YingZouChe:
Translates literally into "hard seat car". In Western terms
it would probably be denoted "2nd class wagon".
I don't have much more technical data than the type (YZ22) and its
serial number (29736).
Very different from its European and US brothers the Chinese wagons were
not heated through a central piping system from the locomotive. Instead
each wagon was self-contained with its own heating oven (right picture).
For the average person this was the way of traveling over
all but the shortest distances.
It was a basic design aimed at cheap mass movement of many people -the
very backbone of travel in China to this very day.
Travel by airplane is out of the question for the average Chinese migrant worker going to and from his or her home for
October holiday or Spring Festival. It is too expensive and -more importantly- the airlines simply
do not have the capacity to move some 300-400 million people over 1-2
days!
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