What We Experienced: Our green-train journey from Yuncheng in Shanxi Province to Hancheng in Shaanxi Province required a three-hour transit in Houma. Instead of sitting in the station, Dad and Elaine went exploring, found a little local restaurant for lunch — then continued through the countryside toward another ChinaTravelBUG rabbit hole.
Sometimes the inconvenient route turns out to be the more interesting one.
We were leaving Yuncheng (运城, Yùnchéng) in Shanxi Province (山西省, Shānxī) and heading for Hancheng (韩城, Hánchéng) in neighboring Shaanxi Province (陕西省, Shǎnxī).
There wasn’t a convenient direct train for the journey we wanted.
So our route became:
运城 → 侯马 → 韩城
Yuncheng → Houma → Hancheng
Two green trains.
Two provinces.
And roughly three hours in Houma (侯马, Hóumǎ) between them.
Dad looked at the itinerary.
Three hours?
We’re not sitting in the station for three hours.
😂
🎥 Come With Us — This Is What the Journey Looked Like
Before we tell you what happened in Houma, come aboard our green train (绿皮车, lǜpíchē).
🚂 Looking Out Across Shanxi
Fields.
Villages.
Farm buildings.
Mountains.
Wind turbines standing along distant ridges.
And that steady railway rhythm underneath everything:
clack… clack… clack…
High-speed rail (高铁, gāotiě) gets you across China incredibly quickly.
But the slower train gives you something else.
Time to look.
🚂 The China Between the Famous Cities
This is one of the things Dad loves about traveling beyond China’s major tourist destinations.
Look outside.
Farmland.
Village houses.
Roads.
Power lines.
Mountains.
Another freight train thundering past.
Nothing here requires an entrance ticket.
Nothing is on a “Top 10 China Attractions” list.
But this is also China.
🌉 And Then This Appeared Outside Our Window
Now watch this one.
The landscape suddenly opens up…
and an enormous modern bridge appears across the broad valley.
This is something Dad and Elaine keep noticing when traveling through lesser-known China:
China’s big infrastructure doesn’t stop when the famous tourist cities stop.
Railways.
Expressways.
Long bridges.
Tunnels.
Transport links connecting provincial cities and communities most international travelers have never heard of.
And there was something wonderfully contradictory about the view.
We were sitting inside an old-style 绿皮车 (lǜpíchē)…
looking out at enormous pieces of modern Chinese infrastructure.
Old train. Modern infrastructure. Lesser-known China.
All through the same window.
But Our Journey Had a Three-Hour Intermission…
侯马站 — Hóumǎ Zhàn
Houma Railway Station
Our journey wasn’t actually one continuous train ride.
There was no convenient direct service for the route we wanted.
We had to change trains in Houma (侯马), another city in Shanxi Province (山西省).
And our connection gave us roughly:
THREE HOURS.
We could sit in the station…
or…
😂
go outside and see what we could find.
Dad chose Option Two.
🚉 But Our Journey Had a Three-Hour Intermission…
[INSERT PHOTO: ELAINE POINTING AT 侯马站]
侯马站 — Hóumǎ Zhàn
Houma Railway Station
Our journey wasn’t one continuous train ride.
There was no convenient direct train from Yuncheng (运城, Yùnchéng) to Hancheng (韩城, Hánchéng) that worked for our plans.
So we had to change trains in:
Houma (侯马, Hóumǎ)
another city in Shanxi Province (山西省, Shānxī).
And our connection gave us roughly:
THREE HOURS.
Three hours is an awkward amount of time.
Too long to sit around doing nothing.
Not really long enough to venture very far.
Dad looked at Elaine.
We could stay inside the station…
or…
go outside and see what Houma looked like.
😂
Dad chose Option Two.
🚶 We Hadn’t Planned to Visit Houma
That’s what made this little stop interesting.
Dad hadn’t researched:
“Top 10 Things to Do in Houma.”
There wasn’t an attraction we were rushing to see.
We weren’t even really visiting Houma.
The railway timetable had simply put us there.
So we walked out of Houma Railway Station (侯马站) and explored the streets nearby.
No guide.
No itinerary.
No particular destination.
Just Dad and Elaine with a few hours to spare in a city we’d never planned to stop in.
And after a while, another question became considerably more important than sightseeing:
What’s for lunch?
😂
We Found One Small Place to Eat
There didn’t seem to be a huge selection of restaurants immediately around the station.
Eventually we found a small local eating shop.
Good enough for us.
We went in.
And one dish caught our attention:
黄酒焖鸡 — Huángjiǔ Mènjī
Yellow-Rice-Wine Braised Chicken
A hot pot arrived at the table.
Chicken.
Tofu products.
Other ingredients simmering together in a rich sauce.
And two big bowls of rice.
This wasn’t a famous restaurant Dad had researched beforehand.
We hadn’t traveled to Houma specifically to eat 黄酒焖鸡.
We were simply hungry travelers with three hours between trains.
And at that moment?
It was exactly what we needed.
😂
Then Elaine Noticed the Bottles
Sitting nearby were rows of colorful glass bottles.
大窑汽水 — Dàyáo Qìshuǐ
Dayao Soda
Orange.
Pear.
Lychee.
Different flavors lined up in those wonderfully old-fashioned-looking glass bottles.
This is exactly the kind of thing Elaine and Dad notice when we’re traveling through China.
You see something everybody around you treats as completely ordinary…
but you’ve never tried it.
So naturally:
we try it.
😂
And suddenly our annoying three-hour train connection had produced:
a walk around Houma
+
黄酒焖鸡
+
大窑汽水
+
a little glimpse of another Chinese city we’d never intended to visit.
Not bad for a transit stop.
Then It Was Back to 侯马站
Lunch finished.
We checked the time.
Our three-hour Houma adventure was nearly over.
Back to:
侯马站 — Houma Railway Station
because Green Train Number Two was waiting.
Our next leg:
侯马 → 韩城
Houma → Hancheng
And when we climbed aboard…
Dad and Elaine got another surprise.
😂 Wait… Where Is Everybody?
Look at this.
Rows of blue seats.
Huge windows.
Hardly anybody around.
After our earlier green-train journey from Xianyang to Baoji — when Dad and Elaine discovered we didn’t even have seats — this felt almost luxurious.
😂
This time:
WE HAD SEATS.
Plenty of them.
Elaine could settle down.
Our luggage wasn’t fighting us for space.
Dad had a big window.
And outside…
rural China was waiting.
And Eventually… 韩城
There she is again.
😂
Another railway station.
Another sign.
This time:
韩城站
Hánchéng Zhàn
Hancheng Railway Station
We’d made it.
Our day’s journey was complete:
运城 → 侯马 → 韩城
Yuncheng → Houma → Hancheng
Three cities.
Two provinces.
Two green trains.
One three-hour transit.
One unexpected lunch.
And many hours looking through train windows.
But arriving at Hancheng (韩城) wasn’t the end of this story.
It was the beginning of another one.
Why Hancheng?
That’s the better question.
Why would Dad bring Elaine to a city that many international travelers to China have probably never heard of?
The answer is familiar by now.
Dad had been researching again.
😂🐇
Hancheng turned out to contain an extraordinary collection of historical rabbit holes.
There was:
Sima Qian (司马迁, Sīmǎ Qiān)
one of China’s greatest historians and the author of the:
Records of the Grand Historian —《史记》(Shǐjì)
There was:
Da Yu (大禹, Dà Yǔ) — Yu the Great
one of the foundational figures in China’s ancient stories of flood control, political authority and civilization.
There was an ancient city.
Temples.
Courtyards.
Historic streets.
And layer after layer of Chinese history.
A place Dad had once barely known existed had suddenly become somewhere we wanted to see for ourselves.
Our green train had delivered us to 韩城站.
Now the real Hancheng rabbit hole could begin.
Could You Visit Hancheng Too?
Absolutely.
Hancheng isn’t one of those places most international travelers automatically add to a first Xi’an itinerary.
That’s also part of its appeal.
If our journey has made you curious about going there yourself, Dad has put the practical transport and planning details separately here:
How to Visit Hancheng (韩城) From Xi’an — A Practical Guide for Foreign Travelers →
That article tells you how to get there.
This story tells you…
what happened when we did.
ChinaTravelBUG’s Take
If there had been a convenient direct high-speed train from Yuncheng to Hancheng that fitted our plans…
Dad probably would have booked it.
😂
Faster.
Simpler.
More comfortable.
But then think about what we would have missed.
No 侯马站.
No wandering around an unfamiliar city for three hours.
No little lunch shop.
No 黄酒焖鸡.
No 大窑汽水.
And perhaps no long afternoon sitting beside the enormous windows of an almost-empty 绿皮车, watching fields, villages, mountains and modern bridges pass outside.
Travel keeps teaching Dad and Elaine something:
Not every inconvenience needs to be removed from the journey.
Sometimes the slower train…
the three-hour transit…
the unfamiliar station…
the restaurant you never planned to visit…
and the city you barely knew existed…
become the story.
And waiting for us at the end of this particular railway line was Hancheng (韩城).
Another place Dad found while researching.
Another place outside the usual international-traveler itinerary.
And, as it turned out…
another very deep rabbit hole.
🐇❤️
Yuncheng → Houma → Hancheng
运城 → 侯马 → 韩城
Where Are Yuncheng, Houma and Hancheng?
If these names are unfamiliar, don’t worry. All three cities sit well beyond the usual first-time international travel circuit — but they’re surprisingly close to some of northern China’s great historical landscapes.
📍 Yuncheng — 运城 (Yùnchéng)
Province: Shanxi Province (山西省, Shānxī)
General location: Southwestern Shanxi, close to the borders with Shaanxi and Henan provinces.
Yuncheng was where this journey began. For us, it became a gateway into stories connected with Shun (舜, Shùn) and Guan Yu (关羽, Guān Yǔ).
🐇 See why we went to Yuncheng →
📍 Houma — 侯马 (Hóumǎ)
Province: Shanxi Province (山西省, Shānxī)
General location: Southwestern Shanxi, west of Linfen (临汾, Línfén).
Houma wasn’t one of our planned destinations.
For us, Houma Railway Station (侯马站, Hóumǎ Zhàn) was the railway connection between Yuncheng and Hancheng — and our roughly three-hour wait became an excuse to walk outside and find lunch.
📍 Hancheng — 韩城 (Hánchéng)
Province: Shaanxi Province (陕西省, Shǎnxī)
General location: Eastern Shaanxi, beside the Yellow River (黄河, Huáng Hé), across from Shanxi Province.
Hancheng was our real destination — and another of Dad’s historical rabbit holes, with Sima Qian (司马迁, Sīmǎ Qiān), Da Yu (大禹, Dà Yǔ) and Hancheng’s ancient city waiting for us.
🐇 See why Hancheng became one of our Beyond Xi’an discoveries →
