the random oracle

I’m a big fan of trains. They are comfortable, ecologically friendly, and don’t suffer the drawback of takeoffs and landings or turbulence. Fortunately, China has the most extensive and intensive rail network in the world, and we’ve been able to get everywhere so far without leaving the safety of solid ground.

Train travel isn’t necessarily convenient here though. The ticket system is a little archaic and does not work as well (for the technologically savvy) as say the SNCF does in France. The tickets can only be bought through official sales points, and not all the sales points have access to all the tickets. There is no discriminatory pricing for tickets so they tend to sell out very quickly, especially during rush periods like right now (the summer vacation season). Tickets only become available 10 days before the trip (sometimes 20 for high speed or express trains) and can sell out right at the moment when they become available. I hear this has a lot to do with scalpers (黄牛) buying them out right away. Anyway the ticketing system might make sense since lots of people might not be able to buy things online, but still there must be a way of implementing tiered pricing so you don’t get the kind of drastic shortages like there are now.

The trains themselves and the train stations are by and large comfortable and sometimes ultramodern. I took the Beijing-Tianjin express, which leaves from the new Beijing South Station and zooms along at an average speed of 300+ kmph to reach Tianjin in half an hour. This broke the world record for highest average speed for a regular passenger train service when it opened in 2008, and I think remains as of 2010 the fastest (along with the new Wuhan-Guangzhou line). I’m really looking forward to when the high speed lines are all finished, at which point one will be able to go from Beijing to Shanghai in 5 hours by rail.

This summer, my train from Beijing to Lanzhou was slower, taking about 17 hours, but this was fine because I had a bed. From Lanzhou to Jiayuguan we had a hard seat overnighter, which turned out to really suck becaus already it’s hard to sleep upright, but then we were also next to this big pack of loud obnoxious people who stayed up pretty much all night making noise and smoking. The last segmen from Jiayuguan to Dunhuang might have even been worse because we got a train without numbered seats, so we had to stand for the first hour, but luckily enough people got off so that we could sit for most of the ride. Altogether I guess I’ve probably already spent about 30 hours on the train so far, probably with many more hours to go.