Last Sunday afternoon, I took the train back from Hualien to Taipei. As usual it was packed, with many more passengers than seats, so how did I get a seat? You can book a seat two weeks in advance – but the online system for booking regularly goes into meltdown as everyone tries to book seats as soon as they are available. Having failed to get through before all these seats were snapped up, we were forced to go for the second option …

Every train has a large percentage of the seats reserved for army officers – of course hardly any of these seats are actually used by the intended recipients. This means that if you know someone who knows someone whose third cousin once used to be in the army, then you might be able to get a reserved seat that way. Although it’s quite surprising that such an odd rule is still in existence, it goes to show how slow Taiwan has been in reforming away the priveledges of the ruling class. It’s also an example of how old rules and customs mean that it can still be a question of who you know, and how much ‘guanxi’ you have that decides how easily you can get something done.