Originally Posted by
Jamoldo
At least y'alls aren't doing train travel in China! We don't do bookings on the web here. We go to the station 10 days or four days before departure and stand in long lines and sometimes don't get tickets (for hard sleeper, soft is easy)... Horay for finding middlemen/terrible travel packages...

That's how it used to be in India prior to computerisation of Railways reservation system.