High-speed services connecting the Yangtze River Delta Region and the northeastern China will open on Dec 28, reducing the travel time from Shanghai to Harbin, the farthest provincial capital in Northeast China, to less than 13 hours.
High-speed trains will run between Shanghai's Hongqiao Station and big cities in the northeast: Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian.
Although ticket prices have not been published, the news of the upcoming high-speed railway operation has led to a drop in airline ticket prices.
The price of airline tickets from Shanghai to cities in the northeast is down 80 percent around Dec 28 and about 60 percent on Jan 10, three weeks before Spring Festival, when hundreds of millions of people will travel back home.