i have tried the bullet train, from zhengzhou to guangzhou and guangzhou to zhuhai. the long journey was safe and fine. It made me feel I was in a first class trip, but the man sitting next to me, in a full tux, was wolfing chicken legs and cracking boiled eggs. He was still refined though when he handed the bag of bones and pieces of egg shells to red lady attendant.

I once shared a sleeper cabin with some old retired dudes riding from Ningbo to Shanghai.  It was a second class "seat", where they make 6 people share the cabin, and usually you just share the bottom bunks as benches.  From the first 你好 from my mouth, they were quite sure I was fluent in Chinese (I'm not).  Anyways, we had some pretty funny broken conversations about China, the US, what they were doing, what I was doing, etc.  The best part was when they asked what I thought about Obama, and I only responded with two words: 笨蛋 .  One of the old dudes then hooked me up with a couple of fresh picked oranges.  Score!

at the beginning of the month i took the over night train from ningbo to hefei to register my marriage with my now lovely wife as she was from anhui.

it was one of those 6 bunk a cabin trains and ours were right at the end next to the toilet.

it was an 8 hour ride. i honestly couldnt tell who had travel sickness or who was just spitting into the trash next to the toilet. sounded exactly the same.

"koyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy puhhhhhhhh!"

I was on an 8+ hour ride recently, and met a really big, old fat Chinese guy. He was all happy and jolly, and bragged about his daughter for a long time. In fact, he looked almost like buddha statues. Guy was really nice, and had a really rare "I should've been a movie star" look about him.

About 2 years ago I took a train from Haikou, Hainan to Guangzhou...never again!  It was the most excruciating 18 hours.  It was an idea of a friend who thought it might be a fun experience, plus it was a lot cheaper than flying.  The train was hot..air condition wasn't turned on until much much later, being crowed didn't help either.  We were both stuck on the top bunks of a six bunk cabin.  The bunks didn't seem all that sanitary and had a smell,..people kept non-stop talking; and when finally I thought I would get some sleep, I awoken in the middle of the night to the smell of instant noodles!

My experence in long distance train travel was very good. Nanning to Beijing. When you bought your tickets you were assigned to a cabin with a central table with a clean tablecloth a thermus with hot water a waste paper basket. I belive there were four bunks. The other young couple that shared the cabin had a small son. The bunks were clean and quite comfortable even when compared to hotel beds. Chinese beds??? in a Chines bed your body conforms to the bed not the bed to the body. Even in high class hotels the beds are as hard as nails. The overall experience was quite good. Franck3