A long, cold journey home

Green train 2667 will go from minus-15 degrees Celsius to minus-47 that's not because of the air-conditioning. Instead, this train has the coldest route, traveling from Liaoning to Heilongjiang Province.

It's forty minutes before ticket check for Train 2667 in Dalian Train Station. Passengers are already waiting in a long queue with their huge baggages. Tickets to the last station, nearly 22-hundred kilometers away, start from as low as 114 yuan, or less than 20 US dollars.

Finally, the journey home gets underway.

Six hours later, when the train arrives in Shenyang Station, the coach has become crowded.

Liu Yanliang and Guo Qing work in Dalian and have been together for about two years. It'll take them 37 hours to reach the end of the train line, as they make their way to Liu's hometown in Mohe.

Liu Yanliang said:" We are going home to meet our my parents. I'm extremely happy to go home. I don't know how to express my feelings right now. I couldn't sleep last night and kept checking the time because I didn't want to be late for the train."

But Guo is a little bit nervous about his first meeting with his parents-in-law.

It's minus-30 degrees Celsius outside when the train passes Harbin Station. The cold turns the windows into a drawing board.

These two girls are college students in Harbin. They still have to transfer on to a bus to get home after they arrive at Tsitsihar, at 2 am.

Arriving home makes the journey worthwhile. So while the train ride is long and the weather is cold, it's still warm in everyone's hearts.