G, D, C, K: Reading a Chinese Departure Board by Its Letters — Epoche B1
The letter in front of a Chinese train number is the timetable in one character. Stand under a departure board in Beijing and you can read the whole day's choices before you read a single destination. The letters sort the trains, and they sort them by what they cost you. G — the fastest high-speed services, hundreds of kilometres an hour, seats only, no berths. D — slower services on the same modern track; a few run overnight with beds. C — short intercity hops between a city and its neighbours. Z, T and K — the older long-distance trains, in that order of speed, still running through the night. That last group is where the interesting choice sits. A K train from Beijing to Xi'an takes a night. A G train takes a few hours in daylight. The G costs a great deal more, and then costs you a hotel as well; the K gives you a bunk, a thermos of hot water and a morning arrival. You are not choosing a train. You are choosing what to spend: money, hours, or a night's sleep. Laozi wrote that a journey of a thousand li begins with a single step, and for most of Chinese history a thousand li meant weeks. The high-speed network has made that distance an afternoon. But the old trains were not abolished. They were kept, at the bottom of the board, for people who need the fare more than the speed. So read the letters first. They tell you, before any price appears on the screen, which kind of journey you are being offered — and whether the cheap one is a hardship or a bed you did not have to pay twice for. References China Railway (2024). National Railway Passenger Train Timetable [Quanguo tielu lüke lieche shikebiao]. Beijing: China Railway Publishing House. Laozi. Dao De Jing, chapter 64, trans. J. Legge (1891), Sacred Books of the East, vol. 39. Oxford: Clarendon Press.