This post is a continuation of my journal entries from our six-week expedition to China this summer. If you didn’t read the introduction to this series, you can read it here.

Date: 7/4

Location: Aboard Train K9616 from Kunming (昆明) to Lijiang (丽江)

From 10:14 p.m. to 8:30 a.m., a 14-car train filled with hundreds of passengers steams from Kunming’s main railway to Lijiang. The overnight trains seems to have three classes: soft sleeper (软卧), hard sleeper (硬卧), and hard seat (硬卧). We booked our places in the hard sleeper classes, which on consists of six bunks without doors per berth, and about ten berths per car. I was on the top bunk. The lights went out at about 11 p.m., and so I slept quite comfortably until 7:30 a.m. We then ate a rose cake and a piece of lemon cake for breakfast. In the morning, I had a chance to walk through the train and saw the hard seat class, which was packed and full of smoke. At 8:30, the train pulled into Lijiang’s railway station, and we began a new day.


See the gallery of photos from the train here:

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