Not a plane ..

.. but a train. The Tianjin Shanghai bullet train that reaches over 300 km/hr for most of its five hour journey.
Hoping for scenic beauty, sadly it was flat dull and horribly developed for most of the route. Still however a better way to travel between places than an anodyne flight. What wasn't so good was that two of the trains crashed in 2011 killing 40 - news that didn't really reach the west.
No pick up at the rail station so we had to work out a taxi ourselves which is always a bot of an epic, especially as it meant crossing the small little city that is Shanghai - population currently estimated at 23.9 million compared to the paltry 15.1 million that in Tianjin. London eat your heart out at a mere 8.6 million.
A different hotel in Shanghai which is ridiculously marbled up. All very communist.