Buy a train ticket

February 11th, 2007 Filed under English entries, Life

@ 2007-02-11 20:22

It’s very very hard to buy a train ticket at this time of the year for most the tickets have been sold. Many people, including farmer worker, students and other workers in the city waited in quene at the railway station for many hours to buy a train ticket. It reports that 20M people want to go home by train in Guangdong province before this new year, but only 5M can get the ticket they want, most will be disappointed.

Train ticket is not a big problem for those who want to Beijing, since there are 12 trains each day go from Shanghai to Beijing which is much more than trains to other districts like Shandong. Urecca’s home is at Jinan. She went to the train ticket office on the first day it began to sell the ticket of 16th Feb. She only found that there’s a long quene at the office and the tikets had been sold out. Since we can’t get a ticket through the railway ticket office we turn to other ways.

One way is internet. Some people who have got a ticket may change his/her shcedule and sell the tickets on the internet. Many websites offer train-ticket-transaction service, like huoche.com, sohu.com, piao.com etc and etc. But there’s site you can’t miss, its kooxoo.com. Kooxoo is a so-called “vertical search engine” offering search service for some daily life related info. Search of train tickets sellling info is one of its core service. I tried my luck there and really find several tickets I needed. But when I click through to see more details, I find the tickets have been sold just minutes ago. Why? Internet is for every, if I can see the info, so do others. I keep searching on kooxoo.com for several day and come out to be in vain.

The second way is an effective way if you have some relationship with some one work in the railway system. One of Urecca’s neighbour happen to have a friend in the station, he himself have get a ticket by the help of the friend. So Urecca ask the neighbour to help. Soon the neighbour replied: he told Urecca a seven digit numbercode (03######) and told Urecca to tell the worker at the station’s ticket office and the worker will definitely sell a ticket from Shanghai to Jinan to her. So Urecca went to the station and told the number to the ticket office and it really worked!

Very mireculous, right? Nevertherless the ticket office have announced all ticket are sold out, when you enter a seven digit password, the tickets come out again! Then where were they? I don’t know exactly, but I can guess. They are reserved by some “insiderman”. If you know one of them, a ticket is not a problem. If you don’t know them, then wait in quene for hours or even a whole day to try you luck at the ticket office. The most possible answer is an ugly angry middle-age woman telling you “no ticket”.

A ticket is a vivid picture of the current China. Abuse of power, corruption, previleges and struggle of the mass. Such an unfair goverment, we don’t need.

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