Sounds a dawdle, we know. And it is, if you too are in the know. But to the uninitiated or non-Chinese readers, once at the station and then on the platform, the final challenge is getting on the train, specifically the correct coach.
So let’s say your ticket is for coach #8, seat 8A. Enter the world of colour codes. The platforms of larger high-speed railway stations in China are marked with digits on different coloured backgrounds.
And elsewhere, as recently introduced to the main departure board (read “truly massive LED”) at Nanjing South Railway Station. It’s even labelled in English, badly; “SURFACECOLO”. But bless them for trying.
These colour codes are intended to inform passengers as to where each particular carriage of the train will stop as it comes to a halt in the station.
Of course, it doesn’t always work like that, as a good proportion of train drivers seem to be able to misjudge their deceleration, causing the train to scoot past its supposed stopping point. But that’s a story for another day, one perhaps entitled; “China’s High Speed Train Drivers; what they don’t want You to Know”.
But once on the platform, it can be a little bewildering to see three or four numbers next to each other; 15 on a green background, 7 on a brown background, 2 on a yellow background, etc.
Bewildering to many. Spare a thought, though, for the China Railways employee who stands at the foot of the stairs/escalator leading to platform level whose only purpose in life is to answer the query, “Where is coach number 5?”.
That all said, this is generally once again where the Chinese have a one up on the hapless foreigner of limited linguistic capabilities. Happily though, appropriate signage has more and more of late started appearing around stations and on the platform. Most commonly, such information is also to be found on the displays above each platform, as shown below.
So all one really needs to do is learn the Chinese characters for various colours. Here’s a quick guide to get started:
- Green: 绿色 (lu se)
- Brown: 褐色 (he se)
- Yellow: 黄色 (huang se)
Then it is time to be off to that designated carriage. Now if they could just also put that information on the tickets themselves, we’d be sorted.
