Hangzhou to Nanjing: A New Railway Through the Rain, Into the Hills | 6-7 Oct 2022

Описание: 6-7 October 2022. A brief autumn wandering.

Departing from Hangzhou East, I boarded a new railway line toward Nanjing. The train window became a frame—holding the misty, rain-veiled heart of the Yangtze River Delta. Huzhou, Changxing, Yixing, Lishui. Names emerged through the moisture, then folded away at 300 kilometers per hour.

This is the most prosperous land in China of the last millennium.

What passed outside was not a single landscape but layers of time: a tributary of the Grand Canal, a town name lifted from a Song dynasty gazetteer, fishponds and rice paddies plotted with millennial precision. The rain softened the boundary between the new and the deeply rooted, revealing a land defined by sustained, patient abundance—not the kind that erupts, but the kind that returns every spring.

Arriving at Nanjing South, a friend’s car waited. We didn’t enter the city. Instead, we drove further south, toward hills. The city’s reverse side. Suburbia. Another Jiangnan—gentler slopes, quieter voices. One night’s rest. Then back by train the next day.

Three minutes. Fragments. Traces. Incomplete field notes.

And yet: where do we begin to understand such a land?

We begin with this train—watching how rain connects southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang into one continuous dampness.
We begin with those villages, factories, and transmission towers that recede but never disappear from the window frame.
We begin with that clumsy question: Why has this place always been prosperous?

The answer is not in any economic history.
It is in the fact that, every time we pass, the land still shows us its order.

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2022年10月6日至7日，一场短促的秋日漫游。

从杭州东站出发，搭上前往南京的新线。车窗成了画框，框住的是烟雨蒙蒙的长三角腹地——湖州、长兴、宜兴、溧水，这些地名在水汽里依次浮现，又被时速三百公里的列车迅速折进身后。

这是中国最近一千年最富庶的土地。

窗外掠过的不是单一的风景，而是层层叠叠的时间：江南运河的某段支流、某个从宋代方志里走出的镇名、某片被精确划分的水塘与稻田。雨水模糊了现代设施与古老肌理的边界，让整片大地呈现出一种持续的、耐心的丰饶——不是爆发式的，而是每年春天都会回来的那种。

抵达南京南站，朋友的车已在等候。我们没有进城，而是继续向南，驶入有山的地方。那是城市的背面，是郊区，是另一种江南：起伏更缓、人声更疏。歇一夜，次日火车折返。

三分钟。碎片，留痕，不成章节的视觉笔记。

但我们仍可试着回答：可以从何处开始了解这样一片土地？

就从这趟列车开始——看雨水如何把苏南浙北连成同一片湿润；
从车窗里那些迅速后退却又反复出现的村庄、厂房、高压线塔开始；
从“为什么这里始终富庶”这个笨拙的问题开始。

答案不在任何一本经济史里，而在每一次路过时，大地依然愿意向我们展露它的秩序。