Spit-Free Trains in China? Say It Ain’t So.

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  12.19.07 | 10:07 AM ET

imageLast week, National Public Radio correspondent Rob Gifford filed a series of reports from China’s Yellow River, examining the region’s sobering environmental challenges. I was a big fan of Gifford’s China Road series, which aired on NPR in 2004 and later became a book, so I was happy to follow his recent travels. But it was the Reporter’s Notebook item Gifford posted on NPR’s web site that really got my attention, for one shocking revelation: He claims that the Chinese trains he rode while reporting the latest series were clean and spit-free.

Gifford, who is currently posted to London and had been away from China for two years, can’t believe the change in decorum. He writes, “No smoking? No spitting? This is China, I kept thinking to myself—how can they enforce no smoking and no spitting?” But they are enforcing it, he claims, and it’s working.

I’m equally incredulous. While living in China five years ago, I took a number of train trips out of Shanghai and learned to brace myself for filth and chaos. Passengers throwing orange peels on the floor and spitting in stations, long lines of migrant workers jumping the queue for tickets, bathrooms that defied description—it was all part of the unforgettable China rail experience.

If Gifford’s account is true for other parts of the country, the China travel experience is undergoing dramatic change. Great news on the cleanliness front, but I’ll admit to a little worry that the exhilaration of riding the rails won’t be the same next time I visit.

Related on World Hum:
* It’s Official: China Bans Lonely Planet Guidebook
* Confucius: More Popular Than Harry Potter?

Photo of Beijing’s train station by The Wandering Angel via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tags: Asia, China

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


3 Comments for Spit-Free Trains in China? Say It Ain’t So.

Kelsey 12.19.07 | 3:27 PM ET

I was on a train in southern China this past Spring and, trust me, there was plenty of spitting going on.

Adam 12.20.07 | 5:06 PM ET

He must have been travelling in 1st class…there was plenty of spit and trash on all the trains I was on earlier this year.  The “unforgettable China rail experience” still exists.

David Alexander 12.21.07 | 7:47 AM ET

My wife and I traveled to China in 1999 and spendt 32 days traveling by boat, train, and plane. We found all the accomodations to be clean and do not remember any spitting or trash either on the train or in the stations. What we do remember is that planes depart on time regardless of whether you are ready or not. We were taxiing down the tarmack when still putting bags in over heads etc.

It was a wonderful trip and we would return only to see the completion of the Three Gorges dam.

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