Mobile phones and mobile offices

I was born and raised in a rural family in Fufeng, a county in Shaanxi province.

When I was young, my parents took me to visit relatives and friends in other provinces. We always took the train, so my parents went back and forth to the train station for several days to get tickets. It was an exhausting process.

Now, many people reserve train tickets online and collect them at the station. It is very convenient for passengers. However, in the rural areas, such as my hometown and nearby counties, most people still go to station booking windows to buy tickets because they do not know how to purchase them on the internet.

In October, Zhou Decai, a 76-year-old farmer, visited the ticket window more than five times, hoping to buy a ticket from Shaanxi to Chongqing to visit his grandson during the National Day holiday. But each time, the tickets had all been sold.

I wrote down his personal information and told him that I would look online in my spare time, hoping to snap up returned tickets. Eventually, I bought tickets for him and his wife online, and they followed my advice to change their original plans to adjust to the rail schedule and avoid the holiday travel rush.

The system is easy for people with smartphones and the ticket-purchasing app. They can book tickets anytime, anywhere. But those lacking knowledge or skills have to go “old school” and visit a station booking office.

Zhou is just one of the people I have helped in Qishan county. Last year, the rail bureau (the Xi’an-Baoji section) opened a mobile ticket window in Qishan and I became involved.

Every morning, we drove our van from the train station to the center of Qishan, where I met many villagers.

We built up a good relationship when people came to buy tickets, and a growing number of seniors asked me to buy tickets for them.

The app can deal with a maximum of 15 contacts, and my phone is always full.

When demand is high, I have to write the passengers’ information on a piece of paper. I filled six pages from mid-December to mid-January alone.

The internet coverage isn’t good in Qishan, so sometimes it is difficult to log onto the application. When the owner of the restaurant next to our parking space knows I am using the app to buy tickets for local people he always allows me to use the Wi-Fi in his store.

The villagers appreciate our efforts and are very kind — some have even brought snacks for me.