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Soft Sleeper / Hard Sleeper
So far since leaving Qingdao, Karen and I had taken either modern, high-speed trains or buses to move from city to city.  That changed when we left Beijing on a 'fast' train to Tai Yuan (8 hours), spent a day there, and then took just a plain old train to Xi'an (11 hours).  We could've flown, but we were here to see the Chinese countryside and not just Chinese clouds.  For the same reason, we traveled by day rather than by night, although we rode in sleeping cars for these two legs of our trip.  I took some 500 pictures out the window each day, but I want to share here our experience inside the train.
How's this for a train station!
Several days earlier, the high-speed train had delivered us to the main Beijing train station, which was nothing special, although its replacement is under construction and will be impressive.  This is Beijing West and will be hard to forget.
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