A girl points at scenery along the Beijing-Nanjing high-speed rail line. Guangxi is a major gateway between China and ASEAN countries. Chen Fuping / for China Daily

Price/time balance

Although the long journey can be tedious, many passengers said the high-speed rail provides the best balance of time and cost.

A young mother from Luoyang, Henan province, who was taking her 11-month-old baby to Nanning to visit her husband and father-in-law who sell furniture in the city, said she cannot afford to travel by air.

Although the flight between Beijing and Nanning only takes about three hours, the ticket price of 1,800 yuan is nearly twice that of the high-speed rail service.

The woman, who preferred not to give her name, said she was relieved when the high-speed train was launched because the previous rail services were inconvenient.

"We used to get on a Nanning-bound train at Zhengzhou railway station at midnight, and get off at 5 the next morning," she said. "It would be torture to take the baby to Nanning that way."

Yang Hao, a professor of rail transportation management at Beijing Jiaotong University, said that the railway will provide a good supplement to air travel because the trains stop at a large number of small cities and towns that airlines won't visit because it's not economically viable for them to do so.

According to Wei, the railway official in Nanning, tourism in Guangxi has been boosted by a large rise in the number of people taking short trips on the train to local stations.

Several years ago, a friend invited Wei to attend his child's wedding in Guilin, but Wei declined because the journey would take four hours.

Now, the high-speed railway has cut the travel time to just two hours and 30 minutes. "If people leave in the early afternoon they can make a wedding banquet in the evening and then return home on the last train," he said. "If I was asked again I certainly wouldn't decline the invitation."

Contact the writers at huoyan@chinadaily.com.cn and xindingding@chinadaily.com.cn