Comment on "Keeping track of precious rail tickets" (China Daily, Jan 19)

I can cite two cases that show how difficult it is to book a train ticket in China. This winter I intended to visit Harbin, Heilongjiang province, to see the ice and snow sculptures. But no train tickets for Harbin were available to suit my travel plan, and I had to call the hotel in Harbin and cancel my reservation.

Last summer, I planned to visit Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Then, too, I couldn't get a train ticket and I had to cancel my hotel booking.

So uncertain it getting train tickets, that when some of my friends called me last winter and expressing an interest in visiting China, I had to advise them not to do so, because train tickets cannot be effectively booked in advance.

But the ID requirements are not the problem they are being made out to be. Many ticket agents are simply not trained to deal with foreign passports.

Queue jumping and the general unwillingness of people to queue up at the railway stations, however, are very hard for first time visitors to China to fathom.

One of the many changes needed to improve train services in China is to plan according to what people actually do and not what they should be doing.

Robert Crawford, via e-mail

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(China Daily 02/06/2012 page9)