Platzkart cars: Chinese and Russian (12 photos). China

01.04.2021

What an innovative reserved seat looks like in China

In 2017, a new generation of second-class second-class trains were launched in China on the route between Beijing and Shanghai. Both the Chinese and the guests of the Celestial Empire immediately fell in love with the two-story trains for their comfort, smoothness and personal space for each passenger.

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

The main distinguishing feature of the new train was the absence of a vestibule and transitions between cars. In fact, the entire interior of the train is a long corridor with berths on the sides. The border between the cars in the new trains is purely nominal: there are toilets and vending machines with drinks.

Unlike traditional second-class carriages with a longitudinal-transverse arrangement of sleeping bunks, 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 help you sit comfortably.

Thanks to the innovative organization of the space, each passenger has a separate table and legroom. Due to the well-thought-out organization of the internal zones, the engineers managed to design a train for 880 seats.

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

When designing the new train, the engineers paid special attention to sound insulation and smooth running. By the way, the route between Beijing and Shanghai is 1318 kilometers long and the two-storey train takes just 11 hours. The maximum train speed is 250 km / h.

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Chinese compartment car

Here we are! We go in looking for our compartment. I was so staring at everything around that I just flew the whole car and did not notice our seats. But it's not scary, tickets are on hand, so we'll all go to places. We open the door, places 7 and 5 (bottom), go in and…. I can't believe my eyes, everything is very good! Clean linen has already been made, a wonderful fresh smell, not a drop of tobacco smoke (this is unique for China), spacious and much wider sleeping space than in Russian carriages.

There is a one-liter thermos on the table, while it is empty. The table is very small, of course you can't eat chicken on this one! The maximum that can fit on it is two cups of tea and two plates of instant noodles, such as "china-style".

The compartment also has hangers, a bunch of hooks for anything, disposable slippers, wi-fi, and a Chinese radio. But this is a delight for amateurs, it lasted for 2 minutes of listening.

Having settled down, putting on white slippers, we went to explore the expanses of the car. We visited a washroom for three persons. Not very clean room, cold water, but a bonus - a huge mirror. This is a note for lovers of selfies in unusual places.

The dressing room pleased with the relative cleanliness and lack of smell inherent in this place.

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

Along the corridor of the compartment car there are comfortable folding seats near the windows, on which you can sit and think about everything, because there is more than a lot of 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 so few people to enjoy loneliness. In Hailar, the cutest adult couple of Chinese sat down with us. A very pleasant woman and an interesting talkative man.

Here the fun began! As you already know, we have been living in Manchuria for a long time and this city borders on Russia. Many Chinese people know Russian to one degree or another, so it is extremely difficult to apply their knowledge of the language in practice. Since, if you start speaking Chinese, and the Chinese do not understand the first time, then it is easier for them to switch to Russian. This is where the whole practice of the language ends. But here is another matter, our coupe neighbors absolutely do not understand Russian. And this plays into our hands - a great opportunity in an emergency to activate all our knowledge. It was incredibly interesting for us, because if from the first time we did not understand, then they repeated it to us even before 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 we were understood. It's amazing to know that your training has not gone in vain, and you can speak and understand what is at stake.

In the course of the conversation, it turned out that our fellow travelers had been to Russia and they liked our country (all Chinese like the Russian expanses). This is a wonderful married couple, owners of 4 hotels, which are scattered throughout China, from Hailar and Beijing to the Chinese coast. The hotels have the style of such lovely cozy villas, with a large number of parks and fountains in oriental style. We promoted these travelers' shelters in all their glory.

Probably, you, like us then, are asking the question: what are such well-to-do 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 easy to solve. A talkative man has two ailments: fear of heights (acrophobia) and fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia). Therefore, they travel thousands of kilometers by train, controlling the operation of their hotels as needed. Now it became clear to us why a man often went out into the corridor without having the addiction of smoking.

Night fell imperceptibly. 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, but prevented Artyom from falling asleep. The fireman lit the train stove. Dry air whistled into the lungs and left them with a heavy pressure. Lounging on a spacious bunk like a starfish, wrapped in a light padding polyester blanket like the foam of salty waves, I peacefully plunged into a deep sleep.

Chinese reserved seat car

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

Having flown into the car first, we found our seats, more precisely the section number 3 - 4. And we were pleasantly surprised that the section was closed. Let me explain now. Everything looks like in an ordinary compartment, with the only difference that there is no door, but there are walls that isolate from the corridor. This is brilliant! Moving around the carriage, you do not need to hold your breath while passing the “fragrant” legs of passengers, who, like zombies from horror films, pounce on you from every corner. The same wide berths, the made bed and the same table as in the compartment.

The washroom is designed in a traditional railroad style, which I think is the perfect "hole in the floor" for public spaces. The washrooms are austere and spacious.

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

Of course, we were incredibly lucky with our neighbors. He was a tall young Asian with aristocratic glasses. A middle-aged woman who sat in the hallway late into the night. And the man who slept quietly all the 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 had to spend 13 hours so quickly and unconsciously.

I can summarize the following, the Chinese reserved seat carriage is a worthy way to travel at a minimal cost.

Travel on different vehicles, to different places, try new food, explore the peculiarities of the territories visited, always look at the world with a smile and joy.

All goodness and happiness, yours Alena A.

A sort of predator of railways with an elongated rounded muzzle. And although such roads in China are really developing rapidly - nevertheless, most ordinary Chinese travel by ordinary "slow" trains. And at least half of them travel in reserved seat cars. They are not like ours - three-tiered and with a passage, and this is a whole road world with its own laws.

Honestly, at first I was afraid of the reserved seat there. Plunging into the dense human sea of a completely unfamiliar composition is quite exciting. It seemed that everything was packed with poor Chinese and everything around was incomprehensible. So on the first expedition, almost to the very end, I moved either on high-speed trains or in a compartment. And just before leaving (from Yan'an to Beijing), for the sake of interest, he risked a ride in a reserved seat. It turned out - quite normal, and not at all scary. Yes, there are some nuances. But they are surmountable.

In the Second Chinese Expedition, we had to deal with the placcart already tightly. I had no pre-purchased tickets for most of the route and had to deal with a lot along the way. There are no tickets for 1-3 days to many destinations, except for reserved seats or without seats. It's like in the USSR: there are a lot of trains, traffic intensity is very high, ticket turnover is also high. Therefore, the reserved seat really helped out - during my travels I had to use it six times and save a lot of overnight stays in hotels. The main thing is to try to take it down or in the middle. Along the way, I broke the template that in the Middle Kingdom only losers from the lower social strata move on the reserved seat. Nothing like this! The reserved seats are mainly used by those who were simply not lucky enough to take a coupe at the checkout. And not those who want to save money.

So now I will tell you in pictures about the Chinese reserved seat.
And about how their local road world is being built there.

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

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

3. So, the first car on the Second Expedition to get the car # 17 of the K1168 train. I took it literally an hour and a half before departure, because until the last I hoped that I could find a ferry directly to Guangzhou with an overnight stay. But, having passed both ports in Haikou, it broke off and had to change the plan. A passenger on the train is given just such a card for the duration of the trip. Car number (17) and section number in it (13). The section indicates the place with a hieroglyph. As you can see, I have the bottom - T with a dash.

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

5. Quite convenient in the reserved seat there is that the owners of the upper shelves can sit on the side seat. By default, it is considered that the passengers of the lower shelves do not pretend to these seats, but those who are on top or from the middle sit on them. It is already late hour (our train is loaded onto a ferry across the Qiongzhou Strait), and almost all the passengers went to bed, but during the day the seats are almost completely occupied.

6. There, in the window you can see the uncoupled neighboring cars. Now we will swing on 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 cut down, except for the section numbers burning in the dark. So you can sleep well. In addition, thumping, loud chatting, playing music or walking around in your section at night is very discouraged: Chinese guides can interrupt such a process rather rudely, because the rest of the passengers must rest. This is quite a big difference from our order, ours is more liberal.

8. Linen in the reserved seat is laid in advance, and is always included in the price of the seat. Sometimes it turns out that the linen is "carry-over": if you sit down at a small intermediate station, no one will simply stop it for you without a reminder. You can go to the underwear of the previous passenger :) However, when you specifically remind the guides, 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). The Chinese cannot exist without drinking bowls and thermoses.

10. This photo shows the section numbers below the window. In the dark, they glow red so that passengers can quickly find theirs.

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

12. The third shelf is located high, and it is not very easy to climb there.

13. Climb there usually from the side, here on such a ladder.

14. Here the passage is already filled with people, late in the morning and many have a snack.

What kind of contingent travels by reserved seat in China?
At first, I thought that these are those who want to save money or who do not have the funds for a compartment, and even more so for a bullet train. However, it turned out not to be so: those who are relatively poorer (mainly residents from the provinces), in the reserved seat no more than a third. The main part of reserved seat passengers is made up of those who simply could not take a ticket to a higher category. That is, the contingent strongly intersects with compartment cars, just those who took a ticket either strongly in advance, or caught it via the Internet, go to the compartment. Tickets are now sold in China in 20 days, and earlier (more recently) it was only 10. This is especially true for popular destinations or general holidays: it is impossible to get a ticket for five days already, the demand for them is so great. Because of this, I could not get to Chongqing, which I had to miss - and precisely because of the lack of suitable tickets.

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

What is the difference between a reserved seat and a coupe, apart from comfort? Greater freedom of communication.
In principle, the people here are friendly, there are few "crook merchants" (through whom the typical opinion of a standard tourist is formed about the Chinese), and they immediately look at the laova with great interest, especially if he travels in the direction from the hinterland, and not from a large center like Shanghai. During my seven trips in the reserved seat, I was able, for example, to very productively teach the hieroglyphs of food - and during the day I gathered about five "fans" in my section, who diligently taught me to pronounce the 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 it is a whole art - where to start, and how to add lines. True, I didn't really remember anything from this - but nevertheless, it was interesting.

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

15. Since the linen in the carriage is always covered by default, the Chinese do not particularly bother sitting on someone else's linen, like ours - they bent a corner there, sat on a bare shelf, so as not to get dirty with clothes. The Chinese simply jumped off and sat down.

16. Take photos in the reserved seat very difficult: the first hour and a half you are the subject of everyone's attention. Then for some time they are watching you - the Chinese is very unusual about the very fact of being in a reserved seat. And only after about half a day you become a part of the interior, they finally get used to you. So we had to be perverted as much as possible: stealthily, with a rotating screen and only a small camera. The mirror immediately attracts attention, and the 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 - the afternoon full house. Whoever could, went down from the upper shelves and all the seats in the aisle are occupied.

20. Approximately every three to four hours a conductor walks through the car and cleans it up. It passes twice: first with a broom, then with a plastic garbage bag, where everyone throws packages and so on. There is no other way: the Chinese waste an incredible amount of litter in life, and if you do not clean it up all the time, they will quickly fill up the whole car with waste. Otherwise, the carriage remains relatively clean.

21. The Chinese drink as much as they eat. Actually, I also drank a lot there. The nature of the food is highly conducive to 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 time line). To see a book or paper newspaper in the hands of someone is a huge rarity, they mostly read text or pictures from tablets and large smartphones.

23. Nevertheless, in the reserved seat there is often a specific ambush - de-energized sockets throughout the car. They are watching this in the compartment, and there I did not run into such a thing. And here - three times, almost half of my trips. So there is nothing to recharge the devices with, and you come to a new city without energy. The sockets in the reserved seat are, according to the standard, like eight - four paired blocks, through a section.

24. It's time to eat, and the massive smell of instant tea with soy sauce :)

25. Upstairs you can see the shelf for the things of the upper passengers. It's almost under the ceiling.

26. A wash compartment in a reserved seat always has 3 seats (in a compartment - 2 or 3). Here it gets dirty faster - there are 1.5 times more passengers.

About toilets. They are dirtier than in a compartment. Sometimes, even at the end of the route, they are flooded with water (I hit it a couple of times).
This, unfortunately, is the inconvenience of the 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 a useful tip: if the neighboring carriage is compartment, go there. The conductors do not care, and the passage is open around the clock.

28. Three or four times a day, starting at 9 am, a "nutritious" aunt, with a trolley, rides through the carriage. He speaks loudly and in a singsong voice, and if you hear it, you will have time to buy it. On the way, it is worth taking ready-made hot meals wrapped in foil, or packages sealed in a vacuum. It is better not to take open pieces from trays (I did not risk it). There is a complex snack there in the region of 15-20 yuan (the second with meat or chicken, salad, drinking). Remember to wash your hands regularly, before and after, and more often in general.

Hot snacks take about a quarter of passengers, another quarter takes them with them (if the train does not go from the capital or Shanghai), and about half brews cardboard boxes with kuksa (this is the most massive train food in China).

29. Thermosock in hand with you almost always. Without a thermosk-column, the Chinese are not quite Chinese :)

30. Chinese railroad workers outside the window. There is a lot of manual labor, less small-scale mechanization than we have.

31. The problem of sun protection has been solved very interestingly. If we have taken the path of canceling the curtains, and there is only a complete closing of the window with a tight shutter, then the Chinese also put blinds on the windows. Precisely from the sun, but not completely removing the light. In about half of the reserved seats, there are also LCD screens, however, they are turned on only in the evening and centralized films are played. Starting without fail with the party-consistent, and then all sorts of tearful melodramas and kungfu a la Bruce-li.

32. The second passage of the conductor along the carriage with a plastic bag. About half a bag of garbage is collected at a time, the Chinese are masters at this.

33. On the way, you have to drink Chinese tea, which is brewed at 70-75 degrees. Our large-leaf Ceylon is underboiled at this temperature. Honestly, after three weeks of staying there, I really want our tea, and not the floral-herbal aroma of the Chinese. The ubiquitous jasmine is especially infuriating. When I returned home, I could not get drunk with our usual tea for a long time :)

34. Chinese hard workers from the installation of power lines. We drove from Xian to somewhere near Beijing. Through my tablet and Google translator, I managed to get into a conversation with that guy in the distance, who also had a translator on his gadget.

35. Climb to the top shelf, evening. The ordinary life of a Chinese reserved seat.

36. Tambour for smoking. There is also an ambush here with the smell of smoke - for the reason that the inter-car passages are not closed and the tobacco smell sips inside the car. Therefore, if possible, it is better not to take the first 2 sections from the washroom. It is best to go closer to the middle in the 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, albeit with its own nuances. Unlucky to take in the coupe? Take a reserved seat. Try to take the seats down whenever possible, it turns out almost like a coupe in terms of comfort. The middle is worse. The top is inconvenient, except for the option "go 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 dash on the right, see photo # 3.

The pictures were taken on different voyages of the expedition, I just combined them here into one story for the convenience of showing different sides of the trip.