Foreigners get no easy ticket to ride

Chinese Web users have been reposting a complaint yesterday from a foreign traveler, who grumbled that ticket machines installed at Beijing railway stations are useless since the introduction of the real-name ticket policy last year.

Ticket machines at major stations have an English interface, but will not accept a foreign passport as a form of identification, leading to further criticism of the ticket policy.

Yesterday, a screenshot of a message shared on Foursquare, a location-based social networking website, was reposted on major websites like Sina Weibo and Douban.

The registered user whose account name was "Maria U." checked in with her venue as Beijing South Railway Station at the end of last year and wrote "There's no way to buy a ticket at the machine unless you have a Chinese ID, what the hell do they have an English interface for then?"

South Station has installed over 70 ticket machines, but since the real-name ticket system was introduced in May, foreigners are unable to use them.

"I don't understand what the English system is here for," said a passenger surnamed Liu at the South Station yesterday, "foreigners don't have a Chinese ID, right?"

Sylke Klapp, a German student, said it had never occurred to him to use the machines.

"It doesn't make sense to have an English language interface if the machines will not accept passports," he said.

"I'm afraid so far the ticket machines at the four major stations are not applicable to foreigners who use passports as ID," said a publicity official surnamed Yang from Beijing Railway Bureau.

"As for the English interface on the machine, it's just to prepare for the software which will be installed in the future to read passports, but we don't know when that is," said Yang.

The microblog with the screen shot was forwarded over 600 times yesterday, with most commenters being unsurprised to learn of yet "another government vanity project."