About This Blog

“Dear passengers: Your attention please…”

Just about all Chinese railway public announcements start with these magic words in English. Having heard that since mid-2008, when the Beijing-Tianjin (Jingjin) Intercity Railway first opened, I (David Feng) was a bit numb to this rather cheesy address.

Until I realized that dearpassengers.com remained un-registered.

Whereupon I snatched it and made it into this blog you’re with now.

As I remarked in my first posting…

Totally out of the blue, I found out that dearpassengers.com was, amazingly enough, not taken. (The same happens to all Chinglish domains, it seems. Just try registering workingstaffandreceivingpeople.com, another Chinglish railways refrain heard at station announcements.) Bang. I grabbed it faster than the CRH Express zipping on the Beijing-Shanghai HSR at test speeds close to 500 km/h.

This is what you have now. But I felt that making Dear Passengers an HSR-only blog was like travelling on a long express train where there were only five people onboard. You could hog two toilets whole per person and still have “leftover” space. This blog had room to grow, and the point was that you were all passengers. Dear passengers, rather. And the other thing was that I loved to travel. Just this year, I clocked in not just in excess of 13,000 km on the rails, but with the HSR’s enemy, the plane, I also clocked in 8,432 km. The point was that there was no way in hell to staple me to an office chair. I loved to travel and my soul loved to “be out there” in the great outdoors. And apart from the HSR obsession, I was also obsessed with non-HSR trains, as well as highways, expressways, and Subways or Metros.

Not just that… I’m also into cultures. I’m mixed culture myself, as in I got my education in Switzerland when I was a kid, but I’m still Chinese by blood. I don’t slurp my noodles, but I let an accent rip that, when heard, becomes a candidate for rhotic Beijinghua. I stop for pedestrians on zebra crossings most of the time, yet can also get the better side of drivers in Beijing with my taxi driver-ish driving, reserved only when I’m in an absolute hurry. So that also makes me a culture enthusiast, or rather, a travelling culture enthusiast. If you like, a culture travel kind of guy…

Finally, the reason why I take the train is because I can totally relax. This might not “come to you” when you see me onboard with a laptop or iPad in front of me, but I think about little else while on the move. It’s the best way to make me relax, so I’m also for relaxing while on the go. I’m hence also into slow, relaxed lifestyles.

Add to that my manic obsession with travel-related news, and — boom. Mix it all up and you get this blog, Dear Passengers. Here’s hoping you enjoy this!