Train Mis-Adventures

Seeing as June 1st was the official start of China's real-name ticketing system for bullet trains (you need ID or a passport to buy tickets), I thought I'd give it a whirl and see how this rule was actually being applied on the ground.  Overall not too bad.  You need the passport to book, but they simply just copy the number into a computer and it is printed on the train ticket.  Nobody checked at the station or when I was board the train, granted, it was a short distance. 

 

The big caveat, however, is the fact that the queues are slowed to a crawl as everyone else has to contend with this new rule.  Ticket vending machines with Chinese ID card scanners are now off-limits to foreigners who obviously don't have ID cards.  So we have to line up at the booths and there is usually one or two open at the high-speed rail stations, amounting to a queue of anywhere from 20-30 minutes.  This adds to the detours in reaching the far-away bullet train stations in the first place.  By the time you add everything up, the regular trains end up being faster.

 

So it looks like the bullet trains in China are only an advantage for very long trips.  In the midst of all the hype, the changes, and the shuffle, there were certain routes that ended up getting badly shafted.  These were mainly the short-distance routes that used to have regular trains.  These trains either had their services cut or had major route changes

 

A classic example of this is the Shanghai – Hangzhou route.  Back around 2002 – 04, a bunch of us enjoyed doing the occasional weekend trip to Hangzhou and West Lake, which is a natural retreat for many Shanghainese.  It is with great sadness to say that such trips are no longer possible to do in the same kind of style, unless things change in the future which is doubtful.  Today I explored it from every possible angle in the hopes of proving this false, but I could not.

In the good old days, we would simply hop on down to the Shanghai South station, waltz into the ticket booth, purchase a ticket right away, catch a hard-seat train in the morning for 25 RMB, and arrive right downtown Hangzhou a couple hours later where we could easily go and see West Lake.  Not so any more.  If anyone wants to do this nowadays, here is what would be required:

 

1.  Go to the brand new suburban railway station in Shanghai for bullet trains which requires an hour of extra time, or a very expensive taxi ride.

2.  Take the bullet train which costs anywhere from 50 – 80 RMB.   You won't have access to the self-serve ticket machines, and will need to line up for the ticket in very slow queues, given that everybody has to show their passport or ID card now to buy the tickets.  20-30 minute wait times are common.

3.  The train takes 40-60 minutes.  Yes the actual train is fast at 300-350 km/h top speeds, but when you add up all the times (getting to the station, buying the ticket, etc. ) you won't save any net time compared to the past.  If anything, the net journey will take longer.

 

It turns out that the regular trains still depart from Shanghai South, but they canceled the Hangzhou station in order to make way for the bullet trains to arrive there.  So the regular trains now go to another station in Hangzhou which is miles away from downtown.  It is the same with the buses.

 

Yesterday I figured I could take the regular trains to some midway station, and then switch to a bullet train midway through.  This plan sounded good in theory, as it would make for a downtown à downtown connection.  But unfortunately the regular train stations and the bullet train stations are miles apart no matter where you go.  I tried this in two midway towns and found the situation to be disgusting.  Almost an hour between stations.  There is a third midway town I haven't tried yet, but I don't have much hope on this one.

 

What is so incredibly aggravating here is that the public transit to and from the bullet train stations is really, really scarce.  You might have one public bus running every 30 minutes from the station, or perhaps a subway every 20 minutes.  It essentially amounts to riding a bullet train in style, only to be dropped off in the middle of the countryside.

 

What this means is a ripe market for 'back taxi' drivers or 'hei che' in Chinese, which can be found loitering all over the stations.  Motorcycles too!   After the nightmare with such drivers last year, I vowed never to take one again.  Yet the illegal black transport market is thriving like nobody's business with these isolated train stations!

 

All these changes have taken place in the last few years, and I've now lost count of the number of times I've been taking an involuntary walking tour of the countryside, due to being dropped off in the middle of nowhere and refusing any of the black taxis.  Ordinarily I'd avoid the countryside as it's not exactly pleasant.  It's even less pleasant when coming off a high-speed train and being thrust into the middle of shack-ville with dilapidated housing conditions, all within earshot of what sounds like airplanes running along the ground at high speeds

 

Uhh …. can someone say gap between the rich and the poor?  The rich will take the bullet trains and pay almost 3 times what it used to cost in the past for a scenic trip to  Hangzhou that has now been relegated to my memories.