High-speed services connecting the Yangtze River Delta Region and the northeast will open on Dec 28, reducing the travel time from Shanghai to Harbin, the farthest provincial capital in Northeast China, to less than 13 hours.

The trip used to take 22 hours.

High-speed trains will run between Shanghai's Hongqiao Station and big cities in the northeast: Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian, according to Shanghai Railway Bureau, and also between Ningbo, Zhejiang province, and Shenyang.

All of the trains will set off in the morning and run during the daytime.

High-speed trains will also start their maiden trips between Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Wenzhou. It will take around 10 hours to travel from Shanghai to Shenzhen.

Altogether, 68 train services will operate on the new schedule.

High-speed rail tickets from Shanghai to the northeastern cities of Harbin, Changchun and Shenyang can be booked by phone or on the Internet starting on Monday, the bureau said.

Although ticket prices have not been published, the news of the upcoming high-speed railway operation has led to a drop in airline ticket prices.

The price of airline tickets from Shanghai to cities in the northeast is down 80 percent around Dec 28 and about 60 percent on Jan 10, three weeks before Spring Festival, when hundreds of millions of people will travel back home.