Changing China seen from the 'hard seats' of a train
Travelling with a cheap rail ticket provides a snapshot of any country's underbelly. Doing it twice at an interval of 26 years, in a country like China, provides a fascinating snapshot of the country's rapid development.
Sixteen hours sitting bolt upright on a train gives you a bit of time to reflect on how much a country has changed.
It had started to go wrong when I got to the ticket booth in China's capital Beijing and found a queue snaking round the corner.
It was the lead-up to the mid-autumn holiday and half the city was headed for distant homes.
When I asked for a ticket to Wuhan, an all-night journey south, the young sales girl snorted her derision. Tickets were sold out for the next three days."Ying zuo," she said, and looked up as if throwing down a challenge.
China's nominally classless Communist Party splits its trains into four classes, from the relative comfort of a four-bunk cabin, to the most basic and cheapest, ying zuo, or hard seat.
When I first travelled ying zuo - in 1986, as a student - it was like being initiated into the Chinese peasantry.
Chickens and goats swung upside down from luggage racks. Once all the bone-breaking wooden seats and standing room was packed, more people clambered through open windows, pulling bags and bundled children behind. The ends of each carriage were invisible through cheap cigarette smoke.
Twenty-five years later was I ready for that challenge? After all, I could have flown to Wuhan. But the chance of regaining a glimpse of the past spurred me to hand over my money.
Guangzhou 1991: When hard seats were dominated by villagers with sacks
China's rail network - like the country - has been transformed by its economic rise. New lines have been added every year. Steam locomotives have been replaced by diesel and electric engines.
Most ambitiously, China assembled the world's longest high-speed rail network, buying technology from Germany and Japan, and building specialised lines which now levitate above the sprawling suburbs and squeezed agricultural land between its major cities.
But then an accident in the eastern city of Wenzhou in 2011 punctured all that ambition. Two high-speed trains collided and several carriages derailed. Official reports said 40 people died, though an attempted government cover-up compounded the loss of trust.
The crash was eventually blamed on signalling equipment, which was China's own technology. For many Chinese, the accident seemed to confirm what they had long suspected, that the country was developing too fast, cutting corners to catch up with the world, whatever the risks.
Almost overnight, the sleek-nosed white trains which had swept aside concerns about their cost, rationale or environmental impact became symbols of new doubts about the very model of China's development.
More than a year after the accident, when I told friends in Beijing I was going to Wuhan by train, some asked if I was worried about the risk.
Tickets are scarce at holiday periods
I arrived at Beijing West station during Friday evening rush hour, herded through waiting rooms to a platform long enough for 30 carriages. Each had its own attendant and mine studied my foreign face and ticket suspiciously, as they always had before.
But that was one of the few things that were familiar. Inside the train, a different world unfolded.
This was not one of the speedy new services, mine was an all-stations rattler. But even so there were no goats or chickens. People were packed into every corner but no-one boarded through the windows - these had been sealed. The carriage had air conditioning instead.
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