If convenience is calculated in hours and minutes saved for individual travelers, then the benefits brought by the Nanjing-Hangzhou high-speed are too great to count for Jiangsu's Yixing, a small city with a population of 1.35 million that lies between Nanjing and Hangzhou.

Famous for its purple clay pottery, the county-level city has never had a passenger rail service before the one due to begin July 1, let alone a high-speed railway.

A total of 78 high-speed trains a day will pass and stop at Yixing's newly-built train station, where swallows still mistake the fresh architecture for their old homes, once the Nanjing-Hangzhou line is operational, becoming part of a Nanjing-Hangzhou-Shanghai rail triangle.