Wuhan

It is Friday, and Lee and I decided to leave Guangzhou for the weekend to visit Lee's childhood friend Li Lei. To get to Wuhan, which is a moderately sized Chinese city at 9 million, we took the train.

Wuhan is a smooth 600 miles from Guangzhou, roughly the distance from Indianapolis to New Orleans. We made the trip in less than 4 hours for about 70 bucks. The train from Guangzhou to Wuhan is the fastest train in the world. It was completed only this past December, and is the first leg of a chain that will connect all the way to Beijing.

I've got video of the first 5 minutes of takeoff, ie the train picking up speed to its max of about 350 km/hour (about an Indy500 car). Its really really fast.

Wuhan is situated on the Yangtze River and Li Lei is picking us up from the train station (also brand new and very impressive to put it mildly). Later this weekend he is taking us to the Three Gorges Dam, which is the biggest dam in the world by a huge margin.

I especially was thrilled about the train ride because it would give me a chance to see the rest of the country. Two things really struck me. One, it is remarkable to be sitting on the worlds fastest train and see farmers working giant rice paddies with their bare hands; this is another testament to the contrasts of China. The other thing that struck me is how much construction is going on absolutely everywhere. Its unbelievable. With the amount of construction I've seen we could build indianapolis dozens of times over.

Its a shame that we have such limited transit options in the states. China is larger than the US mainland, but certainly their population density makes it more economical. Still, we gotta start somewhere. Why not a modestly fast midwest corridor connecting Cincinatti to Chicago via Indy?

Pics next week if you're lucky, or if Lee uploads a few from his camera phone :).

Cheers,
Nick
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry