Leaving hefei going to shanghai

The conference finished and it was time to move to Shanghai.
Since there were a lot of people from the conference leaving hefei, we had to wait in front of the hotel for a taxi. I travelled with two Italian colleagues, and since there was quite some luggage and most taxis run of gas (not petrol), meaning that most of the trunk is occupied by a gas cylinder, we had to go in two taxis to the train station. The Italians shared one, and I went alone in the other one.
Although I tried to tell my driver to follow the other taxi, the bastard did the opposite.
And there I was, in a direction that was probably not the right one, with my luggage and some of the other friends, going to a place I didn’t know how long it would take, with no references on how to meet my friends, and hoping that both taxis would arrive to the same train station (because there is more than one),
After driving through crowded hefei center for 50 minutes I arrive to the train station, that seemed to be still under construction, and arriving at the same time, the other taxi with my friends.

The entrance to the station was not clear, since there was just a big square, and some boards displaying information in Chinese.
There was a lot of people queuing to something that looked to be more like a bus terminal, but we were told that it was there the train station.
We queued, being smashed by a big crowd, we passed an x-ray machine placed on the street leading to what seem to be the terminal.
It wasn’t, that was just a pavilion where everybody going in the same train had to wait before going to the train platform.
The train was packed all the way to shanghai, we had seated seats, but there are other ways for traveling such as standing or seating on newspapers in the corridor.. The train was quite good, air-conditioned and fast, with a top speed at 260 km/h, the landscape shifted in between little lakes and farmed lands, to cities with buildings under construction,

When we arrived to shanghai it was night, and a big ocean of people traveled through tunnels until we reached the city surface. Skyscrapers, neon-lights and a city full of life.

We negotiated the taxi ride with a non-taxi driver for 5 eur, it took 1h30 to go through the rush hour traffic in the city center. The driver was fun and with a happy spirit, he made us repeat some Chinese phrases over and over. When we arrived to the hotel he asked for 10 eurs, with the excuse that it had taken a long time to get there, only because he was a fun guy we payed 7 eurs for 1h30 traffic ride and Chinese language class, ta-Buu-txi, pingwa.