A new freight train service has been launched from Tangshan (150 km from Beijing) to Belgium. A train carrying 41 containers of local products, such as kaoline and yeast, departed around noon Thursday from Jingtang Port District in the city of Tangshan, marking the inauguration of the service. The train will go through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, and Germany and will cover in total 11.000 km to reach its final destination – Antwerp, Belgium.

The train service will cut transport time from the usual 45 days by sea, to just 16 days.
Tangshan, located in the north of the Bohai Sea, has developed 32 km of its 230-km coastline for commercial use where two port districts – Jingtang and Caofeidian – are situated. According to the city government, last year they handled 573 million tonnes of freight.
But the new connection offers a new way not only for the freight of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei to Europe, but also for that of Japan and the Republic of Korea to Europe via China.