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Can you travel 1,600 km in a day, attend a three-hour meeting, and still sleep in your own bed that night? For Akash Bansal, co-founder of Indian tech brand Skyvik, the answer is yes, and he credits China’s railway system for it.
In a viral series of posts on X, Bansal detailed his whirlwind journey across China, praising the country’s infrastructure and service levels, while drawing a sharp contrast with the railway experience in India.
“So, I travelled 1600 km in a single day for a 3-hour meeting and wasn’t dead by the end. This shows how convenient life in China is,” he wrote. “I took a train in the morning, traveled 800 km one way, had a meeting, and returned at night to sleep in my bed.”
Bansal pointed to the ease and efficiency of China’s train stations. “Stations are massive. You enter the platform just 10 minutes before departure, and the gates open on both sides, east and west. You simply scan your national ID or passport at the scanner, and the door opens,” he noted.
He shared another incident that left a lasting impression. “Once I reached a station half an hour early, a security person approached me, checked my ticket, and took me to the counter to change it for a train that was departing in the next 10 minutes. Mind you, I said nothing; this fellow did all this on his own. He could have ignored me.”
Bansal also highlighted the amenities at Chinese railway stations: “They have thousands of seating capacity at the stations, and almost 30% are massage chairs. You pay around 100 rupees and wait while receiving a massage. Everything is just so systematic, no nonsense at all.”
In his concluding remark, Bansal made a pointed comparison: “We can’t even imagine this type of service in India.”
His thread quickly drew attention on social media, with some users agreeing with his praise of China’s infrastructure, while others questioned the practicality of such comparisons.
