Visiting China Railway Museum, Chinese and foreign journalists amazed by “China speed"

By Zhang Andi

On the morning of February 2, Beijing Press Center invited 47 Chinese and foreign journalists from 27 media outlets to the Zhengyangmen Pavilion of China Railway Museum located on the southeast side of Tian'anmen Square. The Zhengyangmen Exhibition Hall of China Railway Museum was remodeled from the original Zhengyangmen East Station of Peking-Mukden Railway, which has behind it more than 100 years of vicissitudes.

As the journalists walked into the spacious circular hall of the museum, the first thing they saw was the Dragon locomotive, China's earliest steam train. It was built at the end of the Qing Dynasty and used to transport coal on the previous Kaiping Colliery Tramway between Tangshan and Xugezhuang in early China.

Five exhibition areas on the first floor review the history of Chinese railways. In 1876, when the total length of railways in the world reached 200,000 kilometers, China started out relying on foreign forces. Today, though China began to build high-speed railways more than 40 years later than developed countries, with the hard work of generations of railway workers, it has achieved a historic stride from a late-comer to industry leader.

In the special exhibition area of sand table models, journalists visited models of high-speed railway bridges, stations, Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railways, and Qinghai-Tibet railway.

In the interactive area on the third floor, journalists experienced the simulated cockpit of the Fuxing bullet train in batches.

By the end of 2021, China's total high-speed rail mileage accounted for more than two-thirds of the world's, with operating length exceeding 40,000 kilometers, according to Zuo Wu, a senior engineer with the Development and Reform Department of China National Railway Corp. In China, high-speed railways cover 92 percent of cities with a population exceeding 500,000. According to a 2019 World Bank study, China's high-speed rail passenger density is about twice that of Europe. In addition, China is the only country in the world that has realized commercial operation of high-speed trains running at 350 kilometers per hour, showing "China speed" in the most intuitive way.