I decided to visit my hometown – Zhangye in Gansu Province during this summer vacation. Having not visited the city for five years, I am eager to meet my relatives, see the city and most of all, eat to my heart’s content the local foods. I miss the Beef Noodles, Sauce Noodles, Rangpizi and many snacks with local flavors.
Traveling by air is always expensive, even with discounts. As a poor person like me, I have plenty of time, and a three-day trip on the train doesn’t sound too bad.
I was still surprised by the familiar scene of the crowded ticket lobby when I arrived at the train station. A few long queues stretched from the ticket window to the end of the lobby, making my hope to get a berth ticket very long-queue dim. The air was stuffy, and a few roof fans rotated listlessly, hardly disturbing the buzzing hot air.
The huge electronic information, overhanging the row of ticket windows, said the ticket availability on its display wasn’t real time. It means people could wait a couple of hours for their turn at the ticket window, only to be told the tickets are sold out.
Even with such a crowd, and up to ten times more people around the Spring Festival, not all of the ticket windows are open. Why can’t they hire a few more people to reduce the time for queuing? Wasn’t it true that it is a big advantage of China to own a huge pool of “cheap labor”?
Another thing at the train station, which is a cause of egregious irritation for people, is the open hours of the ticket windows. Every ticket window has a one-hour break time for the ticket clerks, supposedly to let them have lunch or refresh themselves. When the break time arrives, those tickets clerks, with unparalleled resolution and determination, shut the window in the face of the people at the window, and left the post with brisk steps!
Those already in the line of about forty people have no choice but to either line up at another window, or wait for a whole hour.
Whoever is in charge of this arrangement of the ticket windows should be so fired for this blatant insult to the customers. But I doubt it would ever happen. China’s railway service is officially dubbed People’s Railway, and the railway authority only knows how to serve the people, not customers.
Why can’t they let another ticket clerk to fill the post, while letting the previous one taking the break? Only one extra hand needs to be hired to fill the break time of eight ticket windows (eight hours), and save an enormous amount of time and revulsion of the crowd in the lobby.
Yes, people should take notice of the break time and wait at other windows, but the total number of the crowd is still not reduced in this way, and it is much easier to just let another clerk take over the post than force a reshuffle of the long queues in the lobby.
By the way, I waited at an empty window for half an hour till a ticket clerk assumed her post, and was told to come again early next morning to get sleeper train tickets to travel ten days later.