|
|
发表于 2007-5-4 19:22:02
|
|阅读模式
今天刚刚发现的，5月2号的china daily ,3版头条。
On right track to saving time and costs
By Wang Zhuoqiong
Friends of "Farmer" consult him on train timetables if they wish to travel during the Golden Week holidays each year.
Farmer, whose real name is Liu Xincheng, is a 29-year-old student who lives in Nanjing city, East China's Jiangsu Province, and a self-proclaimed train enthusiast.
He collects train timetables, old and new, and studies them thoroughly. His friends say he knows the quickest and the most economical train routes in the country.
Farmer is one of a growing community of train lovers who have put their knowledge to good use. They belong to a website, Hasea.com, to communicate with each other and offer the public advice.
Since its founding seven years ago, the website has grown into an online community with about 30,000 registered users and 300,000 visitors a day.
Its founder, Liu Haitao, 36, is a former railway station operations director.
"Call us train fanatics," said Liu, a native of Mianyang city of Southwest China's Sichuan Province. "We are just crazy about trains."
"I was amazed when I received my first letter from a high school student, obsessed about trains and coaches," Liu said.
The train enthusiasts share their photographs of trains and their journeys through blogging, forum-postings and online chatting.
They also organize trips together. Last July 1 when the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was launched, several enthusiasts boarded trains from three different departure cities - Beijing, Chengdu and Xining.
They uploaded their photographs to the website to showcase the first rail journey to the highest plateau in the country.
Recently the website introduced online broadcasting programs by volunteers about the latest high-speed trains.
"The community is growing," Liu said. "I am glad that through this website, more people are seeing the value of the railways, their history and culture."
As for Farmer Liu, he buys updated train schedules each season, and looks for old ones from other enthusiasts.
"I don't read schedules to check times and destinations. I analyze them," he said. "I study why and how train routes and their arrival-departure times are arranged."
The country's 90,000 kilometres of railway is one of the most complicated in the world, Farmer Liu said.
The change in routes and frequencies reflects the country's economic development and policies.
"If you read into the changes, you will find they indicate a lot of things," Farmer Liu said.
For example, the Expressway from Chongqing Municipality in the western region to Beijing has been boosted from one train 15 years ago to five trains a day now.
"You can see the country's development has shifted from east and south to the west," Farmer Liu said.
His interest in trains and timetables was sparked during one frustrating journey home in winter from college in Tianjin municipality in North China.
The direct train from Tianjin to Yantai city in Shandong Province took 15 hours. But Liu, who was unable to get a seat on the train, had to stand for 14 hours.
"I was exhausted after the trip. So I decided to get a timetable and find the best route home," he said.
He soon discovered that a detour and a stopover does not necessarily take longer than a direct one, and it was easier to get a seat.
Farmer Liu's obsession with timetables and routes has earned him a growing reputation among friends and colleagues. He is often asked for advice on purchase of tickets, selection of routes, and costs.
Travelling almost 20,000 kilometres a year, Farmer Liu sees trains and meeting various passengers as an experience, rather than simply a trip from one destination to another.
"You sit in a train, and can watch an ever changing scenery. But if you were on a plane, you only see the sky and white clouds," he said.
But, train lovers still remain a relatively rare breed to the public. They are often given curious looks for taking photographs of trains or inspecting carriages.
[ 本帖最后由 dhxu121 于 2007-5-4 20:04 编辑 ] |
|
