Slow Boat to China...

…fast train to the airport. Fast, as in 268 mph.

Shanghai is home to the world’s first commercial MAGLEV train (Maglev as in “Magnetic Levitation”).

Somehow they force two repelling magnetic fields to face each other, one coming down from the train, one coming up from the track. And the train levitates! About an inch above the track. No ground resistance, so it can zoom on a 20-mile ride to the airport in just 7 minutes.

Well I just had to check this out, so I took a cab from downtown Shanghai out to Maglev terminal in the suburbs, something like taking a cab from Manhattan to Hicksville.

The only available ride is the 20 mile ride from this terminal out to the airport. I had no need for the airport, but Joe Tourist that I am, I bought a roundtrip ticket for 80 Yuan, which is about $12. I was prepared to pay more.

Oh by the way. What’s the deal with this guy Chairman Mao? I had Chinese paper currency in 5 yuan, 10 yuan, 50 yuan, and 100 yuan denominations, and this guy’s picture was on ALL of these bills. Don’t they have any other heroes in this country? In Canada and USA at least, the glory is spread around -- Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, even a lousy president like Grant on the $50 bill. The Chinese should mix things up, find a famous emperor from the Ming or Xing or Ting Tang or Ding Dong dynasties or whatever. Even a picture of Charlie Chan or David Carradine would do. OK, now I feel better.

Anyway, it was an exciting ride. It was advertised to be smooth. There was almost no noise, just a low-volume hum. There was some occasional bumping and jostling, which is a mite scary at 268 mph.

Perched 30-40 feet in the air, the Maglev passed by expressways with cars going 60 mph, those cars looked like they were parked. There was a digital sign at the front of my Maglev car, with a readout of the train’s speed. When it reached the maximum readout of 431 Km, I looked around for some OOHS and WOWS. But I was the only American Joe Tourist in this car, and the other passengers, all Chinese, were hardly impressed, doing their reading, sleeping, etc, like it was just a trip on the Long Island Railroad.

The Shanghai Maglev has been around since 2004, and has been a financial disappointment. Unexpectedly, many people simply chose to take taxis to the airport, since cabfare is very affordable in Shanghai. Thus far there hasn’t been enough Joe Tourists to make up the slack.

But Maglev still seems to be the Train of the Future, and there’s talk about running a 170-mile Maglev from Shanghai to another city.

In experimental runs, they’ve reached 350 mph. So you can picture a Maglev taking 9 hours to zoom across the whole USA. I gotta stick around for that.