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 4 Jining (Qufu Coach Station) – Zaozhuang (Tai’erzhuang Ancient City)
On Day 4, I followed the journey plan on schedule and entered Tai’erzhuang Ancient City to restock.
(Jining) Route C609 Qufu Coach Station – Qianquan Subdistrict Office Stepping out into the thick morning fog was already a sign that today’s journey would not go smoothly. There are many buses in Qufu that are directly operated by Jining, and this one is a route between Jining’s two county-level cities, Qufu and Zoucheng. Because it’s a proper regular bus, the fare is just 3 yuan — the first low-fare long-distance ride since leaving Beijing, and also the first time since leaving Beijing that my national transport union card worked successfully.(Jining) Route C609 bus, the first long-distance coach with bus-style pricing after leaving Beijing.Qianquan Subdistrict Office is a major stop that appears in many journey reports and holds a high status in long-distance journeys. That’s also because from here you can get a close, unobstructed view of Zoucheng’s abandoned “cloud rail” monorail project.Qianquan Subdistrict Office, a famous waypoint in journey logs and the viewing spot for Zoucheng’s abandoned cloud rail project.
Zoucheng Route 208 Qianquan Subdistrict Office – Huangwan East “Qianquan Office” and “Qianquan Subdistrict Office” are not the same bus stop; they’re about 70 meters apart. The former is a Jining urban–rural bus stop, the latter is a Zoucheng city bus stop. I didn’t get a photo of the vehicle, but it’s another proper low-fare long-distance bus; I paid 1 yuan with my transport union card. The fog over Zoucheng was still very thick, and visibility outside the city was especially poor. Yet the overspeed alarm kept sounding inside the bus and the driver didn’t seem bothered at all. After getting off at Huangwan, I saw a wedding going on in the village with quite the setup.There was almost zero visibility outside, but it didn’t affect the driver at all.Qianquan Subdistrict Office bus stop sign.
Extra: Walking Huangwan East – Qianzao Road Junction For the 20th leg of the journey I had originally planned to walk less than 1 km from Huangwan East across the city boundary and then take Tengzhou Route K236 from Xinglong Village into the city. That one-kilometer walk was stunning thanks to the dense fog and the snow from the previous days. My phone couldn’t really capture it — it felt like standing in a vast, overwhelming haze.
Fog blanketing snow-covered fields.
When I reached Xinglong Village, I asked some villagers whether buses had been running recently. They said yes, so I waited according to the timetable I’d found on the official account. After waiting for about an hour and a half, I called the hotline printed on the bus stop to ask about the service. They told me that because of the heavy fog, only two more buses were planned to Xinglong Village that day, and the next one would be in three hours (3:30 p.m.), which would obviously bring my journey to a halt. My first reaction was: why on earth isn’t the neighboring city affected by the fog at all? (Narrator: it was.)Xinglong Village is, in my mind, a symbolic spot of this journey. I later chose this photo to represent the trip in my 2024 year-in-review.At that point I had three options: wait for the 3:30 p.m. bus and end today’s journey in Tengzhou; go back across the border, take a bus back to Zoucheng, and try again the next day; or start walking toward the city, hoping to reach an area with other buses or at least somewhere I could catch a ride so the journey could continue. With Genso Fuubi and Lalala cheering me on, I decided to walk toward Tengzhou. In the worst case, if I could just make it to a town, the transport problem would probably solve itself. It was already close to 1 p.m. by then, so I pulled out the chestnut cakes I’d bought the day before (foresight!) — very handy.
Houzao Primary School in the fog.
After walking 4 km to the Qianzao Road Junction bus stop, I decided to take a break and reconsider my options, since the stop had a shelter and it was at a junction served by two bus routes. I opened the Tengzhou Bus app (“Bus e-Travel”) and was shocked to see that the entire Tengzhou bus system had been completely shut down the previous day because of snow and fog — today’s sporadic services were already an improvement. Looking again, I noticed that the other route serving this stop, Tengzhou Route K206, had just departed and was about to arrive. I turned on my phone’s flashlight, ready to flag it down. And just like that, today’s journey could continue.
Tengzhou Route K206 Qianzao Road Junction – Municipal Letters and Visits Bureau Perhaps due to the weather, there were very few passengers. When I got on I was the only one on board; another passenger boarded later in town. I didn’t take a photo of the bus; I paid 2 yuan via the transport union card. After entering the urban area, the driver asked where I wanted to get off. In Tengzhou, traffic lights give the left-turn signal before the straight-through signal, the opposite of what I’m used to seeing.
(Zaozhuang) Teng–Zao Express Line 602 This route is called the Teng–Zao Express Line because there is also a slower Teng–Zao Line 601. The express line runs on the expressway. When I tapped my transport union card on the reader, it correctly showed “Card type: national transport union,” while simultaneously announcing and displaying that the transaction had failed. I had no idea why, so I ended up paying with a QR code — 10 yuan, the only high-fare ride of the day.
The photo was taken after arrival. The bus pulls directly into Zaozhuang Coach Center, which is the largest and most modern coach hub I’ve visited so far. It uses an elevated station building: arriving vehicles have their own dedicated drop-off bays, and passengers go upstairs via escalator for convenient transfers.Teng–Zao Express Line 602, with its own dedicated drop-off “track.”Modern platforms and an elevated station building.
(Zaozhuang) Route B2 Coach Center – Tai’erzhuang Ancient City Route B2 is a bus rapid transit line and the first BRT I’ve taken on this trip. It has dedicated platforms; you tap your card before going downstairs to board, and I paid 3 yuan using the transport union card. Departure times are displayed inside the station. Ridership is strong — it’s clearly an important link between the central district and Tai’erzhuang District.(Zaozhuang) Route B2 dedicated boarding platform (part one).(Zaozhuang) Route B2 dedicated boarding platform (part two).(Zaozhuang) Route B2 bus pulling into the station.After getting off at Tai’erzhuang Ancient City Station, I walked about 30 minutes into the scenic area to check into my lodging, ending the day’s journey. This was the designated resupply point in my journey plan, a place to take a proper break. After arriving, I originally planned to stay inside the ancient city an extra day to rest. But it turned out to be the absolute low season: hardly any visitors, most shops closed, and I just couldn’t stand doing nothing in the room. So I left at noon the next day, effectively extending the journey by one extra day as a disguised rest period.
That evening I tried spicy chicken and big pancakes — both very tasty, cheap, and generous in portion, but way too spicy for me, so the experience wasn’t exactly perfect. That may well be why my coughing got worse, which in turn made the later parts of the journey less enjoyable.
Tai’erzhuang Ancient City (part one).Tai’erzhuang Ancient City (part two).
Day 5 Zaozhuang (Tai’erzhuang) – Xuzhou (Huayuan Apartment)
On Day 5, I set off late because I wasn’t feeling well and was already planning to extend the journey. Around this point I also started to let myself go when planning, no longer accounting for rest or food breaks, which made it almost impossible to complete the journey on schedule.
Pizhou–Tai’erzhuang North Line Tai’erzhuang – Hongtong Coach Station As mentioned above, today’s journey started at noon, so to save time I merged the originally planned three-leg segment from Tai’erzhuang to Pizhou (Tai’erzhuang–Jiawang–Gengji–Pizhou Hongtong) into a single direct ride from Tai’erzhuang to Pizhou Hongtong Coach Station. This vehicle has no route number: call it a coach and it stops at a ton of places; call it a bus and its operation is extremely informal. At the starting station you buy a ticket inside the coach hall. For intermediate stops, a woman who I suspect is the driver’s wife sits in the front passenger seat, hustling for passengers and collecting fares along the way — all paid directly to her. At one point the driver pulled over to buy food, which took about five minutes.Pizhou–Tai’erzhuang North Line. A virtually privately run coach with no route number, but very bus-like in character and with excellent ridership.Even though this service is highly informal and the vehicle itself is nothing special, the ridership is great — lots of people boarding in the towns along the route, and it was at or near full capacity most of the time. Honestly, among all the “bus-ified” coach lines on this journey, this one felt the most like a real city bus.
First, the fares are flexible — with an onboard conductor, you don’t really have to worry about complicated distance-based pricing. Second, passengers truly use it as a bus for short hops. It’s not like some so-called bus routes that charge a flat 10 yuan and, in practice, don’t serve short-distance riders at all.
Two little anecdotes from this ride: an elderly passenger answered a call and said, “Does this loan come with interest or not? If there’s interest, I’m not taking it.” Another passenger asked the conductor, “I scanned and paid 6 yuan — that’s 1 yuan too much, what now?” and was promptly given a 1-yuan coin in change. Clearly, coins are still very much in use here.
Pizhou Route 402 Hongtong Coach Station – Yaowan I also came up with the Yaowan route myself. Earlier journey logs usually go via Huayi Sluice, but transport connections around Huayi Sluice have gotten worse recently, so I researched a new transfer route through Yaowan. This route’s number is 402, not C204 as rumored online. The “four trips per day” shown in the mobile transport app is accurate — after the 12:30 p.m. departure, the next one isn’t until 4:00 p.m., which is why I ended up waiting quite a long time at Pizhou Hongtong. If you want to transfer through Yaowan in future journeys, you really need to plan your timings carefully. The route uses distance-based fares, with card taps on boarding and alighting; the full journey is 6 yuan.Pizhou Route 402 bus — I waited here for over an hour.On board, an elderly passenger gave the driver a gift. Since there are only four round trips a day and each run takes only about 40 minutes, it’s likely that just one driver and one bus handle the whole route, so I’m guessing this passenger lives along the line and knows the driver from regular rides. Once out of the city, the bus runs along Canal Avenue the whole way, very close to the canal.Views along Pizhou Route 402.If you pay your fare by scanning a QR code mid-route, the payment notification chime sounds inside the bus. It seemed the driver also took a small delivery job along the way and issued a full-journey ticket for it. He also kindly reminded passengers, “Turn the volume down on the video in the back, please.”
Xinyi Route 11 Yaowan Ancient Town Scenic Area – Huayuan Apartment The bus was parked right next to Pizhou Route 402. Xinyi’s buses have great LED displays; I’d see these displays again later in the journey. The Yitiehuayuan stop is actually a transfer hub where I could have changed directly to my next bus, but since this was the last segment of the day, I got off at the nearby Huayuan Apartment stop, closer to where I was staying.Xinyi Route 11 bus, parked next to Pizhou 402.The fancy LED destination display on Xinyi Route 11.The route uses distance-based fares, but once you ride from the scenic area into the urban area it’s already counted as the full fare, even though I got off several stops before the terminus. You tap your card both when boarding and alighting.Distance-based fare chart for Xinyi Route 11.
Because I left late and spent so long waiting at Hongtong, today’s journey was relatively short — and that was it for the day.
Day 6 Xuzhou (Suyilexiang) – Yangzhou (World Trade Plaza · Pinghuai Road)
On Day 6, I originally planned to reach Yangzhou West, but only made it to Gaoyou. Looking back now, the original schedule for today was extremely tight anyway, with several transfers that allowed almost no buffer and basically no rest time.
Xinyi Route 3 Suyilexiang – Chaliuhe All bus stops in Xinyi have these LED displays, synchronized with the “Palm Bus” app. However, the displayed real-time info is not very accurate. I saw that the bus I needed hadn’t “departed” yet on the screen, so I looked down at my phone — and only looked up when I heard a horn honk and saw Route 3 already stopped right in front of me. I was the only person waiting at the stop, so: thank you, driver.Xinyi bus stops also have fancy LED displays.Xinyi Route 3, arriving at Chaliuhe on the Xinyi side.Chaliuhe is the boundary between Xinyi and Shuyang, and also between Xuzhou and Suqian. To transfer buses here, passengers have to walk across the bridge over the river to cross the city line. Interestingly, according to Baidu Maps, the two sides of the river use different written names: the Xinyi side is “Chaliuhe” in one set of characters, and the Shuyang side is “Chaliuhe” in another — same pronunciation, different writing.
Shuyang Route 310 Chaliuhe – Minhe Hospital After crossing the river you’re in Suqian. There were quite a few passengers transferring here just like me. The fare into the city is 5 yuan. The card reader is set to 1 yuan, so you have to tap 5 times.
To my delight, this was the first bus since leaving Beijing that recognized my card as a “student card,” though it didn’t actually apply any discount. Five taps in a row meant the onboard announcement kept repeating “student card,” and one passenger asked me, “Oh, you’re a student? Shouldn’t student cards be free?” I told them the fare was the same for me, and they replied, “Students really should ride for free.”
Writing this, it occurs to me that I might have unintentionally left them with the impression that local student cards don’t get a discount, so… sorry about that. Anyway, since student discounts differ everywhere, it’s totally reasonable for a non-local student card to not get any benefits — I was already pretty happy just to hear the reader identify it as a student card at all.Shuyang Route 310, departing from the Chaliuhe stop on the Shuyang side.
Shuyang Route 105 Guoyuan New Village Community – Qianji Bridge The first bus inside Suqian brought us from the Xuzhou boundary to downtown Shuyang; this second bus takes us toward the Huai’an boundary. According to earlier journey logs, Shuyang Route 105 used to terminate on the Shuyang side of Qianji Bridge, then was shortened to the Qianji Bus Station, and now it’s been extended again across the bridge to Xuliu River Mouth — the starting point of Huai’an Route H23. The trip I took did indeed go all the way to Xuliu River Mouth, saving passengers the walk over the bridge. Nice.
Since this is still a Shuyang bus, it continued to recognize my card as a student card. I didn’t get a photo of the vehicle, but Shuyang’s buses use the same kind of LED destination displays as Xinyi.Guoyuan New Village Community bus stop sign.
(Huai’an) Route H23 Xuliu River Mouth – Xiaoying Route H23 uses very nice vehicles — fancy interiors, and the headways are good too, with a bus every 20–30 minutes. Huai’an’s system didn’t recognize my card as a student card.(Huai’an) Route H23 luxury coach.From the onboard LED display you can see that Route H23 uses a flat fare, with a seasonal 1-yuan surcharge in winter and spring and a 20% discount for card payments. However, the non-local card didn’t trigger the 20% discount, so I was charged 4 yuan.Fancy LED display on (Huai’an) Route H23. Non-local cards cannot trigger the “80% fare” discount shown here.
(Huai’an) Route 1 Subei Market – Qingzhong There are plenty of options for how to ride through Huai’an’s urban area. By the time Route H23 reached near Xiaoying, it was already 1 p.m., so I got off at Xiaoying for lunch. This was the first time on this journey I had noodles in the “Su-style noodle region” (Jiangsu). Tasty and cheap.
After eating, I picked the soonest bus that could take me to a stop on Tram Line 1: Huai’an Route 1.(Huai’an) Route 1 bus.
(Huai’an) Tram Line 1 Gymnasium – South Gate Apart from the Beijing Western Suburban Line, this was my first time ever on a modern tram, and it was also the only tram segment of this whole journey — so I was really looking forward to it, and specifically planned this leg to be by tram. Trams run about every 10 minutes. Since you tap your card on board and essentially buy your ticket there, there’s staff on the tram to supervise card use.(Huai’an) Tram Line 1 train at its starting point.Platform for (Huai’an) Tram Line 1 — very metro-like.The tram basically has its own dedicated track lane, but still has to obey traffic lights. I kept wondering: if you just painted that lane as a dedicated bus lane where no private cars are allowed, would regular buses achieve similar performance? Maybe they simply don’t have the same capacity. I rode Tram Line 1 end to end on this journey.Onboard route map of (Huai’an) Tram Line 1.
(Huai’an) Route 207 South Gate Tram Station – Shidong Lots of buses connect at South Gate, and there are big crowds waiting there. This bus is also Huai’an Bus, but its card machine is different from the others: the 20% discount for card payments is hardcoded into the machine, so the price is set to 3.20 yuan directly, which meant I actually got to enjoy the discount this time. The photo was taken at the terminus.South Gate Tram Station bus stop sign.(Huai’an) Route 207 bus.On this ride we saw the confluence of the Grand Canal and the Huai River, and we actually crossed the Huai — entering, in a physical geography sense, the “southern China” region. The photo shows the crossing over the Huai River. After crossing, the bus runs along the canal. Another fun detail: when running on the main road, the bus detours into Shanghe Community to loop around, goes to the Shanghe Community Bus Stop (no one boarded or alighted there on my trip), then doubles back to the main road along the same path.Crossing the Huai River! Entering southern China in the natural geographic sense.Shidong stop — with the same Baoying High-Speed Rail shuttle stop sign that earlier journey logs have featured.
32.5. “Mazda” (electric tricycle) Shidong – Jinghe The city-boundary crossing between Huai’an and Yangzhou is the longest “scheduled” walking segment of the whole journey, at about 2.6 km. Earlier journey logs mention using local commercial three-wheelers to cover this stretch. There are lots of these licensed three-wheelers in Jiangsu’s cities — something you don’t see where I usually live in central/northern Zhejiang or in Beijing. After getting off at Shidong, I saw one of these three-wheelers waiting for passengers. A middle-aged woman happened to want a ride in the same direction as me, so the two of us shared the “Mazda” (electric trike) for this segment. Later, I found out that her next ride after this one was actually the same as mine. The driver was also a middle-aged woman, and she and the other passenger chatted the whole way about current meat and vegetable prices. The fare was 3 yuan. The other passenger paid with coins; I paid via QR code inside the trike. After we got off, the driver insisted that I take a photo of her contact details and reminded me multiple times, “If you see two phone numbers, always call the top one — that’s the one that’s really me,” and “If the signal’s good it’ll connect right away; if it’s bad, just try a few more times.” We didn’t get dropped off right at the next route’s official starting stop (Jinghe), but at a random roadside spot with no bus stop sign. I’ll explain that in detail next.Riding — a three-wheeler!
Baoying Route 108 Jinghe – Anyi Junior High School The three-wheeler dropped me at an intersection on the main road, quite far from the official Jinghe starting stop and not at a marked Route 108 stop. I asked whether Route 108 boarded here, and the driver said yes. There were many people at the intersection, all waiting for Route 108. While we were waiting, the three-wheeler driver didn’t leave immediately; she chatted with people at the stop for a few minutes and only left after confirming my payment had gone through. The photo shows the waiting spot, “Jinghe Ancient Ferry.”Jinghe Ancient Ferry.Baoying Route 108 stops here; it’s more of an informal, agreed-upon boarding spot to make transfers from Shuyang’s buses easy. Starting from Baoying, we enter Yangzhou’s administrative area. On all Yangzhou buses, my card is announced as a “student card,” but again, with no actual discount.
Ridership was good, and apart from me, the passengers all seemed to know each other and chatted a lot. Close to my stop, someone asked where I was getting off; when I answered “Anyi Junior High,” the woman who had shared the three-wheeler with me said in flawless Mandarin, “Get off at Anyi Junior High with me,” and reminded me again just before we got off. She told the other passengers that I had “come over with her on the ‘Mazda’.”Baoying Route 108 pulling in. Strictly speaking there’s no formal bus stop here, but everyone waits at this spot. The passengers are really friendly and seem to all know each other.
Baoying Route 223 Anyi Junior High School – Wangqiao Coach Station When I boarded this bus, there was a real risk I might miss the last bus to Gaoyou. Weighed everything up and still decided to keep pushing the journey. Ridership on this route was excellent, with quite a few standing passengers. Two male students with badminton rackets on their backs were on board; I guessed they were heading back from playing in the town or city.Baoying Route 223 bus.Anyi Junior High School bus stop sign.
Gaoyou Route 16 Wangqiao Coach Station – World Trade Plaza · Pinghuai Road By the time we reached Wangqiao it was 17:25, right at sunset. Being on a provincial road, there were lots of family-run inns on both sides with signs saying “Parking · Food · Lodging.” I went into the nearest one with lights on to buy a bottle of water. The man there asked where I was headed so late, and when I said Gaoyou and mentioned there was still one last bus, he agreed that was a good idea. A child was doing homework in the living room.
Another traveler waited with me for the bus; they were headed to Gaoyou High-Speed Rail Station. I snapped the bus photo in a hurry, so it’s very blurry. Because it was so late, many Gaoyou bus routes had already stopped running, so I got off at World Trade Plaza to sort out dinner first, then took a short taxi ride (starting fare) instead of walking to my lodging. In the original plan, the transfer point for Route 16 in Gaoyou was the old coach station.A famous waypoint in journey logs: Wangqiao Coach Station.Gaoyou Route 16 — very late, shot in a rush, thus very blurry.
