Friday, May 18, 2007

Bullet trains on the way

China recently speeded up its trains, and started to run better, fancier bullet trains between some big cities. One month after the glorious trip, the bullet train runs between Beijing and Zhengzhou took its first monthly check-up early this week.

Perhaps this is no surprise to anyone, but the fancy train has been wounded by its passengers in the most bizarre ways.

-Emergency hammer has been stolen a couple times only because it looks useful.
-Automatic water tabs are taken because some passengers think it's really cool that water runs when you put your hands under.
-The toilets are worse. The turning buttons are all taken, toilet roles, even the gadget that holding the roles was taken.

Apart from these, curious passengers tested every emergency buttons, tried every emergency facility, and experimented on everything a regular train doesn’t have. Turn the 360 degree chairs till they’re broken, sit on attached small table till they crash, put gum and waste papers in air-con ventilators.

Don’t know what conclusion they will come up in the end, perhaps, fancy trains are unusable under extreme conditions? But the conclusion we can come up with is: development should come step by step, one step too big, chimps would get fanatic.