Sun Jiding will never forget the first time he traveled from Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, to Urumqi, capital of the neighboring Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, in 1983.

He was trapped in the train for 54 hours during the journey that covered nearly 2,000 km. "I looked out at the seemingly endless Gobi Desert and said to myself 'Xinjiang is just too far away'.

 

"But Xinjiang finally has a high-speed railway, which has brought us closer to the rest of the country and, most important, to Beijing."

 

Born in Lanzhou, the 52-year-old has since settled in Urumqi.

 

On Nov 6, when tickets for the new service between Urumqi and Hami city on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railway were being sold for the first time, Sun excitedly checked the timetable at the Urumqi South railway station.

 

The 530 km service between Urumqi and Hami started on Sunday. It is the first high-speed service in China's far west and halves the seven-hour traveling time. First-class seats cost 196 yuan each and second-class seats 163.5 yuan each.

 

But Sun really wanted to find out when the whole 1,776-km Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railway, which also passed through Qinghai province, would be in full operation.

 

"I was told by railway staff that it will take only nine hours to Lanzhou from Urumqi once the whole high-speed railway is running at the end of this year," he said.

 

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