Train Tickets

We arrived in Shanghai on August 6th, a week earlier than necessary in order to go to Beijing for a week before school started. We anticipated we would be unable to get tickets because China’s rail system is such that you can only buy tickets a week before the date of departure. As a result they sell out very quickly. Despite this we decided to try anyway. Sunday morning we arrived at one of the many ticket offices in Shanghai to buy tickets for Monday night. After standing in line for 30 minutes we finally arrived at the front of the line and gave the woman at the counter our hand scribbled note with the potential train numbers and times we wanted to leave. She typed a few things into her computer then without even looking at us said “may yo” (don’t have) and waved us off. We stepped to the side, looked up to the electronic seat availability board and confirmed that it did say “15 seats left.” ???? So we conferred for a few minutes and re-joined another line to try again. Clearly that woman didn’t check properly.

Another 30 minutes later.

We handed the guy our note. This time I could see his computer screen and double checked to make sure he entered all 8 of the possible train numbers, which leave 5 minutes after each other. He did. Then he said “yo.” Aaron and I look at each other and thought “Yes! That woman clearly wasn’t doing her job properly.” We started counting out 1300RMB ($191) for the second class soft sleeper, except the amount on the screen popped up with 2770RMB ($408). Immediately the Chinese surrounding us went nuts. “What!!! Where are they going? Why is it so expensive?? This is absurd.” Then I heard someone say “soft sleeper” and they calmed down and I heard a collective “aaahh” with a few head nods. I thought, well I guess this price is accurate and the one we found online was not. Ugh. We forked over the money and left.

We saw one of our Chinese friends later that day and showed him our tickets and he just laughed then showed our tickets to the random Chinese guy next to him who also started laughing. Great! We’ve been duped, clearly.

After a very long sleepless night during which we spent most of it online trying to figure out what on earth happened and how we could be reunited with our money we learned a few things. To start with we could have flown cheaper even if we bought the tickets for the next day. More importantly we discovered that there is ONE English language train ticket counter in Shanghai. We also learned that you can return your tickets for a small penalty.



Are you curious to know what happened? Well the nice gentleman at the counter decided to sell us the super deluxe first class soft sleeper tickets rather than the second class soft sleeper tickets just because he could. Wasn’t that so nice of him!!!! Next time when the woman says “may yo” we’re walking away!

As a little coda to the end of the story, we have subsequently discovered that after arriving in Beijing we would have been unable to buy return train tickets!!! Apparently train tickets into Shanghai are selling out in a matter of minutes, since everyone wants to go to the 2010 World Expo. Instead we’re saving our money and traveling to Tibet in October.