As my first long journey, I spent about two weeks planning this trip. I drew heavily on lots of previous journey logs and resources, so I’d like to express my thanks in advance; the main references are listed in the acknowledgments at the end of the full text. Due to my own decisions on the road and objective factors in transport, plus making things line up with lodging, there are some differences from my original plan. The first and last rides of each day usually connect to the place I stayed, not strictly to the “must-do” journey nodes. If there are any mistakes in the journey report, I welcome readers to point them out.
Some notes on the information in this journey report:
Some original prices are missing because I couldn’t confirm the original fare.
For payment methods, “QR code (inside station)” means you need to buy the ticket in advance inside the station.
Route numbers are based on a combination of map information and what locals call them. A number without a prefix usually refers to a prefecture-level city’s local bus route; in the text I add the city name in parentheses beforehand to clarify.
In the journey plan / journey report, the administrative region marked in red is the region that actually operates the route. Vehicles from within that region are not specially annotated.
The journey took place from January 14 to January 22, 2024.
All transport costs for this journey were kindly sponsored by Genso Fuubi, and portable charger support was provided by tosaki — huge thanks to both.
Journey Plan
The figure below is the journey plan I made for this trip, with the collected bus operating times omitted. Since the plan wasn’t fully polished, there are quite a lot of errors and missing info. The actual journey broadly followed this plan, but there were also plenty of changes.Journey plan for this trip. The actual route ended up being different.
Journey Report
Below is the actual journey record corresponding to the plan. While organizing the logs, I tried my best to keep the information accurate and true to reality, and to match the route details with how things were operating during the journey. That said, because of missing records, route adjustments, and other factors, some information may differ from the situation at the time of travel / at the time of publication / when you are reading this. Thanks in advance for your understanding.
Day 1 Beijing (Zhongguancun) – Hengshui (Hengshui Coach Station)
Day 1: because I left on time and kept a generous buffer in the early planning, I actually overachieved the journey plan.
Beijing Subway Line 4 Zhongguancun – National Library I set off from the familiar Zhongguancun Station on Line 4 — the first step of the first day, and also the earliest morning I got up in the entire ten-day journey. The morning train on Line 4 was almost empty.Early in the morning, Line 4 is nearly empty.The familiar Zhongguancun subway station, the starting point of countless trips of mine.
Beijing Subway Line 9 National Library – Liuliqiao At National Library Station, Lines 4 and 9 share the same platform for transfers, which seems pretty rare in Beijing (the real “same-platform transfer king” should be Hangzhou Metro). A lot of people got on at Beijing West Railway Station. Before reaching Liuliqiao, Line 9 has a station called Liuliqiao East. In my half-asleep state I got off there by mistake. After exiting the station I spent quite a while confused about why it was still so far from the starting point of my next ride, and why the exit numbers and directions didn’t match the map. I even bought a bottle of Vitamin C drink from a vending machine in the concourse. Once I realized what had happened, I rushed back into the station and got on the train again. Without this little detour, I might have caught an earlier 838. From the diagram on the platform, it looks like Line 9 and the Fangshan Line run through services during peak hours.Through-running operation between Line 9 and Fangshan Line.Liuliqiao is absurdly huge — Genso Fuubi commented, “I can’t believe this is just a subway station.”First time seeing guidance signs hanging right above my head.My first time at Liuliqiao Station: it’s huge and the wayfinding is very clear.
(Beijing) Route 838 Liuliqiao Subway Station – Zhuozhou Traffic Police Brigade Leaving Beijing. The bus stop at Liuliqiao Subway Station serves only Route 838 and has its own dedicated queuing lane. There are touts around asking if you want to ride with them.Route 838 has its own boarding area, clearly a route with strong demand.The bus stop at Liuliqiao Subway Station serves only this single route.Passenger numbers are high even early in the morning. It was still dark when we departed. The whole bus is soft seats, and everyone is catching up on sleep. Very quiet.Within Beijing’s urban area this line only stops at Liuliqiao; the next stop is already on the expressway heading toward the border of Fangshan. The vehicle belongs to Beijing, and ticketing is unified with Beijing’s regular buses. The original interval fare is 12 yuan; according to the Beijing Bus app, card payment has a discounted price of 6.66 yuan, and student cards are 4.22 yuan. (Who knows how they came up with those numbers — this is why the last digit of the balance in my card will forever be 8.) This was both the first and the last time I enjoyed Beijing’s student bus discount on this entire journey. I tried to take a picture of the moment we were running parallel to a high-speed train at sunrise, but sadly it came out very blurry.Sunrise, side by side with a high-speed train.
(Baoding) Route 621 Fanyang Road Intersection – Baoding Coach Center On the map, Route 621’s starting point is shown as the coach station, but in reality both the bus and ticket booth are at the Fanyang Road intersection. After getting off at the traffic police brigade and walking a bit toward the intersection, I spotted it. There’s a small ticket booth next to the stop; the full journey to Baoding Coach Center is 30 yuan, and they issue a ticket from Hebei Intercity Coach. If you board midway, you pay by scanning a QR code. From this ride on, I’ve entered the territory of Baoyun Bus. The previous Beijing bus was pretty much the most standardized, by-the-book kind of bus; the routes operated by Baoyun Bus in this area are at the opposite end — the least “formal” kind of bus.(Baoding) Route 621, waiting at the roadside stop.Buses run every 15 minutes; there are a lot of them. The onboard announcements still ask passengers to show their health codes — clearly not updated.(Baoding) Route 621 is very frequent, every 15 minutes.
(Baoding) Route 601 Baoding Coach Center – Anguo Coach Station The main reason I say Baoyun is “informal” is that these “buses” are actually converted intercity coaches, still partly functioning as long-distance coaches. This was my first time buying a ticket from inside a coach station on this journey, and I spent quite a bit of time fumbling around. At first I didn’t realize I had to go inside to buy a ticket, so I wandered outside looking for the bus stop and even got misled by touts telling me “there’s no 601 here.” Once you clear security and enter the coach station, there are no more touts. After finding the 601 bus, I was told to buy a ticket at the ticket office — same process as buying a long-distance coach ticket. Full journey fare is 18 yuan.First time entering a coach station on this journey. You need to go through security to get in. There are lots of touts outside, none inside.As soon as the bus arrives, a crowd appears to hustle for passengers.(Baoding) Route 601 arriving at the stop.
Anguo Route 16 Yijiawang – Madian This bus may appear either on the Yijiawang side of the road or the opposite side, because the charging posts are on the Yijiawang side, while the official departure stop is across the street. The stop across the road has a notice saying that the “urban–rural bus stop has been relocated,” but Route 16 still departs from that very stop. Given the size of the bus, the passenger load is actually pretty decent, with quite a few students heading home. It seems the fare is paid directly to the driver: after scanning the QR code, the phone immediately rings with “payment received.” After getting off, I was already within the borders of Hengshui.Anguo Route 16 charging by the roadside. You can board here, or wait at the stop on the opposite side for departure.The bus stop sign says the urban–rural bus stop has been relocated, but when I went to the new location and asked around, I found Route 16 is still departing from here.Once the bus reached the rural area, passengers could basically decide where to get dropped off. I checked the map and hopped off together with another passenger. Since the next bus was still a while away, I walked to the starting stop for my next ride and saw a lot of corn stacked along the roadside for the first time. Corn stored like this would be my companion for quite a long stretch of this journey.Anguo Route 16 — I got off with another passenger. A lot of corn is piled up by the roadside; this corn will be a familiar sight for some time.
Anping Route 203 Shiwu Village – People’s Congress & CPPCC This is the return direction of an urban–rural bus route. There were plenty of passengers, with quite a few already on board from the starting stop. Due to heavy air pollution at the time, buses across all of Anping County were free to ride. I assume you can still tap a card if you want. The “People’s Congress & CPPCC” stop name seems to have been changed recently; Baidu Maps doesn’t show this name at the route’s stop point, but if you click into “stop details,” the correct name shows up. Because there had just been a snowfall, road conditions were pretty bad.Anping Route 203. A couple asked if I was waiting for the bus here. Right before departure a lot of people showed up, and someone asked the driver “is it still free today?”
Anping Route 2 Huixiang Supermarket – Coach Center Anping County’s bus network is relatively simple, so the stop signs have very clear transfer information, which is great.Like a metro map: transfer information printed right on the Anping County bus stop signs.Anping Route 2 bus.
(Hengshui) Route 127 Anping Coach Center – Hengshui Coach Station This is another route that starts and ends in coach stations, but Hengshui’s “bus-ified” operation is much more standardized. Fares are collected using the onboard card reader. My first attempt to use my transport union card failed. Since this was my first time trying the union card outside Beijing during the journey, I didn’t experiment too much at the time; looking back now, it was probably due to choosing the wrong card region (later on, when the region setting was wrong, the machine would hang for quite a while before reacting) or tapping the wrong spot on the reader. Using a QR payment code charges you the full fare to the terminus first, and then when you tap to get off, the unused distance is refunded. Even though the bus operation is well “bus-ified,” the full-journey fare of 18 yuan is still relatively high.(Hengshui) Route 127 at its starting point in the coach station.The onboard payment terminal.You need to tap your card / payment code both when boarding and alighting. Full fare is charged on boarding, and unused distance is refunded on alighting.
After arriving at Hengshui Coach Station, the first day’s journey came to an end.
On Day 2, thanks to over-achieving Day 1’s plan, I was still ahead of schedule.
(Hengshui) Route K206 Hengshui Coach Station – Dezhou Coach Terminal Starting from Dezhou, the number of onboard announcements saying “please press the stop button in advance before getting off” began to increase, and passengers became much more proactive about actually pressing the button. Dezhou has the strongest “press the stop button” culture I’ve seen: in other places, people might prefer to just tell the driver verbally, but in Dezhou passengers really like pressing the button — even those sitting right next to the driver will walk back to press the button by the rear door. This route is operated by Hengyun, so it still uses the “pre-charge full fare via QR code, settle on alighting” model.(Hengshui) Route K206 at its departure bay in the coach station.This bus did not seem to follow the timetable on the board — maybe it was on a “winter schedule” with “special adjustments.”Timetable inside Hengshui Coach Station. This particular service did not depart according to the posted schedule.
(Dezhou) Route 15 Coach Terminal – Pa Chicken Food City West Route 15 is a small bus, and it runs as a loop. There’s a sticker inside saying “this bus will not stop unless the stop button is pressed.” That said, on a city loop like this there’s basically always someone getting on or off at each stop, so the driver will slow down before every stop anyway. City buses in Dezhou are free throughout the winter, probably also for air pollution control, though unlike Anping, this is seasonal rather than only on polluted days.(Dezhou) Route 15 is a mini-bus.The mini-bus runs a loop route.I’d deliberately added Pa Chicken Food City to the itinerary. It’s a big supermarket complex: the ground floor mainly sells Dezhou braised chicken and other cooked foods, while the second floor is a regular supermarket. Unfortunately, I was on my own and couldn’t possibly eat that much.Some of the cooked food sold at Pa Chicken Food City (part one).Some of the cooked food sold at Pa Chicken Food City (part two).
(Dezhou) Route K919 Dezhou No. 7 People’s Hospital – County Transport Bureau This is an intercity route between Dezhou and Linyi. Inside the bus, all the ads were promoting a new Dezhou–Jinan route. Coincidentally, my next stop today was indeed Jinan, but since the Dezhou–Jinan service doesn’t have a route number, I didn’t take it. Tickets for Route K919 are paid via QR code.(Dezhou) Route K919 bus.(Dezhou) Route K919 stop sign.
(Jinan) Route D917 Transport Bureau – Jinan Long-Distance Coach Terminal While transferring in Linyi, several public toilets were closed for maintenance or cleaning, and the time I spent searching for a usable restroom caused me to miss a bus and waste quite a bit of time. By the time I arrived, it was already dark; the photo of the bus was taken at the terminus. As usual, there were taxi drivers at the station hustling for passengers and asking if you wanted a ride — “same price as the bus to Dezhou, you coming?” Payment for this route is via QR code too, but unlike Hengshui’s distance-based system, this one charges a flat 15 yuan for the full ride. This effectively discourages short-distance passengers from taking the route; within Jinan city, the driver actively turned away people who tried to board just to go to the coach station. Jinan’s traffic was severely congested, and it coincided with the evening rush hour; this was the first traffic jam of the journey. Jinan was also the first provincial capital city on my route.(Jinan) Route D917 stop sign.(Jinan) Route D917 arriving at the stop. Traffic was extremely congested after entering Jinan’s urban area.
(Tai’an) Route K960 Jinan Long-Distance Coach Terminal – Feicheng Coach Station I boarded this bus inside the coach terminal. Since there was no staff at the front gate machine, I assumed you could buy a ticket on board and went straight up to try tapping my card, only for the driver to stop me and tell me to go back and buy a ticket first.(Tai’an) Route K960 arriving. When departing from Jinan Long-Distance Coach Terminal you can’t use a card, but after leaving the station you can ride it with card payment as a regular bus.
After arriving in Feicheng, the second day’s journey came to an end.
On Day 3, because there were very few services to Chonghua / Dachonghua, I couldn’t pass through smoothly on the day of the journey, so I changed the route. The end point of the day’s journey remained the same as planned.
(Tai’an) Route 401 Feicheng Coach Station – Tai’an Coach Terminal With a light snowfall in the morning, a day’s journey that was both very boring and somehow very interesting began. For Route 401 you buy a ticket inside Feicheng Coach Station; without asking me, the clerk added a 1-yuan insurance to my ticket, which was not great. From the same station there’s also Route 402, which goes to Tai’an High-Speed Railway Station — it’s closer and cheaper. Route 401 also passes near the high-speed rail station and will stop nearby, but it doesn’t enter the station’s official pick-up/drop-off area. This detail will come back to bite me later. From within Tai’an you can see Mount Tai.Route 401 (Tai’an) inside the station.Timetable for Route 401 (Tai’an). In reality you can take Route 402 to the high-speed rail station and still connect to the next legs of the journey.Looking out toward Mount Tai in the distance.
(Tai’an) Route 502 Tai’an Coach Terminal – Ningyang Coach Station On Baidu Maps, Route 502 in Tai’an is not shown as passing the high-speed rail station, but in reality it not only passes there — the driver even pulls into the station’s passenger pick-up/drop-off area and waits for quite a while. So the ideal journey would actually have been: take Route 402 from Feicheng to the high-speed rail station, then wait there for the Route 502 coming from the coach station. The way I did it, I unnecessarily rode back and forth between the high-speed rail station and the coach station, burning extra time. That might well have been the decisive factor behind the problems with the rest of today’s journey. The photo was taken on arrival.Route 502 (Tai’an) bus.
Ningyang–Qufu coach (former Route 701) Before talking about this ride, it’s worth mentioning the original journey plan. Originally, I planned to take an urban–rural bus from Ningyang Coach Station to Chonghua, located at the Ningyang–Qufu boundary (inside the coach station it’s labeled as Route 7003, not “Ningyang Route 7” as shown on Baidu Maps), then walk about 2.6 km to the Huangjiatang area in Qufu and catch Qufu’s urban–rural bus into the city. Around 2 p.m., I asked the ticket inspector whether there was a bus to Chonghua. They said there would be one at 2:30 p.m. and told me to wait. But by 3 p.m. there was still no sign of any bus. Watching the other urban–rural buses, their departures were wildly off-schedule; it’s entirely possible the bus snuck into the station and left while I was in the restroom. So I went to the information desk. They told me buses to Chonghua are very rare and they themselves didn’t know if any more would run. They gave me a landline number and told me to call. After I called, the answer was: no more buses today. (Fun detail: the person on the phone greeted me in standard Mandarin, but the moment I said I wanted to go to Chonghua, they instantly switched to the local dialect.) So I bought a coach ticket directly from Ningyang to Qufu instead. This was also the only coach to Qufu that afternoon. The bus was fast — we reached Qufu in under 40 minutes. To my surprise, after arriving in Qufu I noticed a “701” route plate on the rear of the coach. This must be the old Route 701, though no one calls it that anymore and it no longer functions as a bus route — it runs non-stop except for a stop in Xiangyin Township. There were still bus-style hand straps inside, which further proves it used to operate as a bus. Nowadays it runs two trips in the morning and one in the afternoon, three in total.Ningyang–Qufu coach. This is in fact the Route 701 bus mentioned in older journey logs, but it’s now a pure long-distance coach.
I had added Qufu to the journey plan because I wanted to visit the Confucius Temple, but due to the hiccups in the schedule I didn’t have time to make it there. So I found a place to stay near the coach station and called it a day. While ordering delivery, I noticed a highly rated “chestnut cake” shop, described in one review app as “the most important thing in Qufu besides the Confucius Temple.” I ordered 15 pieces, planning to use them later in the journey for emergencies (like ending at 8 p.m. on Day 2), and as a little tribute to earlier journey logs where people bought 10 scallion-wrapped pancakes in Qufu. The food arrived still hot and was really delicious.
