Take on the lines

When you are in a country of 1.3billion people whose area is roughly the same size as our country which has a measly 300million, you learn what congestion is like. Everywhere you go there are endless lines, to get a taxi, to get a subway ticket, to get a train ticket, everywhere there are lines.

I stood on a line today which literally took 40 minutes to get through and this is typical. See in China there is no push for efficiency, in a country where everybody works, nobody rushes. We went from Beijing to Shanghai today and instead of flying, we took a train. Now it was a high speed train routinely doing 300km/hour but when two cities are 1200 kilometers apart and you make multiple stops that train ride takes 6+ hours. Most of the time you'd say that getting to and getting from an airport would add time but it wasn't like the train station was anywhere near my hotel anyway, it took an hour by cab. Then my hotel in Shanghai was another 45 minute subway ride away. So the entire day started at 7:30am and will conclude at nearly 5pm. I'd have to think any flight combo would have been vastly faster. But I asked why we didn't fly and was only stared at like I had two heads. The reason is that the train is $80 and the flight $200, the $120 extra is not worth he extra 5 hours of my life apparently

Oh well.