Guangzhou -> Beijing express

Yesterday afternoon, after failing to obtain cheap plane tickets, I purchased a train ticket to Beijing (on the T16 express)...this new express train has cut two hours off the old Guangzhou-Beijing trip, and can now accomplish the run in a mere 22 hours. The trip started out ok. I had bought a soft sleeper ticket, so I could lie down in an air conditioned cabin. Unfortunately, one guy in the cabin started quarelling with his wife (over his cell phone). They quarelled non-stop beginning at 11:30 pm. The guy's cell phone apparently has a very hardy battery. By 2 am, they were still at it and I was starting to go insane, so I sought some relative peace on the floor next to the bathroom (which is where I sat for the next 14 hours). One interesting incident that happened as we were approaching Beijing was that all of a sudden the train stopped suddenly and a whole crew of train staff came rushing down the corridor. It turned out that a careless smoker had started a fire a couple of cars down, so for the next 20 minutes the staff was running back and forth with buckets of water. Fortunately, the train was back under way after only stopping for about 20 minutes. One last thing: for anybody interested in geography, the train stopped in Changsha (capital of Hunan), Wuchang (part of Wuhan, capital of Hubei), and Zhengzhou (capital of Henan).