On the night train

China has more than 52,000km of rail tracks. GREG DIXON buys a ticket to ride from Beijing to Wuhan.

Just inside the glass doorway of Beijing's Xi Zahn railway station are nine photographs of what it looks like when you die horribly. Even without a smattering of Mandarin, the message is plain: on no account muck about on trains or at railway stations in China if you want to keep your head on your shoulders or your limbs firmly attached.

Sobering stuff all right. But stuff sobriety — a couple of cans of the local Tsingtao beer would steady the nerves. With 12 hours and nearly a thousand kilometres of track ahead on the night train south to Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, the over-active imagination figured that was fair enough.

Once inside the vast, air-conditioned cavern that is the station's "No1 Soft Seat Waiting Room" — complete with its revolutionary relief for educating the waiting masses — I guzzled a warm one, worried, and waited for the 7 pm departure.

As it turned out, it was mental ado about nothing.

Despite the gory photo gallery, China's 52,000km rail network has a solid reputation for getting you there on time and in one piece.

First constructed in the 19th century, the rail system has been rebuilt and expanded since the 50s after suffering heavy damage during the Boxer Rebellion of the 1900s (rail was seen as a sign of foreign encroachment), the Japanese occupation during the 30s and 40s, and the Civil War which brought Mao Zedong's Communist party to power in 1949.

Reconstructed Chinese rail may be, but refinement must still be on the drafting board.

Xi Zahn's vast modernity — it's many times larger than the city's second main station Beijing Zahn — and its breathless bustle of purposeful travellers promise a life in the comfortable fast lane. But on the Wuhan express, the carriages still tend towards 50s' utilitarianism with a fresh paint job and increasingly reeky dunnies.

There are four classes of rail travel running from "hard seat" (what you read is what you get) at the cheap, but hardly cheerful end through to the air-conditioned "soft sleep" (RMB$ 411, $103) for upper middle-class locals and sissy Westerners like myself. The room, like the train, has an old-fangled charm. All aboard and metal ticketed by female guards in crisp blue uniforms, Thunderbirds hats and brick red sashes, the journey begins with a back-bending fight to get overstuffed bags into the overhead compartment of the four bunk, 2m by 2.2m room.

I grabbed a bottom cot (the last available in the two-up-two-down berth), with it's thin but comfy mattress, warm blanket, towel and a pair of pre-loved thongs tucked underneath.

Stretching out would have to wait. Chris, the charming bloke in the bunk above, needs a place to plonk while we wait for the dining car to open.

Out the window Beijing's backyard is flashing past — it looks like it needs a decade of working bees.

While air travel makes everywhere look like lilliputian utopia, it seemed to be an inalienable law of rail that a city always drops its trousers for train travellers. Beijing's backside is spotted with tightly-packed, crumbling tenements and belching smokestacks. But then poverty and industry are customary bedfellows.

Urban decay has passed to the exuberant green of rural China by the time I settled in for the dining car's two courses (RMB$133, $33.25). In a minor blessing the diner has pliable bamboo, rather than slippery lacquered wood, chopsticks for noshing. It's the most efficiently gobbled meal I managed during seven days in China, though the gristly beef is far from the best.

Washing it down with another fine local brew, King Long, sees it, like the scenery, pass from fair to middling to damned fine.

Locking our room's door, we settled in to watch the twilight dye the countryside sable and burnt ochre. We mulled on tomorrow and Wuhan, one of China's three summer furnaces.

Lying roughly halfway between Beijing and Guangzhou, the city is split three ways by the Yangtze and Han rivers, has a population of seven million and is one of China's largest industrial and trading centres. It has the steamy, smoggy haze to prove it.

But it's bite-sized portions of this city's long history which our guides will be serving.

The cool, studious interior of the Hubei Provincial Museum will introduce us to rich trappings of the 2400-year-old tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, a small kingdom on the Yangtze during the Zho Dynasty (1100-221 BC).

On Snake Hill in Wuhan's Wuchang district squats the latest incarnation (completed in 1985) of the impressive Yellow Crane Tower.

Destroyed and replaced many times since it first watched for warriors coming down the Yangtze nearly 1700 years ago, the tower is the subject of more than 1000 ancient poems.

A Taoist tale tells of an immortal who blessed a good Samaritan's restaurant by drawing a yellow crane on its wall. The bird was damned good for business — it came to life and entertained punters — until the immortal returned and flew away with it.

The flashy restaurateur later built the first tower to honour the bird and its creator.

It sounds like a bedtime story — though it's the train's gentle lullaby I attempt to fight off before ...

I awoke just in time to see dawn light a patchwork of rich, ancient paddies before we gently click-clacked across the fat, slow snake of the Yangtze.

Now that's what I call a backside.

CASE NOTES

Getting there: Several Asian and Pacific airlines, including Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, offer non-direct flights from New Zealand to Shanghai or Beijing. Return airfares start around $1700, although seasonal and package specials are available.

Other costs: Hotel rates vary according to season with tourist-rate hotels in Beijing and Shanghai offering twin accommodation for as low as $40 a night (between November and March with a minimum additional travel purchase).

Train travel is not expensive and comes in up to four classes. The best class, the air-conditioned "soft sleep" (RMB$411, NZ$103 from Beijing to Wuhan) is recommended.

When to go: Beijing's average temperatures run between -10 and 31 deg C. April to June, although hot and humid, are the best months to travel.

Dollars and sense: Visas are a must for foreign nationals and can take up to a month to receive from Chinese officials based in New Zealand. American dollars and travellers cheques are recommended, and can be easily cashed for China's currency, yuan or RMB. Be sure to change any yuan back before leaving the country — it's impossible to exchange them in New Zealand.

• Greg Dixon travelled to Beijing and Wuhan courtesy of Continental Ltd.