Shanghai to Beijing by train in a day
By Rahul Jacob
Published: December 27 2008 01:11
The English poet Philip Larkin once said that he would visit China – if he could return in a day. I recently took a 10-hour train journey from Shanghai to Beijing on one of the country’s fast trains intending a variation on that absurd idea.
It was a chance to see, albeit only from a train window, more than just the epic skyscrapers of those two metropolises. Both cities have played the role of giant portals that have turned the heads of the world’s chief executives and led to the greatest emerging market gold rush ever. Coincidentally, the book I was reading on my journey, Yasheng Huang’s Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, argued that the government’s huge investments in all those skyscrapers and show-off airports had come at the cost of China’s rural areas.
FT article
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