China Travel Forum

[Guest]

What is a softsleeper? Please explain as I am travelling to Shanghai in August and know nothing about train travel etc.
Also where are the best markets around Shanghai for designer t-shirts etc.

[kamal]

soft sleeper is a kind of bed on the train,most of the trains supply the passengers with two kind of bed on is softsleeper and another one is hardsleeper ,soft sleeper is expessive than heard sleeper as it is soft.
u can ind the Tshirt desiger market almost everywhere in shanghai

[escape beijing]

You have different types of tickets: what I know is that you usually have soft and hard sleepers, and soft and hard seats.

By buying a soft sleeper ticket, you will be in a 4 sleepers cabin with a door. You'll be able to get up of your sleeper without knockin Ur head on the upper sleeper. The hard sleeper is in a room without door with 5 others sleepers. there's very few space around you, but it's not much "less soft" than the "soft" ones. That's the best for me, cause the hard one's price is 60% of the soft one, and you sleep quite well. Just don't forget (I don't know the english word) some thing to put in your ear, cause sometimes chinese people speak loud and very much

The trick is, you will often hear "meiyou" (not possible) at the chinese train stations when U ask for a hard sleeper: it may be because there's is no hard sleepers in this train (like for Bj-Shanghai, some trains - the Y with a number- are just "soft": soft seats and soft sleepers, while others are "hard" -the D with a number- : seats and sleepers)

it may be cause all the hard-sleepers are booked (it's the best quality-price level)

but sometimes, they say that, even if they have: so U buy a soft seat ticket and in the train look for a employee and try to change it into a hard sleeper: you'll just pay the difference between the two prices.

So it's hard to know WHAT is in the train, employees at the station, even if they speak english, won't say: "if you want a hard sleeper, take the D-train instaed of the Y-train", U have to insist (without getting angry),and the best may be askin to a chinese traveller where U can find hard sleepers. Be careful: a lot of people at the station are OK to help U but want money, and I'm not sure at all that U can trust what they say.