No one smokes and can stretch their legs

Traveling to China can often feel like visiting the future. The cities stretch out for what seems like forever, while new skyscrapers, bridges, and futuristically designed landmarks spring up every year.

Nowhere is this feeling more apparent than when you encounter China's high-speed railway network. At 15,500 miles, the country's "bullet train" is the world's largest. And it's getting larger.

You can pretty much travel in anywhere in China via high-speed rail. It's usually comparable in speed to air travel (once you factor in security lines and check-in) and far more convenient, as I found on a recent trip to China.

If I wanted to travel a comparable distance in the US by train — at 712 miles, New York to Chicago is the closest — it would take 22 hours, with a transfer in Washington, DC. And that's with traveling on Amtrak's Acela Express, currently the fastest train in the US with a speed up to 214 km/h.

I arrived at Beijing West Railway station a little over an hour before my train at 2:00 p.m. Built in 1996 and expanded in 2000, the railway station is the second largest in Asia, serving up to 400,000 people a day. It was very busy when I arrived.

If there's one aspect of the high-speed rail system that could be improved, it's ditching hard tickets for e-tickets. But, knowing China's obsessive adoption of mobile phones and QR codes, I'm sure it won't be long.

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3、To enter the station properly, you have to present your ticket and passport (or Chinese national ID) and put your bags through an x-ray machine and step through a metal detector. All that security happens right at the entrances, which gives a nice peace-of-mind considering recent terror attacks in transit hubs across the world.

4、The Beijing West Station is over 20 years old at this point and a bit shabby when compared to the country's other railway stations. But it's fairly easy to navigate once you get inside. Match the train number on your ticket to the numbers on the platforms and you're ready to go.

A lot of people decided to sit it out and wait. The seats are all assigned like an airplane, so it's probably not worth it to rush. But I'm a worrywart and it was my first time.

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5、When you get to the front of the line, you scan your ticket in the card reader. If you are a Chinese national, all you have to do is tap your ID card. Chinese national IDs are linked to the railroad system.

About a week after I took this train, I happened to be standing on a train platform in a smaller city when a bullet train blew by at full speed. The whoosh of the train nearly knocked me onto the ground.

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I did see a train attendant tell one passenger to take their bag down because it was too big.

I was very happy with my seat. It was big and comfortable, with lots of legroom. Even with my backpack in front of me, I was able to spread my legs out fully.

7、At that speed, it's already faster than most trains in the US.

You could definitely feel the higher speed, though it's probably a credit to the engineering that I didn't feel it too much. I only really noticed the speed when I looked out the window and saw the scenery whizzing by.

8、Rather than cook onsite, they offer prepackaged microwaveable meals. On the train I took, there was no dining car at all. Instead, a train attendant came by with a trolley selling snacks, drinks, and instant noodles.

Every carriage has a hot-water dispenser. Chinese people drink a lot of tea. This came in handy when I took the train back to Beijing and had to eat instant noodles.

9、A lot of people seemed to enjoy killing the time by hanging out in the space between the carriages. People did this in the regular-speed train I took, except they used the space to chain-smoke cigarettes. This didn't happen on the bullet train.

As for the question you are all wondering: The bathrooms were Western-style and pretty clean. This was not the case when I took a regular-speed train.

10、When you get off the train, you have to scan your ticket again to leave the station. Like most of China's bullet trains, the Xi'an train platform opens directly into the metro. It makes for a seamless experience.

After riding China's bullet trains back and forth across the country, I couldn't help feel as if the US is being left behind, at least when it comes to transit.

But about halfway through the trip, I realized how dead simple and convenient the bullet trains were. I ended up taking four bullet trains in total.