What they say

It takes only 10 hours to travel from Urumqi to Lanzhou by high-speed train, much faster than in 1958, when it took me several days to return to the autonomous region from Lanzhou by bus.

Zhu Zhenda, 80, a retired official in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, who took the bullet train with his 50-year-old son on Friday

I used to drive home, which costs more than 3,000 yuan ($590), and I got exhausted during every trip home. Now I can take the bullet train and wait for my friends to pick me up at the railway station.