Making tracks through China’s past and present
High-speed rail may have modernised journeys through northern China, but centuries of urban history are still in evidence on a pilgrimage from the capital to the caves used by a strengthening Communist Party
“Peking wore the green lace of spring, its thousands of willows and imperial cypresses making the Forbidden City a place of wonder and enchantment,” American journalist Edgar Snow wrote of Beijing in 1936.
Ninety years later, strolling before the vermillion ramparts of the Forbidden City, it’s clear that Beijing’s mass conversion to electric vehicles has rendered the city not only cleaner than it has been of late, but also quieter – allowing Zhongshan Park to bloom much as Snow described.
Snow’s description was included in his wartime account of a journey to Yanan, Red Star Over China (first published in 1937), his destination then being the base of the Chinese Communist Party. But the city has made headlines much more recently, with the December opening of the Xian-Yanan high-speed railway taking the length of China Railway’s operational network past the 50,000km (31,070 miles) mark.
It took Snow more than two days to cover the 1,000km (621 miles) from Beijing to Xian by rail, but China’s 21st century public transport will make my own pilgrimage to Yanan, with some history-imbued detours along the way, far smoother.
With tickets bought online, I set my sights first on Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, located on the upper reaches of the Yellow River and 400km (249 miles) to the south of Beijing.
At the massive, oval-domed Beijing South station, I board a G-class train that makes light work of the Central Plain, rocketing across an area the size of Paraguay characterised by undulating wheat and rapeseed-flower fields. It takes just over two hours to reach the far side of the mighty Yellow River, a reminder that Beijing was one of the few ancient Chinese cities that were not fed by the “mother river”.
Jinan’s urban district stands to the south of the river. First impressions upon arrival at dusk are of a typical second-tier city composed chiefly of modern high-rises strung together by flyovers. My mood isn’t much improved by the hotel I pre-booked, which is located down a gloomy Shizhong district alley, past street-side barbecue joints populated by drunks, with electrical wires dangling overhead and between adverts for spas and KTV (karaoke television) lounges. The labyrinth of hotel corridors has tobacco-stained carpets and room service comes courtesy of R2-D2-like robots.