From Cover, issue no. 341, November 12th, 2007
Translated by Zuo Maohong
Original article: [Chinese]

"The card has been with me for almost 20 years... It's really hard to say goodbye." says Zhang Jie with an awkward smile. "I can no more hear that unique sound when the card touches the swipe machine." He commutes from Wudaokou, a suburb in the northwest of the city, to Nalishi Road downtown.

Roughly 170,000 other Beijingers have traded in their monthly subway passes for the now ubiquitous public transportation cards. Fortunately for Zhang, with the new card he can enjoy the same 60 percent discount in bus fares and a low subway fare of two yuan per trip as other commuters.

Now, Zhang's Beijing hukou, or residential registration in Beijing, no longer entitles him to a privilege that those with hukou from elsewhere in China are not. The same transportation prices he's benefiting from now are shared by everyone in the city, no matter where their hukou is registered.

As Zhang recalls, the first time he used a monthly pass was in 1989, 11 years after the first monthly pass was adopted. At that time, the ticket was a joint monthly pass for electricity, bus ride, and subway ride and cost 10 yuan. It was easily available to anyone with a Beijing hukou and a proof of employment or studies.

"But the certificate had to specify the distance between one's home and either job or school. Only if that distance was longer than the set standard could the applicant buy a monthly pass," says Zhang. Compared with the normal subway fare of 0.3 yuan, commuters at the time could save significantly by using monthly passes.

In 1995, Zhang moved into a new home. His mother, who previously walked to work in about 10 minutes, had to then ride a bus for over two hours to work every day. It was difficult to buy a monthly subway pass then, since the Beijing Subway Company began to limit sales, as was reported, to guarantee the safety of subway operation.

At the time there were 200,000 monthly pass holders. In the following years, however, the figure didn't increase a little.

As demand rose and supply remained fixed, people had to use their connections to buy a ticket. Says one Beijing-based government official who once was involved in such activity and wishes to remain anonymous,  "There was no way to get a ticket unless your connections were really strong... a ticket only came with an approval note from the leadership of the subway company."