Xinjiang Railroads Lead to...Nowhere

If anyone ever doubted the strategic importance China places on northern Xinjiang, this last week ended the debate. The provincial government recently announced (here in English) the completion of four new rail lines stretching a total of 1,400km, a project that cost 1.68 billion yuan ($243 million USD). Unlike the Urumqi-Kashgar line opened a decade ago, however, most tourists (including me) aren’t likely to care much about traveling these new routes that basically lead to nowhere.

In Xinjiang, the railroad generally isn’t geared toward the traveler. As a case in point, the new train station in my home of Karamay – a small city of 200,000 with plenty of space to grow – is almost 30 minutes outside of town by taxi. Even if it was more conveniently located, though, I still wouldn’t take it for time’s sake. A bus to Urumqi takes almost 4 hours. The train will take 8. The same can be said for the city of Turpan, whose train station is actually located an hour to the north of the city.

That’s not to say that the scenery along these new lines isn’t spectacular. The new lines skirt by some of Xinjiang’s many nature reserves and the bridge you see below crosses through the fertile Yili grasslands.

Most surprising is the fact that this announcement is just the tip of the iceberg. Currently 10 more lines are under construction in different parts of the province with the plan to extend the current 3,000km of track in the province to over 10,000km by 2020. According to Xinjiang Railway director Luo JinBao, that’ll make us the railroad king of China. 

Traveling by Train from Urumqi Station 乌鲁木齐南站

The journey is finally over. We took a train during Spring Festival and actually survived!  We left from the Urumqi train station at midnight and arrived 38 hours later in Xi'an no worse for wear.  Although I wouldn't recommend riding the rails during major Chinese holidays (buying train tickets was a painful process), it was an adventure we won't soon forget.  If you ever find yourself in Urumqi or are looking to take a train within Xinjiang, I think you'll find some of the following information useful.

The Urumqi Train Station

The Urumqi train station, located in the southwestern portion of the city (see map below), looks like any other major train station in China.  Three floors of waiting rooms filled with hundreds of chairs, a few snack stalls, and one measly bathroom for everybody to share.  There are many different waiting halls spread along each floor reserved separately for hard seat and standing tickets (economy class) and for hard sleeper (business class) and soft sleeper (1st class) ticket holders.  As you can tell from the pictures below, the waiting room seating accommodations are fitted accordingly.

 

Hard Seat Waiting Hall during Spring Festival

 

Soft and Hard Sleeper Waiting Hall during the same Spring Festival.  Definitely the place you want to be.  It even had a huge TV.

Trains in China

Xinjiang trains are no different than any other China train, but if you've never taken a train here you'll find it to be quite a unique experience.  Most every train (with a few exceptions) is divided into three sections, listed from the cheapest to most expensive: hard seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper.  Some trains are also fitted with a soft seat section, but I haven't found these to be common in China and I've never seen it on a train here in Xinjiang.  The names pretty much describe what it is, but here are a few pictures to give you a better idea:

Soft Sleeper: 4 beds in a room with a lockable door

 

Hard Sleeper: 6 beds with no door.  Much more crowded but not unpleasant.

 

Hard Seat: Like the name says, these are no Lazy Boy recliners.  Imagine sitting for hours on end in your dining room chair.

 

Train Stations in Xinjiang

 

There aren't a lot of train tracks in Xinjiang, although the government announced in October of 2008 that they were going to expand the railway.  At present this makes things pretty simple, though.  There's only one way into the rest of China, and that's through the Gansu province to the southeast.  Future plans have a couple more lines running into Qinghai, Mongolia and past the borders out west.  That'll take another decade.  For now, this simple map should suffice.

  

 

Train Tips:

• If you're taking any train longer than 8 hours (which is most all of them here in Xinjiang), for your own sanity you really ought to avoid the hard seats.  It's just not fun.  I'm sure there are plenty of people who've lived here a few years in China that could tell some good stories.
• The Urumqi train station is about a 20-25 minute taxi ride from the center of town.  If you're leaving during peak traffic hours, you'll need to adjust accordingly.
• Urumqi is the primary point of departure, although there are a couple trains that begin in Kuytun.  The Kashgar train line currently only runs to Urumqi.
• I would love to post train timetables here, but over the next few years these will be changing frequently and I don't intend on keeping this article updated.
  

View Larger Map
Sorry, I could only get this map in Chinese for now.

Buying Train Tickets on Spring Festival: A Migrant Worker's Guide

Getting your hands on good train tickets in any major Chinese city during the Spring Festival is without a doubt one of the most difficult tasks known to man. Right now tickets halls from Beijing to Shanghai to Xi'an are packed with people who wait countless hours in line for the chance to buy tickets to be with their families back home, an ordered chaos that is led primarily by a fearless group of people known as migrant workers. But what happens to those migrants workers who have moved to small cities in Xinjiang that don't have train stations? Since train tickets are not yet available for purchase on the internet or by phone, how exactly are they to get a hold of these invaluable tickets to freedom?

My home here in Xinjiang is one of those small cities filled with many of those fearless people and my wife and I just spent the last 48 hours finding out exactly how they get tickets.  It's not easy, it's not fun, and unless you are a migrant worker with no other option you should try to avoid it at all cost!  If you must, however, here is a brief migrant's guide to help you understand this crazy procedure.

Phase 1: Ticket Office Reconnaissance

Many moderate sized cities in China that aren't serviced by trains will usually have a train ticket office.  Two days ago my wife and I scouted out the location in our city - two separate and nondescript buildings near the local supermarket - while trying to figure out which train we needed and the process in which to purchase the tickets.  After questioning many different people near the office we began to faintly understand how the ticket system here works.

I think it goes something like this, at least here in Xinjiang: because there are so many people from all over the province who are desperate to get tickets home, a rationing system has been put in place whereby each local train office is allocated only a portion of a train's tickets a maximum of 10 days in advance.  Once those tickets are sold, which can take anywhere between 15-45 minutes, that's it for the day. People in Xinjiang are only able to physically purchase train tickets for trains departing from Urumqi, the capital city, and it's all on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Phase 2: Take a Number!!

Unfortunately this "first-come first-serve" business is a two-day process for most people, "most people" including us. Part one begins on the first day at office location #1, a plain, medium-sized hall with two doors, 200 chairs and a single TV. You don't come here to buy tickets today.  Instead you come to get a number giving you the right to stand in line the next day to buy a ticket.  People start to form a Chinese line outside the office (in other words, a big mass of people) at around 4a.m. in hopes of being given a number when they are handed out every day at 3:30p.m.  If you're counting, that's nearly 12 hours of waiting so far (in Xinjiang's frigid winter, no less) and you don't even have a real train ticket to show for it.

My first thought was, "How can people afford the time to wait that long!"  I then remember that many of these migrant workers are seasonal, such as the cotton pickers, and therefore have lots of time on their hands at the moment.  There are also many entrepreneurial types who will wait in line on behalf of somebody else for a fee.  We thankfully avoided both these options because we unknowingly garnered the sympathy of the one of the office workers who, when we arrived early that morning told us to just come back at 3:30 and he would save us a number.  Were it not for that man's sympathy we would not have tickets today.

Phase 3: Train Nazis and Train Tickets

This morning we woke up at 6a.m. in order to get in line to purchase our tickets at train office #2.  I actually went alone because each number can only be represented by a single person and that single person can only buy three tickets.  My first stop was office #1 where I witnessed something that very few people get to see in China - an actual line.

This line of people with "numbers" was made possible by a man I decided to nickname the "Train Nazi".  Loudspeaker in hand, I was convinced Mr. Train Nazi was ex-military as he barked orders and literally shoved people who didn't have tickets out the door.  I felt like a lucky kid with a golden ticket to Charlie's Chocolate Factory, except I wasn't excited - I was nervous.  What if they didn't have any train tickets for where I wanted to go?  Nothing was guaranteed and all of this would have been wasted time and effort.

For an hour I waited in line at building #1 as people who were taking part in today's Phase 2 were allowed to fill the room to wait for the next 3:30 ticket distribution. The entire time many people who didn't have numbers were badgering all of us in line to find out if we were using all three of our allotted ticket purchases.  If we weren't they would beg and bribe us fortunate souls with numbers to purchase a ticket for them and were prepared to hand over money, ID cards, and a piece of paper stating the ticket desired.  Although I personally didn't offer the services of my third unused ticket allocation, I witnessed a few people who did and I'm sure they made a small profit from it.

At this point, still a few hours before sunrise, we were led in a single-file line over to office #2 where we had to hand over our numbers before we would be allowed entrance by the guard at the door, another Train Nazi with an ex-military style attitude.  For the first time in this entire process while looking at two ticket counters in front of me I felt like I was actually buying a train ticket.  The place wasn't as packed as office #1 but it was still chaotic with guards shouting orders and people venting frustration after finding their train was already sold out.  My nerves would not be settled until I had two tickets in my hand.

These Tickets are GOLD!!

Thankfully our train hadn't yet been fully booked, so for the first time in three years of trying to take a train on Spring Festival we have successfully purchased tickets.  As interesting as it was, we won't be doing it again and from the stories we've heard might even regret this trip because of how crowded the train will be. No matter.  We saved a ton of money and the experience has not only given us a new appreciation for the life of migrant workers but also an insight into the value of Spring Festival train tickets.

According to my basic-level understanding of supply and demand - these tickets are GOLD!

The Expansion of the Railway...in Xinjiang?

It's no secret that Tiff and I despise the railway system here in China.  For the two and a half years that we have lived here it has been next to impossible to book a ticket to anywhere we've wanted to travel, and when we actually do break down and buy hard seats we are stuffed in the trains like...well, like Chinese (edit: this video, as mentioned in the comments below, is actually from Japan, although to be sure, such cramming does exist in China.  My apology for being misleading).  Even our most recent trip to Kashgar was a tad disappointing when we were forced to take a 24-hour sleeper bus back home because the train was sold out.  Most of this can be attributed to the fact that the only time we can travel is during the Chinese holidays, notably Spring Festival, which is the absolute worst time to try to squeeze through China.  Another reason is that the whole ticket selling process is so darn confusing (do tickets go on sale 7 days or 4 days before departure?).  Finally, there just aren't enough railway lines in China.

At least the government is working to solve one of these problems.

Railway lines all over China are getting a boost, but that's old news.  From 2006 to 2010 - a mere four years - China's railway system will have grown an astounding 17.5%!  As if that weren't enough, last weekend China's State Council just approved 2 trillion yuan ($292 billion) to expand the rail system even more...all of this in the midst of a worldwide financial crisis.  Business Week called this move the largest railway expansion since the US's transcontinental line in the 1860's.

Thankfully, all this change is actually going to affect us here in Xinjiang.  Considering how little railway we have at the moment, we actually may feel all this change more than any other part of China.  Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, announced earlier this month that they have plans to build 9 more rail lines by 2020!  Currently, there is only one track traveling from Xinjiang to the rest of China, but in a decade we should be connected to each nearby province with the exception of Tibet - I guess those mountains were just too big to travel over.  Pretty amazing stuff considering the first rail line in Xinjiang was only opened 46 years ago.

Hopefully this will open up a few more train tickets for us to buy for travel around China - that is if we're still here in 12 years (survey says..."nnaahh").  Of course, odds are that most of these rail lines will just be feeding coal to this energy-hungry country, so we'll either have to be content cramming ourselves in with China's huge migrant labor force or just hop on top of a coal car.

We'll probably just end up taking the sleeper bus.

For more info on the China State Council project, read this article.