"WOW, it is faster than a helicopter," said Luo Rongguang as the Harmony Express eased out of Wuhan station and instantly began to gain speed.
Within a minute the world's fastest train was travelling at 120mph. By the time the Harmony Express, or Hexie Hao, hit its first bend, it was doing a steady 220mph.
As the lush rice paddies of Hunan province, China's breadbasket, passed the windows in a blur, the inside of the train was eerily still.
Chinese-built, albeit using technology from Siemens and Kawasaki, the Harmony Express is faster than Japan's Shinkansen "Bullet" trains and France's TGVs.
In testing, it reached nearly 250mph and it covers the 660 miles between Wuhan and Guangzhou, the equivalent of a journey from London to Edinburgh and back, in just three hours. replica balenciaga handbags The trip previously took almost 11 hours. "It is just amazing," said Mr Luo, 33, a businessman from the eastern city of Ningbo who was travelling to Guangzhou to visit factories.
"When the minister for rail said last year that China would one day have trains running at over 300mph I thought it was an empty boast. Now I can see it is not a dream at all."
The Harmony Express is just the first step of an epic Pounds 480billion project to build nearly 19,000 miles of railways in the next five years, 8,000 miles of which will be tracks for high-speed trains.
China, the United States and Japan are locked in a race to build super-fast train routes. All three countries are hoping that trains, rather than polluting planes or cars, will once again form the backbone of their domestic travel network.
In the US, President Barack Obama's administration has just proposed -- as part of its economic stimulus package -- to build or upgrade 7,100 miles of track so it can be high speed. But the timing and other Chanel Replica Handbags details are uncertain, putting China well ahead in the race.
More than five million Chinese have travelled by train every day this month in the run-up to today's New Year holiday, always the peak travel weekend with long queues at airports and rail and bus stations. The high-speed train routes to be rolled out this year, the Year of the Tiger, and in the two years that follow, will spread economic development to the countryside and bind together unruly regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
"I remember taking my first train back in 1989," said Mr Luo. "It was one of the old green locomotives that roared with noise and travelled at 30mph.
"I travelled from Yichang, in Hubei province, to Xinjiang. It took seven days and it was so hot that everyone was sitting with their shirts off. The train was so crowded it looked like a refugee camp. At each stop, people pushed dumplings, beer, tea-smoked eggs and roast chickens through the windows.
"The passengers just dropped their rubbish on the floor, so cleaners had to pass through every hour. There was one lavatory for every 200 passengers and the queues were horrific."
During the New Year holiday, trains across the country are crammed with migrants returning home from their factories, often carrying huge bags, livestock and cooking pots. More than 2.5 billion journeys are made across the land in the biggest human migration in the world.
But aboard the Harmony Express, and at Wuhan's brand-new Pounds 1.5billion French-designed railway station, everything is spotless.
For some, it
Other articles:
http://mywatches.blogwogin.com/2010/02/04/msp-airport-shoe-shine-opportu/
http://www.momentface.com/momentface/blog.php?user=mywatches&blogentry_id=219
http://www.jwallgren.com/Offenders-should-be-given-more.html
http://mywatches.baywords.com/2010/03/01/esprit-interim-results-for-the/
http://www.qdsyq.com/Blog/View/?389