Shanghai Railway Station on Tuesday began to offer special
carriage service for female passengers on two through trains
between the largest metropolis in eastern China and the country's
capital, Beijing Times said on Wednesday.
It is believed the move will be conducive to ensuring more
comfortable and private space for female travelers.
The Shanghai railway station has arranged two special sleeping
carriages with eight cushioned berths on each of the through
trains, dubbed Z6 and Z22, respectively, between Shanghai and
Beijing, the newspaper said.
Ticket fare will not be raised for the special carriages, the
paper added.
Even if only one ticket for such a carriage is sold, the
carriage will keep male passengers away. And if no ticket is sold
one day before the train's departure, all berths of the carriage
will probably be sold to male bookers.
If more single female passengers need special berths, additional
ones will be possibly arranged.
The Shanghai railway station was not the first to provide
female-only carriage service on the Chinese mainland. It is
reported that Xuzhou City in east China's
Jiangsu Province took the lead to do so.
The new service has been welcomed by most female travelers but
doubted by some of their male peers, the newspaper said.
Some female travelers said they often felt embarrassed when
taking sleeping carriages with cushioned berths.
"I felt better with hard-berth sleeping carriages which were
open. But at a carriage with cushioned berths, which was closed, I
was often discomforted psychologically by the presence of male
travelers," Miss Feng said.
"Once I was dressed in skirt and happened to take an upper
berth. Then I had to wait till there were no male travelers inside
the carriage before climbing up to my berth," said Miss Qiao, who
was often on a business trip.
However, it seems that the anxiety of women travelers failed to
be understood by their male peers.
Some male travelers believed that strange men and women spent a
journey together inside one carriage will be conducive to creating
a harmonious atmosphere.
"Didn't many romances happen while a man and a woman traveling
together, did they?" a young man surnamed Wang said with a sense of
humor.
(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2006)