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　　SHANGHAI--Partly because of a string of malfunctions and the July 23 train crash in Wenzhou, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway was not as popular in its first month of operation as many had expected．

　　In a news release on Monday, the Ministry of Railways said the railway had transported 5．26 million passengers from July 1 to July 31, or 170,000 passengers a day on average．

　　And an average of 179 trains including both those that run at 200 km/h and at 300 km/h trains - were on the line every day, and the trains had an occupancy rate(上座率)of 107％, the ministry said．To many who traveled, that last figure no doubt seems puzzling．How, after all, could carriages that were often half empty have been 107％ occupied? Zhao Jian, professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, said the figure is not a good reflection of reality．He accounted for it by noting that a seat aboard one of the trains would be said to have a 200％ occupancy rate if one passenger had sat in it from Beijing to Tianjin and then another passenger had occupied the same seat from Suzhou to Shanghai．

　　Despite the impressiveness of those figures, travelers will find, perhaps to their surprise, that they will have little trouble buying tickets to ride the 1,318-km-long high-speed rail line．By 7：30 pm on Monday, passengers could still buy 754 second-class tickets and 148 first-class tickets for a high-speed train that is to leave from Shanghai for Beijing on Tuesday afternoon, according to the China Railway Customer Service Center's website．The train contains 1,066 seats．

　　The story was different for those who want to travel by air between Shanghai and Beijing．Luo Zhuping, board secretary of China Eastern Airlines, said seats on the company's flights on that route are selling well：90 percent of them continue to be occupied．

　　The situation was different in the first week after the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train began operating on the last day of Junc．The airline then saw the number of travelers using its service fall by 20 percent and began offering generous discounts to draw in more passengers．Few such incentives are being given now, he said．Still, passengers have not totally abandoned high-speed rails in the days following the Wenzhou train crash, which has killed 40 passengers and injured 191．