Published : 19/12/2025
China's Fuxing high-speed rail technology leads the world, but few might realise that its chief designer, Liang Jianying, was spurred by a bout of motion sickness during a trip to Europe.
This experience solidified her determination to ensure that China's high-speed trains not only run fast, but also with greater stability, providing passengers with a far superior travel experience.
What is Liang Jianying's story?
Living by the Railway, Liang Jianying Was Full of Curiosity about Trains
The ancestral home of Liang Jianying (梁建英) is in Shandong Province. She was born in 1972 in a small forestry town in Northeast China's Jilin Province, and her father was a railway employee.
When she was a child, her home was only 200 metres from the railway station. Watching the trains pass by every day, she wondered how those behemoths of trains could pull so much and run so fast.
After finishing secondary school, Liang Jianying, who had been fascinated by trains since she was a child, decided to study at Shanghai Railway Institute (which merged into Tongji University in 2000).
In those days, China's railways were still very backward. Liang, who travelled between Northeast China and Shanghai every semester, had first-hand experience of the difficulties in buying tickets, the slow speeds, and the unbearable crowding.
Therefore, her wish at that time was to design a train that would allow everyone to travel with dignity.
After graduating, she went to work at the Sifang Locomotive and Rolling Stock Works in Qingdao, Shandong, starting as a designer for ordinary trains. This factory is the predecessor of CRRC Sifang (中車四方) and also a powerhouse in China's railway industry.
Women are in the minority in the railway equipment industry, but Liang Jianying never felt that she was weaker than any man.
She started from the most fundamental tasks, constantly absorbing knowledge. In addition to the electrical engineering she studied at university, she also learned about systems and equipment such as the train's car body, drainage, and bogies one by one, until she had mastered the secrets of the entire train.
In addition, she continued her studies and obtained both master's and doctoral degrees, but this was later on.
Liang Jianying's professional abilities were quickly recognised, and her colleagues knew that this bold and straightforward woman "had many unique ways of thinking".
China's full-scale high-speed rail development showcased Liang Jianying's talents
In 2004, after years of introducing, absorbing, and assimilating technology, China decided to develop its own high-speed railways and trains at full speed.
Shortly after, CRRC Sifang began to develop a high-speed electric multiple unit (EMU) with its own intellectual property rights and a speed of 300 km/h, and Liang was given the opportunity to showcase her abilities, being appointed as the project's lead designer.
This was also her first time designing a high-speed train.
A high-speed EMU is a vast systems engineering project. A single train consists of hundreds of thousands of components, and increasing its speed from 200 km/h to 300 km/h required breakthroughs in key technologies such as aerodynamics, systems integration, the car body, and bogies.
To overcome these challenges, it became the norm for Liang Jianying and her thousand-strong team to work from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week.
She recalls that during that time, she had no time even for her young daughter. Every day she returned home from work, her daughter was already asleep. When she left for the design office in the morning, her daughter had not yet woken up.
After three years of hard work, China's first EMU capable of speeds from 300 to 350 km/h was successfully launched.
One evening, her daughter, in a tender, childish voice, pointed at a high-speed train speeding across the television screen and shouted, "Mummy, your train!" At that moment, Liang felt a sense of pride, but also guilt towards her daughter and family.
In 2008, Liang Jianying once again shouldered a major responsibility, serving as the lead designer of the "Hexie" (和諧號) CRH380A.
The EMU had a maximum operating speed of 380 km/h, surpassing the benchmarks of all trains previously imported by China from Europe, the U.S., and Japan, with a lot of data being unavailable for reference.
To collect design data, she once again led her team to travel all over the country, conducting continuous research and trials in harsh environments to overcome technical difficulties.
The HK "Vibrant Express" was also designed by Liang Jianying
Finally, the CRH380A EMU was successfully developed in 2010.
In December of the same year, it reached a speed of 486.1 km/h on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, breaking the world record for the test speed of an unmodified commercial trainset (the world record for a specially modified trainset is 574.8 km/h, held by a French TGV train).
This world record was also a milestone, marking China's transition from "following the pack" to starting to lead the world.
"There was nervousness, pressure, and the excitement of achieving the goal," said Liang, adding that it was an unforgettable moment in her life.
448 sets of the Hexie were produced between 2010 and 2017, and the nine Vibrant Express trains that MTR operates on the Hong Kong section of the High Speed Rail are also of this model, except that the Vibrant Express was custom-built for MTR and has a slightly different configuration from other CRH380As.
Next, it is time for the Fuxing (復興號) bullet train to make its debut, which currently leads the world. This is also a masterpiece by Liang Jianying.
In 2013, development began on the Fuxing, a step up from the Hexie.
Liang Jianying, who had by then been promoted to Vice President and Chief Engineer of CRRC Qingdao Sifang, once again led her team to take on various high-tech challenges, and the difficulties and hardships involved are not hard to imagine.
On the China Central Television programme "Voice" (《開講了》), Liang Jianying also mentioned an incident that happened during this period.
Once, when she went to Switzerland for a study trip on rail transport, she took a train from Zurich to Geneva out of professional habit. "The scenery along the way was beautiful, but the train swayed back and forth like a boat, so I started to get travel sick. I couldn't appreciate the beautiful views anymore, and after I got off, I had to steady myself on the ground for a long time".
Liang Jianying said that she does not normally get travel sick, and this journey left a particularly deep impression on her, "so I hope that our products will definitely give everyone who sits in them a good experience."
Read more: Liang Jianying, the only female chief engineer in China's high-speed rail equipment industry
Developing a 600 km/h Maglev train: Liang Jianying takes on another challenge
Later, as everyone knows, the Fuxing bullet train exemplified the pursuit of excellence. Its overall vehicle resistance is 12% lower than the Hexie; its noise is further reduced by 4 to 6 decibels; the stability index reaches an excellent grade, and a series of world-class indicators mark China's high-speed rail as a world leader.
In 2017, the Fuxing bullet train was officially put into operation. In September of the same year, it began operating at 350 km/h on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, making China the country with the highest commercial high-speed rail operating speed in the world.
After hearing about Liang's experience in Switzerland, the host of "Voice" Sa Beining (撒貝寧) joked, "There was a viral video of a young man balancing a coin on its edge on a high-speed train. In the future, if anyone asks why China's high-speed rail can do that, we can answer them: because the chief designer of China's high-speed rail gets travel sick!"
In 2022, the Fuxing was seen all over China and had multiple derivative models covering operating speeds of 160 to 350 km/h, with some also capable of resisting wind, sand and snow. The Fuxing bullet train customised for the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway was even capable of autonomous driving.
Of course, Liang Jianying's spirit of innovation never waned. She continues to lead her team with dedication, and the new highlight of their research and development efforts is the 600 km/h high-speed maglev train.