Tiangai Temple sits atop Mengding Mountain in Sichuan. It honors Wu Lizhen, the first person to plant tea for cultivation, which he did on this spot in 53 BC At an elevation of 1,450 meters and with four surrounding peaks, it’s an appropriately dramatic setting for a defining moment in human civilization. With the first harvest, one can imagine the horns and timpani of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” and the appearance of a black monolith.

Some 2,023 years on, the greatest tribute to Wu Lizhen is the fact that all of Mengding Mountain and much of the surrounding region are carpeted in tea bushes. There are other tangible monuments, as I discovered on a recent visit, including – why not? – a giant teapot.

I live in Hong Kong but rarely explore mainland China. The only genuinely adventurous assignment I ever had there was to Ruili, the rambunctious town of gamblers, jade merchants, hookers, drug addicts, and HIV victims on the Burmese border, and that was 26 years ago. China had no high-speed trains then.

Since they first started rolling in 2007, China has built the longest high-speed network in the world. I want to use it to go somewhere far: Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. What I am exploring is China itself, to see how far decades of rapid development have brought it into the modern world. I wonder how welcoming China is to a visitor, how easy it is to navigate, how prosperous it has become, and – no offense intended – how normal. From the Hong Kong perspective.

West Kowloon Station is the Hong Kong terminus of China’s high-speed train system. Although it opened in 2018, it isn’t seamlessly connected to the local transport system, requiring a hike from nearby subway stations or bus stops, a metaphor for the disconnect between semi-autonomous Hong Kong and the rest of China. It’s an impressive structure, with an interior like a spaceship’s. Part of it is not Hong Kong at all: the Mainland Port Area was ceded to Beijing for a token yearly rent. In other words, you enter mainland China before you board the train.

From tiny Hong Kong, that self-contained and prosperous pimple on China’s rump, traveling to Sichuan seems less a tourist’s schlep than an odyssey: 1,650 kilometers (1,025 miles), eight hours and 17 minutes on a train that can hit 300 kilometers per hour. As it turns out, it’s an easy odyssey. The cars are full because it’s National Day Golden Week, and although Second Class looks unruly – giant suitcases jammed behind seats, legs protruding arrogantly into the aisle even before departure – First Class is civilized. (Even more so Business Class, the most expensive seats.) No goats or chickens, just a lot of screens, earbuds and headphones, solid middle class leisurewear and chattering, well-behaved kids.

The argument for train over air travel is that you see something of