Originally Posted by
dieuwer2
Thanks for the answers so far.
It seems the bullet trains takes 5.5 hours (according to seat65) while the plane is almost 2 hours. Considering that I cannot read nor speak Chinese, I am not comfortable to wait until the last moment and buy a ticket at the train station. I guess I will need to stick with air travel.
While the Xi'an-Beijing train doesn't appear to be as fast as the JingHu line (otherwise, it wouldn't take 5.5 hours to go a shorter distance), the train is definitely worth trying at least once, and you can entertain yourself on your phone/tablet during the journey (no wifi on Chinese airlines yet). As far as buying tickets is concerned, your hotel can hook you up, or I'd be happy to do so myself (assuming I'm in SH during your trip).