think about it- everyone is desperate to get home for the equivalent of Christmas day to spend Spring Festival with their family- but on the day after that, the same trains are running and no-one’s in a rush to get anywhere any more.

Emma worked her Chinese magic on the good people in the Jingan Railway Ticket Office (just opposite McDonalds- no queue) and on Wednesday morning we bought (hard bed) tickets to go from Shanghai South Station to Shenzhen the following lunch time.

Shanghai South railway station
Shanghai South Station- on the first day of Chinese New Year

It’s around 18 hours on the train so we had a good lunch of good lunch of pizza and salad from the Italian cafe in the station before leaving on time from Shanghai South and starting to chat with the neighbours in our carriage. In the hard bed section (soft beds have fewer people and more room, but there were no tickets) there are three beds stacked one above the other, and the same on the other side in a miniature carriage of 6. You can’t quite sit up straight in your bed if you’re as tall as me, but there are seats on the other side of the carriage and of course you can walk around freely, eat dinner in the buffet car, gaze out of the window and chat to your fellow passengers.

Hard Bed on a chinese train
The hard beds on a Chinese train

The carriages are warm and smoke-free, the bathrooms have clean squat toilets, the food is good and hot, beer is 5RMB a can (they only have Snow though, no Harbin). Before I had time to read more than a few chapters of my book it was 10pm and time for lights out. Lying in a warm bed on a gently rocking train, listening to the rumble of the tracks, knowing you’re speeding along to where you’re going is incredibly relaxing. I was out like a light until a squawking attendant woke us up 25 minutes from arrival at Shenzhen Station.

Shanghai to Shenzhen

We crossed the land border from China to Hong Kong (isn’t it supposed to be the same country?), then took the 40 minute metro to Tshim Sha Tsui East station for 30 Hong Kong dollars. So now here I am- sitting in a hotel room looking across Hong Kong Harbour, thinking about tailors, dim sum and the firework display that starts at 8pm.

Hard bed ticket from Shanghai to Shenzhen: approx 400RMB one-way