"It's no longer tiring for me to travel around China with the convenient transportation in Linfen," said Su Shengyong, a retired official in the transport department of Linfen, Shanxi province.

Bullet train, plane, automobiles and other forms of transportation are offering residents in Linfen more choices for traveling these days. For most of them, gone are the days when people sat from dawn to dusk in stuffy compartments to return to their hometowns from cities far away.

Qiao Jing, a woman working in Beijing, came back to Linfen during the National Day holiday by high-speed rail in just four hours, while it previously took her almost 15 hours.

The faster transportation also benefits the delivery of goods, especially fruit and vegetables. Li Jihe, a fruit farmer from Xixian county in Linfen, has planted pears in the mountainous region for a dozen years.

In the past, the pears sent to Linfen used to be badly damaged due to being thrown around on the long journey. However, they are now kept fresh and undamaged when transported to the city in just two hours, with a portion of the freight exported overseas, following the opening of the Houzhe-Yonghe Highway.

As an important transport hub for North China, Linfen has been developing transport infrastructure over recent years. The local Qiaoli Airport has routes to 11 major cities in China, receiving more than 100,000 passengers since the beginning of 2016.

In the land transport sector, the Datong-Xi'an High-Speed Railway and Lvliang-Rizhao Railway are now in operation. Meanwhile, a series of highways, including the Linfen-Jixian Expressway and Huozhou-Yonghe Freeway, have been built. By the end of 2015, the roads across the city extended to 18,245 kilometers, ranking first in Shanxi province.