On the right track

With the Spring Festival holiday fast approaching, my family members kept sending me train schedules and coverage of the new railway, even though I'd seen them a thousand times.

My mom and her photography-buff friends went to take pictures of the station, the railway and the surrounding water views and mountains over and over again-even before it was completed. And the day the new line opened, they managed to join the first group of Qiandaohu residents taking a day trip to Huangshan city.

The focus for the expansion of China's high-speed railway network is now shifting away from larger cities across China to smaller ones, and even onto the counties.

By 2020, China's high-speed rail network will extend to 30,000 kilometers, as outlined in the government's 13th five-year plan for railway development. The domestic railway network will extend to most cities with a population of over 200,000, while the high-speed railway network will cover more than 80 percent of major cities around the country.

And during the Spring Festival holiday between Feb 4 to 10, Qiandaohu station had received a total of 52,547 visitors, according to local government figures.

For many of the older generation, the completion of the railway is an exciting prospect.

My grandmother recounted the story of a hard-seat train trip to Beijing that she made in the 1950s which took two days. And when my grandfather was stuck in the crowded carriages on trips to Beijing during the 1960s and 70s, he would not have imagined someday that his granddaughter might have made the same trip sitting in a neat carriage and making the journey home in the time it takes between meals.

The only people around me that had a minor grumble were my friends from Hangzhou. One of them joined me for a quick dinner at the railway station when I was waiting for the train back to Beijing in a rare chance to catch up.

I still remember the time when my father accompanied me to Hangzhou for a junior high school entrance examination in 2004. The trip by road took more than four hours that rainy day, passing through various cities, towns and villages along the way, before we spent another hour battling city traffic jams.