I just viewed a China video, heavily edited with many pixeled-out parts. It is by the Chinese You-Tubero "Yin's Travels"
In the video, he travels from an interior area, Chongquing, to Shanghai. The interesting part for me was the start of the trip, in a modern railway station. He's filming as he walks about the station, first to get his travel snacks, very modern, then he goes to a kiosk and buys a little dongle, which give him limited access to a (censored) Internet, but only while in the station, he has to turn the dongle back in via a receptor slot at the turnstile to access his departure platform. He puts the properly-cased dongle into the slot and the turnstile opens for him. I presume the equipment had already accepted his boarding pass.
He has selected a third-class sleeper, an open bay affair with triple-stacked bunks and benches at the aisle. Each car holds around 75 bunks, which share two toilets, no shower. Russia uses this third-class system too, they call it "Platzkartny". Meals are available for purchase and are delivered to the bunk. They don't look too bad, steamed veggies, some sort of curry or ragout and a monster bowl of rice.
It's a slow train, makes a lot of stops, but runs right along, usually no slower than 111 kmh, or about 75 mph. On some sections, it runs at 90mph. Not bad for a third-class train which has to wait for faster trains often. He's on the train for 24 hours.
When he gets off in Shanghai South Station, we get to see THAT bustling place. Quite a few cops on electric transports in there.
The way I look at it, it behooves me to watch these sort of things, to be prepared for what we will face shortly if we can't change this government back to a Constitutional mode.
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