So near, yet so feared: off the rails

Just before Lunar New Year, I went to Shenzhen to breathe some long-needed mainland air - but a few metres across the border I stopped dead in my tracks: an outdoor wedding? At Lo Wu station?

Why else would there have been a long white marquee decorated with flowers and hearts? Then I twigged: it was the caring China Rail that had set up the tent, to shield the five million or so people going home for the holiday from the sun.

On the marquee were slogans such as "Treat travellers like family" but the soldiers (yes, soldiers, not train staff) manning the entrances seemed as brusque and ruthless in driving back the thousands trying to cram into the ticket hall as any conductor.

Normally, whenever I'm near Lo Wu station, I feel an uncontrollable urge to get on a train and go far away but, looking at the heaving tent, I was euphoric to be on solid ground. I knew too well what those travellers were facing.

Once I was travelling by train from Urumqi to Jiayuguan, in Gansu province, a 21-hour journey, the only ticket left having been for a hard seat. The aisles and corridors, even the toilets and baggage racks, were full of people fighting for space.

I waded through the torpid river of humanity towards the person-in-charge-of-train carriage and encountered a queue a car long. After an hour's fight-wait (it's a mainland thing: waiting in line while fighting to keep your place against hundreds of usurpers trying to elbow past you) there was a crushing blow: no vacant sleeper bunks.