Absurdity, Allegory and China

On March 10, 2008  the following article appeared in the China Daily: Five-star Beijing-Tibet train to run after Games.

Luxury passenger train service from Beijing to the southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region will be launched on Sept. 1 [2008].

The tickets were gaggingly expensive – $5600 USD per person – and the projected departure schedule was brisk, to say the least – three trains leaving Beijing every 8 days, beginning on September 1, 2008.  On August 21, 2008, nearly two weeks into the Olympics, the AFP reported that

… an official at the Qinghai Tibet Railway Company, who also asked to remain anonymous, told AFP Thursday there was no timetable yet for the train’s maiden voyage.

With a schedule like that and the cost of the tickets, someone was dreaming monster dreams. For a variety of reasons, no train of this stripe has ever left the post-Olympic station. I have continued wondering about this train touted as the “world most luxurious” for some time now. By chance, while reading through a Danwei feed recently, an ad popped up for the New Oriental Express, leaving Beijing on March 30, 2009 (the tour begins on March 27, but the first three days are all-Beijing: Peking duck, King Wing Hot Spring International Hotel, and a dizzying whirl through traffic to the normal tourist venues, including the colossally empty Olympic venues.)

I had mistakenly assumed that this was the same ride as the one hailed as the “five-star train … decorated according to the standards of a five-star hotel,” the one that was scheduled prior to last year’s troubles in Lhasa. But this new train, leaving in just three weeks is not that train. This one is much less expensive and not nearly as luxurious. The train accommodations are normal soft sleeper – four people to a berthing compartment – and instead of the 40,000 RMB price tag on the 5-star ride, this one is only 25,500 RMB, with most nights, with the exception of four or five, being spent in hotels along the way.

But still I pressed on. There is a ban on foreigners in much of Qinghai and Xizang through the end of March, I was told. Yes, I knew that, but the train was not scheduled to leave Xining until April 4, heading into the heart of the Tibetan cultural region after the March ban. Still, there was a problem; the travel company could not guarantee that, as a foreigner, I would be able to get the necessary travel permits to be a part of this tour in April either, since travel permits in April are still questionable, no matter how much I wanted to experience what it is like to travel in the style “normally reserved for celebrities and government officials.”

So, it looks as if the New Oriental Express will be very oriental. Or, more specifically, totally Chinese, since the travel company cannot guarantee that they will be able to get permits for anyone with a foreign passport. Oh, well, I guess I’ll just have to wait. It will give me more time to stumble upon that bag full of money I’d need to purchase a ticket w/permits. I’m betting I probably won’t get to go. Sigh.

But a side-thought to all of this has to do with the reported investors of the original, most expensive train in the world, the one that never left the station and, as best I can tell, has not set the date for their maiden voyage. Last year it was reported to have been backed by Hong Kong’s Wing On Travel (Holdings) Limited to the tune of US $52.9 million. That’s a chunk of change. I wonder what the status of that bag full of money is? If I stumble upon that I might really see what life is like for the celebrities and officials. My nose is to the ground.