As a teacher, I was usually travelling in peak holidays, like everyone else and usually with a band of my students who looked after me as if I was a precious piece of porcelain. Their stress levels rose before boarding was announced. A door opened, a muffled roar emerged from the waiting people, a sturdy woman on a small stand blew a whistle and called the train number and a huge crowd flung itself towards her and fought its way by the door getting their tickets punched somehow or other, arms everywhere, swept along. My students and I clung together like sardines and once through the door, ran like rabbits looking for the carriage number where another scrum formed to get by the carriage guards. Once I said, "We've got numbers on our tickets, we've GOT seats. Why run?" They had no answer at first, but then said, "Somebody might have a fake ticket and get your seat first." My response was that we'd call the conductor because our tickets were real. "No, just get there first, he might be big," was the conclusion. Fighting into the carriage was the really scary part because some people were trying to get out. I felt like I was being pulled to pieces, my backpack somehow wedged between people getting off and my arm being pulled forward and my heart going thump, thump, thump as I expected to land on the tracks. Train trip stories could fill a book of horror stories - but they also were filled with wonderful experiences of talking, sharing, watching the land go by and trying not to go to the toilets or even think about them.

I realize that I haven't been on a train for a very long time because now, so many people fly. Strangely, the trains and long distance buses seem more plentiful than ever too. My conclusion is that migrant workers are more numerous as the coastal areas develop fastest. Every year, spring festival is the largest human movement on the planet and I have heard that the ongoing permanent movement from rural to coastal areas constitutes the largest human migration in history as China globalizes. In the nineties, I think I took only two flights in two years and airports were practically deserted. Now the planes in my city land every couple of minutes. You can watch one plane take off, then one lands, the next one is descending behind it, and behind that the light of another is lining up, over and over and over. China's middle class fills the waiting lounges. I haven't been on the high speed train yet because I'm too busy flying. As for long distance buses, they can be the latest and shiniest between big cities, but if you go out into the back blocks, they start to deteriorate in quality very quickly, as do the roads. You go back ten years in time for every ten kilometres (or less) you are from a major highway and the buses that go that route match up in dinginess with the final destination's remoteness.

The changes to long distance travelling between major cities across China are mind-blowing whether you consider planes, trains, buses or private cars (even high tech bicycles). One thing I don't see much of are really good motor bikes - don't even mention the gazillions of smaller ones or scooters that have taken the place of bicycles. I mean like 1100cc Hondas or Kawasaki bikes with full leathered and helmeted riders - but I don't live in Beijing or Shanghai. As for getting tickets, you can get them online, or line up in nice stations, and I haven't used guanxi for a very long time. People have money now instead, at least on the coastal belts.