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BEIJING - The first commercial bullet train left Shanghai at 3 pm Thursday, beginning a one-day tale of two cities on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway.

The 1,318-kilometer link, starting from Beijing and ending at Shanghai, chains together the country's prosperous Pan-Bohai and Yangtze River Delta economic zones, cutting the single-way time between the two cities to under five hours from two days half a century ago.