A railway journey that led to a lifestime story.

一个铁路旅行影响一生的故事。

"There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettanti, than from a railway train." 19th century Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's bookThoughts on Walking.

"有很多种好的看风景的方式并且没有比这更为生动的了，尽管一些在火车上有这样的一些业余爱好者。"19世纪的苏格兰作家罗伯特·罗伊斯·史蒂芬森’旅行当中的书所写到。

Rail travel has always been, and still is, my preferred way to travel.

铁路旅行从以前一直到现在都是我最喜欢的旅行方式。

Exactly 30 years ago this week I arrived in China by train on a journey from Glasgow, Scotland to Hong Kong's Hung Hom Station. China was a country I knew little about apart from a few confused preconceptions.

特别是在30年前的这个星期我在中国的一趟旅行，从(英国)格拉斯哥，苏格兰去香港的红磡。(中国是一个我了解到的有困惑偏见和差距的城市)。中国是一个我所见甚少的国家。

It would have been easy to fly to Hong Kong but to appreciate a country,or in this case two continents, overland travel encompasses the geography, of watching Europe slowly give way to Asia, of meeting people and observing how they also physically changed, and learning from people about their countries. That journey was also a life changer. If I had not taken the train, my China story would never have happened - 30 years later this country remains my adopted home! The experiences -incredible!

可以很简单的从香港飞行，但要欣赏一个国家或者是两大陆，陆地旅行围绕着地理,看者欧洲以缓慢的方式去亚洲，遇见一些人并且观察他们身上的改变，从他们的身上了解他们的国家。这次旅行也是一个生活的改变者。如果我没有乘坐火车，我的中国故事就不会发生-30年后这个国家成为我的第二故乡！
真是不可思议！

A warm July evening, retreating from the gravelly wastes of Mongolia's Gobi Desert the green eighteen coach train pulled into Erlain, China's border town. A fellow passenger, Mr Li, a journalist with the People's Daily East Berlin office, shook my hand while welcoming me to China.

一个炎热的七月下午，在中国的一个边境城镇Erlain，遇到从内蒙古戈壁滩砾石被拖入的18个教练。一个乘客，李先生，一个人民日报东柏林办事处新闻工作者，握着我的手欢迎我来到中国。

Minutes later we were both under the train watching the wheel bogies being manually swapped for Chinese track gauges, narrower than Mongolian and Russian.

数分钟后，我们在火车下看到车轮专项架被手动转变成中国轨距，比内蒙和俄罗斯更窄。