The 436-kilometer Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-speed Railway, which is scheduled to become operational this month, will bring Ganzhou in East China’s Jiangxi Province closer to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and stimulate the economy and tourism in the two provinces.

The line’s stop in the city of Heyuan in Guangdong will mark the high-speed railway network’s coverage of each city in the province.

During the test runs yesterday, a total of 114 journalists were invited to take a ride on the railway. The train left Shenzhen North Railway Station at 8:46 a.m. and arrived at Ganzhou West Railway Station at 10:29 a.m.

Previously, a regular train trip between Ganzhou and Shenzhen took seven hours, Yang Bin, deputy director of the passenger service department of China Railway Group Corp. Nanchang Bureau, told the reporters when the train arrived in Ganzhou yesterday.

The new railway will also cut the travel time between Nanchang, Jiangxi’s capital city, and Shenzhen to 3.5 hours, he said.

During the initial operation stage, there will be 15 pairs of trains, 13 of which have Shenzhen as their destination, according to Yang.

Ganzhou is known as the “Orange Capital of the World” with its famous Gannan navel oranges. A stall owner named Zhang Zili said, “With the high-speed railway’s operation, more travelers from Guangdong will come and we believe our oranges will be more popular.”

Data released by the Ganzhou Municipal Government Information Office showed that Gannan orange output reached 1.38 million tons in 2020.

For Luo Yu, a Ganzhou native who works in Shenzhen, his life pattern will be changed with the railway’s operation.

An attendant walks in the carriage of a train on the Ganzhou-Shenzhen Highspeed Railway. Sun Yuchen

“It takes me six hours to drive home on Fridays and after this railway starts operating, I can get home in time to pick up my child at kindergarten. What’s more, I can even drop him off at the kindergarten Monday mornings before I go to work,” Luo said.

The railway’s operation will facilitate Ganzhou’s construction of a national transportation hub and invigorate southern Jiangxi’s urban rejuvenation and accelerate the revolutionary base’s integration into the GBA, according to the Ganzhou government’s press release.

Ganzhou and Shenzhen have initiated Shenzhen-Ganzhou Port City Special Cooperation Zone to explore further cooperation.

In terms of tourism, Ganzhou aims to serve as the GBA’s backyard for ecological and leisure tourism and a major agricultural produce supply base. Cultural and tourism enterprises in Shenzhen, such as Huaqiang Fantawild and OCT, have invested to build theme parks in the city.

Fantawild Oriental Dawn Theme Park, a red culture and high-tech theme park, expects a surge of visitors after the railway is put into service. Since its operation in May, the park has received some 850,000 visits and raked in 120 million yuan (US$18.9 million) in revenue.

The Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-speed Railway runs 436.37 kilometers between Ganzhou and Shenzhen, passing through Heyuan, Huizhou and Dongguan. It has a total of 14 stations, with nine in Guangdong. The Guangdong section spans 301 kilometers and the railway is also a part of the Beijing-Hong Kong High-speed Railway, one of the vertical routes of the country’s “eight vertical and eight horizontal high-speed railway network.”