China's Quick Prepare, an Olympic Spotlight

We hurtle previous rows of latest residence blocks on the outskirts of Beijing. The prepare glides right into a tunnel 1,400 feet beneath the Nice Wall of China, and emerges onto a plain the place the 110-foot-long blades of a whole lot of wind generators tower over rows of newly planted pines.

That is the passing panorama on the high-speed prepare from Beijing to the Taizicheng mountain venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics, and just like the Video games itself, this 50-minute journey has been designed to impress with a narrative of China’s progress.

Journalists overlaying these Olympics have been escorted from resort to media heart to sports activities venue in particular buses, taxis and prepare carriages, in keeping with China’s zero-Covid technique of making an attempt to remove infections. Unable to enterprise round, we peer out of sealed home windows, hungry for scenes of life, particularly on the prepare line of about 110 miles to Taizicheng, close to the place lots of the ski occasions have taken place.

Whereas China has sought to wow international audiences with its gold medal depend, it has additionally used these Video games to advertise its broader financial, environmental and technological ambitions. The high-speed rail line is a centerpiece, displaying a number of targets that China’s Communist Celebration leaders have promised: city development, clear power and fewer air pollution, and — above all — impeccable, on-time order.

The view alongside the route, although, additionally affords glimpses of the economic and rural previous that China needs to flee: a village the place horses work the fields, or a manufacturing unit, gutted and deserted.

Guard posts dotting the rail line testify to the Chinese language authorities’s gnawing anxieties about safety, even in distant villages. We go tiny guard outposts arrange to make sure that the Olympics keep freed from threats.

Our journey begins at Qinghe Station in north Beijing, the place workers in blue uniforms and protecting masks and goggles usher us into the Olympics-only ready space after which onto the “Snow Dream” prepare.

For China’s leaders, high-speed rail growth has been a supply of nationwide pleasure and appreciable expense. This line from Beijing to Taizicheng and nearby Zhangjiakou, constructed to serve the Winter Olympics, has a total official cost of near $10 billion. Even on regular high-speed trains in China, the attendants show neat self-discipline — excellent posture, tidy uniforms — and that’s further true on this route.

The prepare journey is, just like the Olympics venues, freed from the blaring billboard propaganda for China’s chief, Xi Jinping, that’s widespread throughout the nation these days. However the message that China’s success is due to Mr. Xi and the Communist Celebration echoes in slogans that flit in Chinese language throughout announcement screens within the carriages.

The high-speed rail service to the Winter Video games venues would “bear witness to the leap in China’s common nationwide energy,” Mr. Xi stated in late 2019, when the road was formally accomplished.

Minutes out from Beijing, we slip into the darkness of a 7.5 mile-long tunnel dug out of a granite hill. We’re beneath a piece of the Nice Wall, the community of fortifications that emperors constructed over the centuries to maintain out marauders. Rail wants straight observe to run quick — no abrupt turns or dips — and Chinese language engineers lead the world in constructing tunnels and bridges that slice by means of hills and valleys.

Re-entering daylight 5 minutes later, the sky is a lightweight blue and the fields are white with current snow. Ten years in the past, the sky was extra more likely to be a smoggy brown-gray at the moment of yr, stained by air pollution from business and heating. We’re nearing Hebei Province, lengthy a house for coal vegetation, metal mills and smoke-belching factories that neighboring Beijing now not wished.

Now, although, the province is making an attempt to cut back polluting business, and the rail line is ready with scenes from China’s clean-energy future. Dozens of wind-power generators have been erected close to the Guanting Reservoir, which offered Beijing with consuming water till farm and industrial air pollution left it undrinkable. Photo voltaic panels blanket the decrease stretches of close by hillsides.

China promised a “inexperienced” Olympics, and the ability corporations fulfilling that vow have made certain that vacationers can see their efforts in motion from the prepare window.

Now on the flattest stretch of the journey, the prepare accelerates: 207, then 209 after which 211 miles an hour, the announcement board on the entrance of the carriage signifies. It’s a bit of slower than the utmost 217 miles (350 kilometers) per hour that engineers say the prepare can attain. Maybe the current snow means there’s a necessity for some warning.

Ribbons of expressway and high-voltage energy traces crisscross the countryside too, and the high-speed line typically runs parallel to tracks for an additional six trains. China’s leaders have for 3 many years been investing closely in rail and different infrastructure to drive development and join the nation right into a close-knit complete. The present chief, Mr. Xi, has accelerated that effort.

However we additionally go by means of countryside the place horses and donkeys nonetheless work the fields. Over a 3rd of China’s folks dwell within the nation by official measures; the true quantity could also be increased. For a lot of of them life remains to be powerful, with out the social security web and alternatives of city dwellers.

The faces that flash by are sometimes older, too. Few villagers of their 20s or 30s keep on the land. Many transfer into cities of latest five- and six-story flats that jut out of the countryside, as if an official had plopped a finger onto a map and commanded “Metropolis right here!”

A decade or so in the past, it might need been attainable for a international reporter to go to one of many cities alongside the road and speak to residents.

As we speak, with the Covid restrictions on journalists overlaying the Video games, it’s not possible for us ask them in particular person in regards to the modifications introduced by the Video games and the high-speed prepare. Even earlier than Covid unfold in 2020, reporting in China was more and more troublesome; officers and police usually hounded visiting reporters, or warned folks to not communicate.

In cellphone interviews, residents dwelling close to the rail line stated that they felt pleased with the brand new high-speed prepare and the Video games, but additionally distant from the hoopla.

“The high-speed line hasn’t had an affect on enterprise, as a result of the 2 years of the pandemic make it a trouble in all places,” stated Xiu Li, who runs a fish and donkey-meat restaurant in Donghuayuan, a city close to the road. “I’ve watched among the Winter Olympics however haven’t paid explicit consideration — simply looking when it’s on TV.”

The prepare begins pulling up into the mountains. We go by means of one other tunnel — considered one of eight alongside the journey — and emerge into excessive nation, often barren brown at the moment of yr. The announcement says we’re at arriving at Taizicheng.

A group of cleaners — every lined from head to toe in protecting white clothes — is ready to climb on and disinfect the prepare earlier than its subsequent journey.

Liu Yi contributed analysis.