Scramble starts for train seats
Print Edition
Buying a train ticket for the annual Spring Festival, the busiest travel time in China, used to mean waiting in long lines at ticket windows in railway stations. The digital age was supposed to change all that by selling tickets online.
Instead, the “lines” and frustrations have simply moved into cyberspace.
The Year of the Rat begins on January 25. The weeklong holiday means millions of Chinese will be traveling home for traditional celebrations with family and friends.
But first you have to get there.
A friend and I wanted to buy rail tickets to travel to Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, on January 22. I am planning to celebrate the Chinese New Year there with my family.
Tickets for that date first went on sale on December 23 at 1:30pm. I set an alarm so I wouldn’t miss the moment. I checked the 12306.com — the official website for buying tickets. My friend was trying to buy them using an “acceleration app” on his mobile phone.
However, in just one second, the tickets for the best departure time were all sold out. We had come up empty.
I tried to check the website for other ticket availability but could not log on. The website crashed from heavy demand.
Luckily, my friend finally got two tickets, even though they weren’t for ideal departure times. Many others using the “acceleration app” weren’t so lucky.
The app uses rapid response technology to constantly refresh a website page and provide almost seamless access to its changing information. That means people who use the app may get to the head of the ticket “line” faster than those who check manually and more slowly.
Our ticket-buying saga is the story for millions of Chinese workers, who have migrated from hometowns to seek jobs in big cities. The annual holiday rush, called chunyun, means a “ticket scramble” for those who want to be reunited with family for the Chinese New Year.
Estimates project 440 million train trips will be taken during Spring Festival, up 8 percent from the holiday early this year. Counting road, air and boat travel, about 3 billion trips are expected to be taken during a 40-day period that extends to take in the Lantern Festival. It is the largest single movement of people anywhere in the world.
At least 102 million railway tickets for the Spring Festival travel rush were sold in the eight days after China’s railway operator started presale on December 12.
To facilitate demand, China’s railway service is adding 100 additional high-speed trains.
So far, there are nearly 60 “acceleration apps” available. They promise a better chance of securing the tickets you want if you pay more and upgrade the speed. None promises a 100 percent success rate.
Alternatively, you can share the apps on WeChat Moment.
The closer the Spring Festival looms, the more hectic the scramble becomes. The four days preceding the start of the new year are the most sought-after travel times. The more popular the destination, such as Shanghai-Beijing or Shanghai-Guangzhou, the faster tickets are sold out. High-speed rail is especially sought after.
If there are no more tickets on 12306.com, you can’t miraculously find a ticket with an acceleration service, even at top price. These software apps do not sell tickets and can’t conjure up new sources of tickets.
Sometimes these apps don’t even surpass the success rate of those using more snail-like manual ticket buying.
According to Shan Xinghua, director of the technical department of 12306 China Railway, “the 12306.com platform has a risk-prevention and control system. If someone frequently accesses the server at a very high speed, the system may regard it as an abnormal operation and intercept or drag it into a slower queue.”
The ticketing system is placed under stress by the apps.
“Manual normal operation takes a few seconds to click at the fastest, but the machine can operate at the millisecond level and limit system resources,” Shan explained.
China Railway is trying to protect the fairness of the system.
Last May, it initiated what is known as “waiting for materialization,” which means that when tickets are sold out, you can still pay for a ticket and wait on standby for extra tickets to materialize — from, say, people who change their minds and return tickets for a refund.
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