Quote:
Originally Posted by The Chemist
or a standard soft sleeper ticket on the same train for ￥1000 (~$160). The cheapest airfare on the route that I can find is ~￥1260, so the high speed overnight train is cheaper, plus you don't have to pay for a hotel for that night - you leave Shanghai in the evening, and in the morning you're in Chengdu!
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I recently paid ￥810 for a flight from SHA to CTU and sometimes you can even get airfares for as low as ￥550 on that route. Not only is that cheaper than the train fare, but it just takes you 3 hours to get there and with a lot more comfort (no offense, but sharing a sleeping cabin with 3 Chinese for 16 hours is a torture given the fact just how noisy Chinese love to be when travelling.)
I once took the overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing, which takes only 10.5 hours. Never again I can tell you.
Rail travel is fine for all destinations that require no more than a 4-hour ride, but for everything above that the plane is by far the better option.