Wanted affordable meals on fast wheels

This Spring Festival holiday will see at least 2.91 billion people travel across the country in less than 40 days, with many of them using high-speed trains. Indeed, high-speed trains have become a source of pride for China, but that should not prevent the authorities from taking measures to not only strengthen railway hardware but also further improve on-board services. That may better justify them as a symbol of industrial upgrading.

For example, the authorities should introduce inexpensive packaged meals on all high-speed trains as they promised.

According to China Railway Corporation, by the end of 2015 the country had 121,000 kilometers of railways, including the world's longest high-speed railway of 19,000 km. But the on-board and off-board management, especially when it comes to catering service, is hardly as impressive. The 15-yuan ($2.3) meal boxes, which should have been available 24x7 on all high-speed and bullet trains by now, as required by the CRC a year ago, were reportedly sold out on a high-speed train from Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu province to Shanghai within 10 minutes of its departure.