What’s Become of Waring? And China’s Blue Train

Recently I read Anthony Powell’s 1939 novel What’s Become of Waring? The novel is narrated by an anonymous publishing firm employee. At a seance, an  warning is received that something is wrong with bestselling travel writer, T.T. Waring, who shortly afterwards is confirmed dead. Through various efforts to bring out an official life of Waring, many secrets are slowly revealed, especially concerning Waring’s identity and the sources of his travel literature. Not everyone in the book is that impressed with Waring’s travel writing – he is expected to be delivering a manuscript on Tibet any day. His publishers believe him to be an intrepid adventurer who travels where most fear to venture, but one old Asia-Hand dismissively comments – “Half the hardships he (Waring) brags about are what the ordinary tourist  puts up with as soon as he has left the Blue Train, and sometimes before.”

And so to the Blue Train. The Blue Train, often referred to as “Asia’s finest Train”, has featured on this blog before (and extensively in my biography of Carl Crow) as the train hijacked by bandits in 1923 at Lincheng (see that story here). The Blue Train (or more often the Blue Express) started in the 1920s between Nanking (technically to Pokou/Pukow, just outside the city on the north side of the Yangtze) and Peking, and then extended to Tientsin (Tianjin). It was completed in 1912. Altogether, the original railway line was built with 85 stations, of which 31 were in Shandong province. The Blue Express is also the famous train of the 1932 movie Shanghai Express (blogged about here too many times to note) and the Chang Hen-shui (Zhang Henshui) novel from 1935 Shanghai Express.

Anyway, all of this is just an excuse really to post a picture of the train in all its glory….in 1934….