Getting Around China: Distance Is Measured in Hours

01Distance Is Measured in Hours

How far apart are China's cities in travel time, and where does the high-speed rule stop?

In China you plan a trip in hours, not kilometres. Beijing to Shanghai is 1,318 kilometres and four hours eighteen minutes on the fastest train; Guangzhou 广州 to Shenzhen 深圳 is half an hour; Chengdu 成都 to Chongqing 重庆 is one. The country laid about 50,000 kilometres of high-speed track by the end of 2025, roughly two thirds of all the high-speed rail in the world, and the practical result for a visitor is that the unit of an itinerary is not the city but the five-hour circle around it.

The first thing to correct is whose hours they are. The hours are the train's, not yours. The people who write up their trips afterwards say the same sentence in different words: a three-hour train is never a three-hour journey. The high-speed station is thirty to sixty minutes outside the centre, there is a security screen at the door and an identity check at the gate, seats on popular routes sell out soon after release, and you are told to be on the platform before the doors close, not as they close. Add an hour at each end. This page says so once here and again in block 04, because it is the mistake first-timers make most.

The second thing is where the hours stop working. East of the line that runs from Heihe 黑河 to Tengchong 腾冲, where ninety-four per cent of the people live, the network is dense and the rule holds. West of it the same train takes eleven hours from Lanzhou 兰州 to Urumqi 乌鲁木齐 and there is no high-speed line to Lhasa 拉萨 at all: the train from Xining 西宁 takes a day, and most of Tibet 西藏, Xinjiang 新疆 and the mountains of Yunnan 云南 and Guizhou 贵州 are reached by road, where a hundred kilometres can be three hours. The peoples page explains why the edges are different; this page only warns that the clock changes there.

The third thing is the last kilometre. Inside a city, transport is a phone act: the metro gate reads a code, the taxi is called in an app, the bicycle unlocks with a scan. That belongs to the digital page, which is why this page stops at the station door and that one starts at it.

02The Six Layers

What kinds of transport does China run, and how big is each?

Six kinds of transport carry almost every trip, and they stack: expressways and high-speed rail between cities, the metro and the bus inside them, and two kinds of bicycle for the last stretch. Each has a scale and each has a consequence.

Expressways. About 190,700 kilometres at the end of 2024, the longest network in the world, reaching more than ninety-nine per cent of cities over 200,000 people. For a visitor the consequence is not driving, which block 04 explains is awkward, but that a car with a driver can reach almost anywhere in a day, and that the long-distance bus still runs where the train does not.

High-speed rail. About 50,000 kilometres as of 2025, laid in less than twenty years, on a grid the planners call eight verticals and eight horizontals. Trains run at 300 to 350 kilometres an hour, leave every few minutes on the main corridors, and are the reason a ten-day trip can hold three cities a thousand kilometres apart. The Chinese word is gaotie 高铁, and it is the word to show a driver when you want the station.

Metro. Fifty-eight cities on the mainland run urban rail, about 12,000 kilometres of it as of 2024, and Shanghai and Beijing are the two longest metro networks in the world. A ride costs a few yuan, the gate reads a code from your phone, and there is a security screen at every entrance. The word is ditie 地铁.

Bus. Everywhere, and cheap, one or two yuan a ride. Shenzhen 深圳 switched its entire bus fleet to electric in 2017 and its taxis in 2019, and most large cities have followed, which is why a Chinese street is quieter than the number of vehicles on it suggests. Buses are the least English-friendly layer: stops are announced in Chinese, and routes are read on a map app rather than a sign.

Docked public bicycles. A few cities still run the older kind, with stations and a card. Hangzhou 杭州 started its system in 2008 and it is the largest of the type anywhere; it survives because the lakeside is built for it.

Shared bicycles and shared electric scooters. Most cities have them, in three or four colours, unlocked by scanning a code and left at the kerb. Around them move some 350 million privately owned electric two-wheelers, roughly one for every four people in the country, which is the single biggest change in a Chinese street in twenty years and the reason the bicycle lane is not a quiet place. Whether you can unlock a shared bike depends on whether your phone identity has been accepted, which is the digital page's subject.

03By the Numbers

What are the figures behind China's roads, railways and metros, with sources?

The table under this block carries the source and the year beside each figure. The prose says what the figures change.

Trains have replaced planes for anything under about a thousand kilometres. The country carried 4.3 billion rail passengers in 2024. On the Beijing–Shanghai corridor the train station is in the city and the airport is not, the train leaves every ten minutes and the flight is delayed, so the train wins on the clock as well as the fare. Above a thousand kilometres, Beijing to Guangzhou 广州 or Shanghai to Chengdu 成都, the aeroplane returns; above two thousand, the sleeper train becomes the alternative rather than the day train.

The shape of the network is the shape of the population. Almost all of the 50,000 kilometres of high-speed track lie east of the Heihe–Tengchong line 胡焕庸线, on the forty-four per cent of the land that holds ninety-four per cent of the people. The map of the railway and the map of where Chinese people live are the same map, and a trip that stays on it moves fast while a trip that leaves it moves at the speed of a bus.

The forty days around the lunar new year 春节, late January or February are the largest movement of people on earth. The travel season the Chinese call chunyun 春运 recorded about nine billion cross-regional trips in 2025, most of them by car and a large share by rail. For a visitor the number means one thing: do not plan to take a train in the week before or after the new year, or in the first week of October, without a ticket bought the day sales open.

Half the new cars are electric. More than half of the cars sold in 2025 were battery or plug-in vehicles, which is why the taxi that arrives is silent, why the ride-hailing fleet is almost entirely electric, and why a car with a driver stops to charge on a long day.

04What It Changes for Your Trip

How should transport shape a first China itinerary, and what catches visitors out?

Start with the arithmetic, because it decides everything else. A healthy ten-day trip holds three cities inside one five-hour circle, not five cities across the country. The forums have worked this out for themselves: the complaint they make most about first itineraries is not the choice of cities but the time lost checking out, reaching stations, waiting, finding the next hotel and packing again. The day you travel between cities is not a day you see either of them; count it as half.

Tickets. Every train ticket is tied to a name and a document. There is no paper ticket: your passport is scanned at the gate, and foreign passports go through a staffed lane rather than the automatic ones. The national booking system opens sales about two weeks ahead, while the international booking sites show timetables two months out and charge a fee for the convenience; the forums' settled advice is to plan on one and buy on the other. On holiday dates the fast trains sell out within minutes of release. The how-it-works page has the current procedure; this page only tells you that the window is short and the name must match.

Stations. High-speed stations are large, new and usually outside the centre; allow an hour from a downtown hotel in a big city. Everyone and every bag passes a security screen at the entrance, and there is a second identity check at the platform gate. Arrive forty-five minutes before departure. Big stations have several waiting halls and the gate number goes up about fifteen minutes before the train leaves.

In the city. The metro is the fastest way across any large city and the easiest for a foreigner: maps and announcements are bilingual, and a single ride is a few yuan. The taxi is called through a ride-hailing app that has an English interface and accepts foreign cards; the travellers' notes add that it does not charge you automatically at the end of a ride, so you pay when prompted, and that the fare on the meter runs a little above the estimate. Street taxis exist and take cash or a code; the queue at an airport rank is the one place a first-timer meets an unlicensed driver, so use the official rank or the app.

Two wheels. Shared bicycles are the pleasure of a Chinese city and the digital page explains what you need to unlock one. The electric scooters around you are the country's real traffic risk for a pedestrian, more than cars; they use the bicycle lane, the pavement and the wrong side of the road, and they are silent. Look both ways on a one-way street. The safety page has the rest.

Driving. A foreign licence is not valid on its own; a temporary permit can be issued at some airports for a short stay, and the procedure changes, so the how-it-works page keeps it. In practice visitors do not drive. A car with a driver for a day is the ordinary way to reach anywhere the train does not, and the cost is within reach because the driver's day is priced in local terms.

When. Avoid the railway in the week either side of the lunar new year 春节, late January or February and in the first week of October; the calendar page has the dates, which move. The same weeks empty the office towers and fill every scenic road in the country.

At the airport. Domestic security is strict about power banks: since 2025 only those bearing the national safety mark are allowed on board, and the rest are taken at the checkpoint. Buy one in China or check the mark on yours.

05Where You’ll Meet It

Where on PreeChina are the train journeys, cruises and drives?

This page is the network. The rides are elsewhere.

Riding it. The page on new China is where the train becomes an experience rather than a line on a map: the overnight sleeper, the old green lüpiche 绿皮车 that still crosses the country at eighty kilometres an hour for a tenth of the fare, the driverless taxis now carrying passengers in Wuhan 武汉 and Beijing, the Shanghai maglev, and the bridges and tunnels that turned islands into suburbs.

Four railways worth riding for their own sake. The line from Guizhou 贵州 to Guangzhou 广州 runs through karst for five hours; the Lanzhou 兰州 to Urumqi 乌鲁木齐 line crosses the Gobi and the Qilian snow; the metre-gauge railway from Kunming 昆明 towards Vietnam is the oldest scenic line in the south-west; and the 1909 line from Beijing to Zhangjiakou 张家口, the first railway the Chinese built themselves, now has a high-speed twin that reaches the ski slopes in an hour. The travel magazines this site reads have been writing these up for a decade; the English internet has barely started.

Water. The Yangtze cruise from Chongqing 重庆 to Yichang 宜昌 through the Three Gorges is three nights and the one journey on this page that is a holiday in itself. The ferry from Xiamen 厦门 to Gulangyu 鼓浪屿 is ten minutes and the island has no cars at all.

The road. The outdoors pages begin where the train ends: the drive into western Sichuan 四川 from Chengdu 成都, the road north from Lijiang 丽江, the loop around the Ili valley. Each one is a car-with-driver itinerary and each is written with the hours, not the kilometres.

The phone. The digital page has the apps that run all of the above, and what a foreign passport can and cannot do in them.

The calendar page has the two weeks a year to avoid the railway, and the peoples page explains why the map of the trains and the map of the peoples are almost mirror images.

06What It’s Not

What do first-time visitors get wrong about getting around China?

• Not the whole country. The hours rule holds in the east, where the people and the track are. Tibet 西藏 has no high-speed line, Xinjiang 新疆's is one line, and the mountain provinces of the south-west are reached by road once the train stops.
• Not a three-hour trip. A three-hour train is a five-hour journey once the station on each side, the security screen and the buffer the forums insist on are added. Plan the travel day as half a day.
• Not only the fast train. The ordinary trains, the sleepers and the old green lüpiche 绿皮车 still run, cost a fraction, take all night and are the part of the railway that travellers remember. The page on new China covers them.
• Not the London Underground. Every metro entrance has a security screen, most lines stop around eleven at night, eating is discouraged and the platforms have doors. Otherwise it is the easiest thing in the country to use.
• Not hailed by hand. In the big cities taxis are called through an app; the ones that stop for a raised arm at an airport or a station are the ones to avoid. The app has an English interface and takes foreign cards.
• Not an empty bicycle lane. The lane is shared with several hundred million electric scooters that are silent and do not stop. Look both ways, including on one-way streets.
• Not faster by air under a thousand kilometres. The airport is far, the security is slow, domestic flights are often late and the train leaves from the city every few minutes. Fly across the country, not along a corridor.
• Not in the centre. High-speed stations are new towns of their own, twenty to forty kilometres out. The old station in the middle of the city is usually the slow trains' station, which is sometimes the one you want.