The first train to China left the World London Gateway
Terminal at Stanford-le-Hope in Essex last week on a 7,500-mile journey, bound
for Zhejiang Province. It was laden, amongst other things, with soft drinks,
whisky, pharmaceuticals, vitamins and baby products.
This was after the first train from China had arrived in Barking,
East London, in January. It had taken 17 days to make the trek from Yiwu City,
via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France and the
Channel Tunnel. Operated by Yiwu Timex Industrial Investments, it carried 34
containers of Chinese exports worth a total of 4 million GBP, including
clothing.
The developments prompted comparisons with the old Silk Road
[or Silk Route], by which China established trade networks with Western Europe
over two thousand years earlier. Apparently, Chinese exports then included
silk, religion, philosophy and the plague.
Well, who would have thought it? Cheaper than by air and
faster than by sea, this is surely globalisation in a nutshell, or, rather, in two
trainloads.
We certainly wouldn’t have seen that coming as young spotters
on the platform end in the early 1960s. There would be more chance of a man on
the moon, or a flying pig……………
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