Shanghai Railway Station on Tuesday began to offer special carriage service for female passengers on two through trains between the largest metropolis in eastern China and the country's capital, Beijing Times said on Wednesday.

It is believed the move will be conducive to ensuring more comfortable and private space for female travelers.

The Shanghai railway station has arranged two special sleeping carriages with eight cushioned berths on each of the through trains, dubbed Z6 and Z22, respectively, between Shanghai and Beijing, the newspaper said.

Ticket fare will not be raised for the special carriages, the paper added.

Even if only one ticket for such a carriage is sold, the carriage will keep male passengers away. And if no ticket is sold one day before the train's departure, all berths of the carriage will probably be sold to male bookers.

If more single female passengers need special berths, additional ones will be possibly arranged.

The Shanghai railway station was not the first to provide female-only carriage service on the Chinese mainland. It is reported that Xuzhou City in east China's Jiangsu Province took the lead to do so.

The new service has been welcomed by most female travelers but doubted by some of their male peers, the newspaper said.

Some female travelers said they often felt embarrassed when taking sleeping carriages with cushioned berths.

"I felt better with hard-berth sleeping carriages which were open. But at a carriage with cushioned berths, which was closed, I was often discomforted psychologically by the presence of male travelers," Miss Feng said.

"Once I was dressed in skirt and happened to take an upper berth. Then I had to wait till there were no male travelers inside the carriage before climbing up to my berth," said Miss Qiao, who was often on a business trip.

However, it seems that the anxiety of women travelers failed to be understood by their male peers.

Some male travelers believed that strange men and women spent a journey together inside one carriage will be conducive to creating a harmonious atmosphere.

"Didn't many romances happen while a man and a woman traveling together, did they?" a young man surnamed Wang said with a sense of humor.

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2006)