Comment by larrysalibra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by larrysalibra | Hacker News Reader

High speed rail in China is also killing the traditional dining car. In my experience, Chinese dining cars on non-high speed rail are amazing. Food is cooked freshly on the car and you can meet random interesting travelers sharing your table.

You used to even be able to get freshly made meat and vegetable dishes on the Guangzhou to Hong Kong (Hung Hom) intercity route.

High speed rail has for the most part either totally ditched the dining car or switched to pre-packaged boxed meals that aren't particularly interesting.

On my most recent long-haul slow train trip from Hong Kong to Beijing in 2016, a university professor from Beijing decided to sit across from and repeat government propaganda to me as if she was the first person to ever tell this foreigner who speaks fluent Chinese these things. "Did you know China has 56 ethnic minorities?" "Did you know China has 5000 years of history?"

I made a point to visit a dining car on an east coast Amtrak route several years ago after my amazing China dining car experiences hoping to get some of that traditional dining car experience and found to my disappointment that even then they were only serving pre-made meals.

I guess it's hard to justify pulling and staffing a full kitchen and stocking it with fresh ingredients.

I think one has to accept that some of these nostalgic things will inevitably retire, like the record player. We'll eventually get new things though, maybe dining cars in autonomous vehicles, who knows. We're currently in an awkward transition where old things are gone and new things aren't here yet, so being human is shitty.

I encourage you to not read the news so much if you actually feel this way. Talk to some older folks too-they’ll tell you about the way it was only 30-40 years ago. Almost everything is so much better today. The world is so much wealthier, smarter, and more connected.

I meet people from all over the world daily. Today, I can be sitting anywhere and order food from kilometers away and have it within a half-hour. I can do my job anywhere and anytime (besides a few windows of time for meetings). Yes, there are a few things that have gotten worse, but the overall picture is so much brighter than it used to be.

I've also done long rail trips in the US and China. Shanghai to Hong Kong and San Francisco to New York. Only did the high speed in China though so I don't know what I missed there.

I guess it will soon be too late, but the fresh dining experience you wanted still exists on the Western half of Amtrak service. From SF to Chicago I was slamming back steak and clams. The meals come with the sleeper car.

Newest HSR trains have buffets, 1 per 8 cars.

Configurations for short routes don't have them.

Do you really need a dining car when the longest route in the country is only 8 hours long?

Packaged meals on HSR do worth their price. Whatever meal I had in the past 7 years on the rail was cooked fresh.

I agree dining cars aren't needed on high speed rail because of the short amount of time passengers are on the train. That doesn't mean I can't miss the old 24+ hour trains with dining cars.

I wasn't aware of the HSR buffet. Look forward to trying out!

Packaged meals on the Beijing to GZ HSR were pretty bad. The trip was only 8 hours (BJ to ChenZhou Hunan), but you do get hungry between there and then. Having said that, I didn’t feel like checking out the dining car (if there was one). Having been on longer trips on normal fast trains with hard sleepers, the dining car was definitely useful.

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