Reserved seat in China. Second-class carriages: Chinese and Russian (12 photos)

A sort of railroad predator with an elongated, rounded muzzle. And although such roads are indeed rapidly developing in China, most ordinary Chinese travel by regular “slow” trains. And at least half of them travel in reserved seat carriages. They are not like ours - three-tiered and with an aisle, and this is a whole road world with its own laws.

To be honest, at first I was afraid of the reserved seat there. Plunging into a dense human sea of a completely unfamiliar composition is quite exciting. It seemed that everything there was filled with poor Chinese and everything around was unclear. So on the first expedition, almost until the very end, I traveled either on high-speed trains or in a compartment. And only before leaving (from Yan’an to Beijing) did he take the risk of riding in a reserved seat for fun. It turned out to be quite normal and not scary at all. Yes, there are some nuances. But they are surmountable.

In the Second Chinese Expedition we had to deal closely with the plazaart. I didn’t have pre-purchased tickets for most of the route, and a lot had to be decided along the way. There are no tickets for 1-3 days in advance for many destinations, except reserved seats or seatless ones. It’s something like in the USSR: there are a lot of trains, the traffic intensity is very high, and so is the turnover of tickets. Therefore, the reserved seat card really helped out - during my travels I had to use it six times and save many nights in hotels. The main thing is to try to take it down or into the middle. Along the way, I also broke the pattern that in the Celestial Empire only losers from the lower social strata travel on reserved seats. Nothing like this! Those who travel in reserved seat seats are mostly those who simply weren’t lucky enough to get a compartment at the ticket office. And not those who want to save money.

So now I’ll tell you in pictures about the Chinese reserved seat.
And about how they are building their own local road world.

The Chinese reserved seat is not the same as ours: three tiers of shelves and an aisle with seats on the side

2. Well, let's move to the sultry autumn island of Hainan and at Haikou station late in the evening we will board a reserved seat to go to Guangzhou?

3. So, the first one on the Second Expedition I got was car No. 17 of the K1168 train. I took it literally an hour and a half before departure, because until the last minute I hoped that I could find a direct ferry to Guangzhou with an overnight stay. But, having passed both ports in Haikou, I got discouraged and had to change the plan. A passenger on a train is given this card for the duration of the trip. The car number (17) and the section number in it (13). The section indicates the location with a hieroglyph. As you can see, the bottom one is T with a dash.

4. The very first thing the Chinese do after landing is to quickly start eating. 70% is kuksa, doshirak or something similar. This causes a particularly pungent smell in the carriage after departure. True, it quickly disappears from air conditioning and becomes barely perceptible. But it never disappears. Another specific smell that never completely disappears is the smell of jasmine tea.

5. Quite convenient in the reserved seat there is that the owners of the upper bunks can sit on the side seat. By default, it is believed that passengers in the lower bunks do not apply for these seats, but those on top or in the middle sit on them. It is already late (our train is loading onto a ferry across the Qiongzhou Strait), and almost all the passengers have gone to bed, but during the day the seats are almost completely occupied.

6. Over there, you can see the uncoupled neighboring cars in the window. Now we'll ride the waves for half an hour.

7. The regime in the reserved seat is observed quite strictly. Stricter than ours. At night, everything is literally turned off, except for the section numbers that glow in the dark. So you can sleep fully. In addition, drinking, loudly chatting, playing music or fiddling in your section at night is highly discouraged: the Chinese conductors can interrupt such a process quite rudely, because the rest of the passengers must rest. This is quite a big difference from our rules; ours is more liberal.

8. Linen in a reserved seat is laid out in advance and is always included in the price of the seat. Sometimes it turns out that the laundry is “transitionable”: if you sit down at a small intermediate station, no one will simply change it for you without a reminder. You can lie down in the underwear of the previous passenger :) However, when you specifically remind the conductors, they come and change them right away. But without a reminder, nothing will happen.

9. An important feature of any section in a reserved seat is a huge thermos with “Chinese” boiling water (temperature about 70 degrees). Without drinking bowls and thermoses, the Chinese cannot exist at all.

10. This photo shows the section numbers below the window. They glow red in the dark so passengers can quickly find theirs.

11. Passage of a reserved seat carriage. Designed to allow a cart with groceries or a person to pass normally and freely along a person sitting by the window.

12. The third shelf is located high, and climbing there is not entirely easy.

13. They usually climb there from the side, using this ladder.

14. Here the passage is already filled with people, it’s late morning and many are having a snack.

What kind of contingent travels by reserved seat in China?
At first I thought that these were those who wanted to save money or who did not have the funds for a compartment, much less for a bullet train. However, it turned out not to be so: those who are relatively poorer (mainly residents from the provinces) are in the reserved seat no more than a third. The bulk of reserved seat passengers are those who simply could not get a ticket to a higher category. That is, the contingent overlaps greatly with the compartment carriages; it’s just that the compartments are occupied by those who took a ticket either much in advance, or caught it via the Internet. Tickets now sell in China for 20 days, but previously (more recently) it was only for 10. This is especially true popular destinations or general holidays: it’s impossible to get a ticket five days in advance, the demand for them is so great. Because of this, I was unable to get to Chongqing, which I had to skip - and precisely because of the lack of suitable tickets.

So in the reserved seat you can meet a student of a capital university, an engineer from Manchuria, dock workers from coastal ports, and a wild peasant woman from a remote province. In a word, a real hodgepodge.

How does a reserved seat differ from a coupe, besides comfort? Greater freedom of communication.
In principle, the people here are friendly, there are few “rogue merchants” (through whom the standard tourist’s typical opinion about the Chinese is formed), and they immediately look at the laoi with great interest, especially if he is traveling in the direction from the outback, and not from large center like Shanghai. During my seven trips in the reserved seat, I managed, for example, to very productively learn the hieroglyphs of food - and during the day I gathered about five “fans” in my section, who diligently taught me to pronounce words correctly, and at the same time demonstrated the difference in pronunciation in different provinces. Or, another time, get a master class in writing hieroglyphs with a pen. There is a whole art there - where to start and how to fill in the lines. True, I didn’t really remember anything from this - but nevertheless, it was interesting.

Sometimes you come across those who try to impose communication, but usually, if the interlocutor is unwilling, this is stopped quickly enough, by the neighbors themselves. Of course, my observation refers to the Laowai-Chinese relationship, and not to intra-Chinese communication.

15. Since the linen in the carriage is always laid out by default, the Chinese don’t particularly bother sitting on someone else’s linen, like we do - they folded a corner there, sat on a bare shelf, so as not to get it dirty with clothes. The Chinese simply jumped off and sat down.

16. Take photos in the reserved seat Very difficult: for the first hour and a half you are an object everyone's attention. Then they watch you for some more time - the Chinese are very unfamiliar with the very fact of being in a reserved seat. And only after about half a day you become part of the interior, they finally get used to you. So I had to pervert it as best I could: furtively, with a rotating screen and only a small camera. A mirror immediately attracts attention, and naturalness disappears.

17. The passages between the cars are always open, this is a feature of Chinese trains and I talked about them separately.

19. And here there is a full house in the afternoon. Those who were able came down from the upper shelves and all the seats in the aisle were occupied.

20. Approximately every three to four hours, a conductor walks through the carriage and cleans it. He passes twice: first with a broom, then with a plastic garbage bag, where everyone throws packaging and so on. There is no other way: the Chinese litter an incredible amount throughout their lives, and if you don’t constantly clean it up, they will quickly fill up the entire carriage with waste. And so the carriage remains relatively clean.

21. The Chinese drink as much as they eat. Actually, I drank a lot there too. The nature of food greatly promotes fluid intake.

22. Passengers have a lot of different gadgets, probably many times more than in our reserved seat in the provinces (except for the St. Petersburg - Moscow line). Seeing a book or paper newspaper in someone’s hands is a huge rarity; most people read text or pictures from tablets and large smartphones.

23. However, in the reserved seat there is often a specific ambush - de-energized sockets throughout the car. They keep an eye on this in the compartment, and I didn’t run into anything like that there. And here - three times, almost half of my trips. So sometimes there is nothing to recharge your devices, and you come to new town without energy. According to the standard, there are eight sockets in a reserved seat - four paired blocks, per section.

24. It’s time to eat, and the massive smell of doshirak with soy sauce:)

25. At the top you can see a shelf for the belongings of the upper passengers. It's almost at the ceiling.

26. The washroom compartment in a reserved seat always has 3 seats (in a compartment - 2 or 3). Here it gets polluted faster - there are one and a half times more passengers.

About toilets. They are dirtier than in the compartment. Sometimes even at the end of the route they are filled with water (this happened a couple of times).
This, unfortunately, is an inconvenience of a reserved seat. But it also depends on the train. If it is category T, then the toilet is clean. If K or lower, then alas. But there is also helpful advice: if the next car is a compartment car, go there. The guides don’t care, and the passage is open 24 hours a day.

28. Three or four times a day, starting at 9 am, a “nutritious” lady with a cart rides along the carriage. He speaks loudly and in a sing-song voice, and if you hear it, you’ll have time to buy it. When traveling, you should take ready-made hot meals wrapped in film or vacuum-sealed packages. It is better not to take open pieces from trays (I didn’t risk it). A set snack there costs around 15-20 yuan (second course with meat or chicken, salad, drink). Also remember to wash your hands constantly, before and after, and generally more often.

About a quarter of passengers take hot snacks, another quarter takes them with them (if the train does not come from the capital or Shanghai), and about half make cartons of kuksa (this is the most popular train food in China).

29. I almost always have a thermos juice in my hand. Without a thermos-column, a Chinese is not quite Chinese :)

30. Chinese railway workers outside the window. A lot of manual labor, less small-scale mechanization than ours.

31. The problem of sun protection has been solved in a very interesting way. If we have taken the path of abolishing curtains, and there is only complete closing of the window with a tight shutter, then the Chinese also put blinds on the windows. Precisely from the sun, but without completely removing the light. About half of the reserved seats also have LCD screens, however, they only turn them on in the evening and play centralized films. Beginning without fail with the party-style ones, and then all sorts of tearful melodramas and kung fu a la Bruce Lee.

32. The conductor’s second pass through the car with a plastic bag. About half a bag of garbage is collected at a time, the Chinese are masters at this.

33. On the road you have to drink Chinese tea, which is brewed at 70-75 degrees. Our large-leaf Ceylon is undercooked at this temperature. To be honest, after three weeks of being there, I really want our tea, and not the floral-herbal aroma of the Chinese ones. The ubiquitous jasmine is especially infuriating. When I returned home, I couldn’t get enough of our regular tea for a long time :)

34. Chinese workers from the installation of power lines. We were driving from Xi'an somewhere near Beijing. I managed to use my tablet and Google Translate to talk to that guy in the distance, who also had a translator on his gadget.

35. Climb onto the top shelf, evening. Usual life Chinese reserved seat.

36. Smoking vestibule. The smell of smoking is also an ambush here - for the reason that the inter-car passages are not closed and the smell of tobacco lingers inside the carriage. Therefore, if possible, it is better not to take the first 2 sections from the washroom. It is best to ride closer to the middle in a reserved seat.

* * *
In general, I must say this, for independent travelers: There is no need to be afraid of a reserved seat in China.
This is a completely adequate type of movement, although with its own nuances. Unlucky to take it into the compartment? Take a reserved seat. Try to take seats downwards if possible, it turns out almost like a coupe in terms of comfort. The middle is worse. The top is inconvenient, except for the option “drive only at night and get off in the morning.” You can draw the hieroglyph of the desired place for the cashier on a piece of paper, the bottom place is a T with a line on the right, see photo No. 3.

The photographs were taken on different flights of the expedition; I simply combined them here into one story for the convenience of showing different aspects of the trip.

There is such a cool blogger Kim Korshunov, he is also a columnist for the “Miracle of Technology” program on NTV, he is also the editor-in-chief of the website and channel of the same name onYouTube . He decided to travel from Shanghai to Beijing by train.

There were three options: either a super-fast train, which everyone has probably seen in some program. Either a regular reserved seat, like ours, or a luxury version of a reserved seat (these are the newest trains, there are about a dozen of them so far throughout China).

Ticket price

The fastest option covers the 1,500 km from Shanghai to Beijing in 4.3 hours. But the ticket costs about the same as a plane ticket. Most a budget option costs about 2000 rubles. The carriages there are almost exactly the same as ours. Well, and the price, in fact, too.

The intermediate option, which Kim called “the coolest reserved seat in the world,” costs approximately 6,000 rubles at the exchange rate. A little expensive, but there are a few points. Firstly, this is a luxury ticket (more on that below), and secondly, the ticket was purchased on the day of departure, one might say an hour before departure (if you buy it in advance, it will be cheaper, and if you take advantage of some benefits, it will be even cheaper). Thirdly, such the train is coming only 11 hours. For comparison, a train would cover this distance in 16, or even 20 hours.

I would also like to say something about purchasing tickets. With Russian Railways everything is much more convenient. I went into the app, bought a ticket in 5 clicks and that’s it. No paperwork, no lines, no cash.

Train

From the outside, the train is very similar to our Sapsan. Well, in terms of speed, it’s actually about the same. Regular cruising speed- 120-160 km/h. During the entire journey there were 3 stops.

From the side, the train appears to be double-decker, because the windows are in two rows, but in size it is approximately the same as an ordinary Russian single-decker carriage. There is no second floor, just the lower and upper passengers have their own small windows. With your own individual curtains. And in general, despite the fact that this is a reserved seat, personal space is separated as much as possible - more on that later.

In the wagon

There are no carriages as such on the train. The whole train is a long “gut” without doors or vestibules, like ours. On the one hand, this is good, you can move around everything while driving.

On the other hand, there is nowhere to smoke. If someone snores loudly or a child throws a tantrum, it will be heard not only in one carriage. Also, the entire train will have to listen to the toilet doors knocking. And they knock. But the remarkable thing is that they are not slammed and, despite good sound insulation, there is silence throughout the entire train.

Guides and tea

When boarding the train, no one checks any documents, although later the conductor still walks through the train. I don’t know how many conductors there are for the whole train, but it seems like there is only one. That is, one conductor and 2 cleaners (yes, in China, a conductor and a cleaner are different people).

In addition to the fact that the absence of a large number of conductors reduces costs, they are, in principle, not needed. But on the other hand, there is no one to order seagulls from, no one gives out cups for free. You also need to take chess with you. Nobody sells cookies and newspapers, souvenirs and lottery tickets Same.

The dining car is just a counter where you can buy local Doshirak and some crap. But, by the way, there is no tea.

The carriage has free drinking water. But it won’t surprise us; we have it too.

Toilet

The toilet is like a toilet. Nothing special. There is no shower, if anyone is interested. Toilets are located in pairs, opposite each other. Toilets, of course, are bio. Everything is clean and smells nice (there is a hanging herringbone type scent).

A distinctive feature is that in addition to the small sinks in the toilet room itself, there are also sinks nearby. That is, if you just need a sink to wash yourself or wash something, you don’t need to occupy the toilet.

Organization of space

As I already said, the carriage has a reserved seat, but I always want to call the seats a compartment, because everyone has their own seat. I would even say that this reserved seat gives much more privacy and convenience than our compartments.

Each seat has its own curtain. You can close yourself and no one will bother you.

There are normal stairs leading to the second floor and no one will step on your bed, on your table, and so on. And if the curtain is closed, you won’t even notice that someone is climbing or descending.

It’s very nice that all the seats are located along the carriage, and not across (hello, Russian Railways), so no one’s legs stick out in the aisle. This is really a huge plus. Moreover, the seats are designed so that you can stretch out to your full height, more on that later. In general, you walk calmly, you don’t dodge feet, you don’t sniff other people’s socks, the passage is wide.

Personal space

Your place in a Chinese reserved seat is not just a place on a bench and a bunk - it’s just a small room, albeit with a curtain instead of a door. The curtain, by the way, is of very high quality and has magnets so that it does not open. In general, I must say that everything was done efficiently, reliably, and powerfully. At least that's the impression.

Everyone has a table at their disposal (and on the second floor too!), everyone has personal lighting (German, by the way, from Schneider Electric), a spotlight for reading, a universal socket (American plug, European and USB), a mesh pocket and three hooks for clothes.

With hooks, however, there is a slight embarrassment. Since all the hooks are above the bed, you won’t be able to hang a long coat or fur coat - the floors will kind of lie on the bed and get in the way.

As I said at the beginning, everyone has their own window. And each window has its own personal curtain. It's really cool. It's such a little corner. There is no need to fight with anyone and argue about whether to open the curtain or close it.

Bed

Let's start with the fact that all the seats are already filled (both above and below), slippers of different colors lie next to them (apparently so that the neighbors do not confuse them). The bag can be put under the bed - half an elephant will fit there.

You can sit on the bed at the table. You can sit with your legs stretched out on the bed, resting your head on the wall, on which a soft headrest has been thoughtfully placed.

There are no mattresses on Chinese trains, instead there is something like a soft blanket, then a sheet, a blanket, a pillow. The pillow, by the way, is buckwheat.

The length of the bed is approximately 2.0 meters. And this, by the way, is surprising, because the average height of the Chinese is 165 cm for men and 155 for women (the new Russian Railways cars, it seems, were made exactly according to Chinese standards, because an ordinary European does not fit there).

In general, as you can see, Chinese new trains have both pros and cons. I like Russian Railways better in some things, but in terms of organizing personal space, Chinese cars are definitely better. They are somewhat reminiscent of capsule hotels, only cooler. And one more thing: in some amazing way, the cars run very smoothly. No jolts, rocking, jerking and quiet.

How do you like it? Which carriages do you think are better: ours or the Chinese ones?

What an innovative reserved seat looks like in China

In 2017, trains with new-generation reserved seat carriages were launched in China on the route between Beijing and Shanghai. Double-decker trains immediately fell in love with both the Chinese and guests of the Middle Kingdom for their comfort, smooth ride and personal space for each passenger.

In order to implement all the conceived ideas, Chinese engineers had to increase the internal space of the train by almost 40%, and also raise the upper shelves as high as possible.

The main distinguishing feature of the new train was the absence of vestibules and transitions between cars. In fact, the entire train interior is a long corridor with sleeping places on the sides. The boundary between cars in the new trains is purely nominal: toilets and drink machines are located here.

Unlike traditional reserved seat carriages with longitudinal-transverse arrangement of sleeping berths, the seats in the new train are located in the direction of travel. Thanks to this, the corridor is noticeably wider, and passengers have much more personal space.

The ticket price includes a set of bed linen and even disposable slippers. The pillows on the new train are filled with environmentally friendly buckwheat material. There is an orthopedic pillow on the wall in each compartment to ensure a comfortable sitting position.

Thanks to the innovative organization of space, each passenger has a separate table and legroom. Thanks to the thoughtful organization of internal zones, engineers managed to design a train with 880 seats.

On the new reserved seat train, you can easily isolate yourself from other passengers using a corrugated curtain. Each compartment has individual lighting that does not blind other passengers, as well as USB connectors, clothes hangers and universal sockets with European, Chinese and American plugs. If necessary, the personal window can be closed with an opaque curtain.

When designing the new train, engineers paid special attention to noise insulation and smooth running. By the way, the double-decker train covers the 1,318-kilometer route between Beijing and Shanghai in just 11 hours. The maximum speed of the train is 250 km/h.

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Chinese coupe car

Here we are! We go in and look for our compartment. I was so focused on everything around me that I simply flew through the entire carriage and didn’t notice our seats. But it’s not scary, the tickets are in hand, so we’ll all go to our places. We open the door, places 7 and 5 (lower), go in and…. I can’t believe my eyes, everything is very good! Clean linen has already been laid, a wonderful fresh smell, not a drop of tobacco smoke (this is unique to China), spacious and sleeping area much wider than in Russian carriages.

There is a liter thermos on the table, still empty. The table is very small, of course you can’t eat chicken on it! The maximum that can fit on it is two glasses of tea and two plates of instant noodles, a kind of “China-style”.

Also in the compartment there are hangers, a bunch of hooks for everything, disposable slippers, wi-fi and a Chinese radio. But this is a delight for amateurs; 2 minutes of listening was enough for us.

Having settled in, putting on white slippers, we set off to explore the expanses of the carriage. We visited the washroom for three people. Not a particularly clean room, cold water, but a bonus - huge mirror. This is a note for lovers of selfies in unusual places.

The toilet room pleased me with its relative cleanliness and the absence of the smell inherent in this place.

Opposite the toilet room there is another washbasin in which, next to it, there is a tank with boiling water. By the way, in China there is boiling water in all public places Oh. That's why they always have a thermos of tea with them. Such a culture!

Along the corridor of the compartment car near the windows there are comfortable folding seats where you can sit and think about everything, because there is more than enough time. And of course, there are 220 V sockets.

We drove to Hailar alone, in a romantic atmosphere. But this is China, there are still not enough people to enjoy being alone. In Hailar, the cutest adult Chinese couple sat down with us. A very nice woman and an interesting talkative man.

This is where the fun began! As you already know, we have been living in Manchuria for quite some time and this city borders on Russia. Many Chinese know Russian to one degree or another, so it is extremely difficult to apply their knowledge of the language in practice. Because if you start speaking Chinese, and the Chinese don’t understand the first time, then it’s easier for them to switch to Russian. This is where all language practice ends. But here it’s another matter, our neighbors in the compartment do not understand Russian at all. And this plays into our hands - a great opportunity in emergency situation activate all your knowledge. It was incredibly interesting for us, because if we didn’t understand the first time, they repeated it to us again and again until we fully understood. We also had the opportunity to repeat everything in several interpretations, pronouncing the correct tone, observing all the rules of pronunciation of sounds and being understood. It's amazing to know that your training was not in vain and you can speak and understand what is being said.

As the conversation progressed, it turned out that our fellow travelers had been to Russia and liked our country (all Chinese like Russian open spaces). This is a wonderful married couple who own 4 hotels that are scattered throughout China, from Hailar and Beijing to the Chinese coast. The hotels have the style of such nice cozy villas, with large quantity parks and fountains in oriental style. They promoted these travelers' havens to us in all their glory.

You probably, like us then, are wondering: what are such wealthy gentlemen doing on the train? After all, an airplane is a much more comfortable way to travel.

Despite financial well-being and access to all the benefits of civilization, people may have problems that are not so easy to solve. A talkative man has two ailments: a fear of heights (acrophobia) and a fear of closed spaces (claustrophobia). So they travel thousands of kilometers by train, monitoring the operations of their hotels as needed. Now it became clear to us why the man often went out into the corridor without the harmful habit of smoking.

Night came unnoticed. The voices died down, the corridor was empty, everyone scattered to their shelves, the lights went out. Only the rhythmic sound of the wheels lulled me to sleep, but prevented Artyom from falling asleep. The fireman lit the train's stove. Dry air whistled into the lungs and came out of them with heavy pressure. Lounging on a spacious bed like a starfish, wrapped in a light synthetic blanket like the foam of salty waves, I peacefully fell into the deepest sleep.

Chinese reserved seat car

After a quickly flown journey, we headed back to the station. But now we had to spend the evening and night in a spacious six-seater section. Yes yes, that's right. Each section of the reserved seat car has three sleeping berths on each side, for a total of six seats. Where there is a luggage rack on Russian trains, here is the third level. But there is a free corridor, the same as in a compartment car. And instead of side shelves, folding seats.

Having flown into the carriage first, we found our seats, or rather section number 3 - 4. And we were pleasantly surprised that the section was closed. I'll explain now. Everything looks the same as in a regular compartment, with the only difference that there is no door, but there are walls that isolate it from the corridor. This is brilliant! Moving around the carriage, you don’t need to hold your breath while passing the “fragrant” feet of passengers, who, like zombies from horror films, pounce on you from around every corner. The same wide berths, a made bed and the same table as in the compartment.

The restroom is made in a traditional railway style, I think it’s the perfect “hole in the floor” for public places. The washrooms are ascetic and spacious.

The corridor is just as spacious and lively, because the necessary energy resources in the form of 220 V sockets are located in the walls.

Of course, we are incredibly lucky with our neighbors. He was a young, tall Asian man with aristocratic glasses. A middle-aged woman who sat in the corridor until late at night. And a man who quietly slept the whole way.

After busy days in Harbin, the train ride turned out to be not such a useless pastime. As soon as the opportunity to lie down presented itself, I pulled the mask over my face and instantly passed out. I woke up only the next morning, when we were already approaching Manchuria. I have never spent 13 hours so quickly and forgetlessly.

I can summarize the following: the Chinese reserved seat car is a decent way of transportation at a minimal cost.

Travel by different transport, to different places, try new food, study the features of the territories you visit, always look at the world with a smile and joy.

All the best and happiness, Your Alena A.