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Reuniting with families is the essence of Chinese Spring Festival.  But buying train tickets during this period is one of the biggest headaches for most people, especially the migrant workers who are reluctant to pay 50 or 100 RMB extra per ticket to Huang Niu/Piao Fanzi (Ticket Scalpers).

So they came to the train stations hours or even days earlier in order to get a good spot in the queue. But sometimes the chance of getting a ticket is still slim.

A cardboard left at a ticket office at Beijing Railway Station, it says “I’m the first, I came here yesterday”.

People waiting in the queue was not as many as I imagined. But some were still reluctant to leave before the next batch of tickets was released.

Chun Yun (Transport during the Spring Festival period) in China is one of the biggest movements of people on earth. It is estimated to be 2.32 billion person-time travel around the country by various means during this year’s Spring Festival.

Thanks to the Internet, complaints regarding the difficulties of buying train tickets have brought the attention of the central government. Mr. Hu Jintao issued a special order to solve the problems.

Then, Deputy Director of the State Railway Department, Wang Zhiguo, made a public apology on TV.

Regarding the Ticket Office Scandal video (a video showing a railway personnel suspicious of selling bulk tickets to ticket scalpers), he said “there was a misunderstanding, but it has hurt our passengers’ feelings”.

According to Southern Daily, one of the few newspapers that have some independent journalistic spirit, a Real Name System can fundamentally solve the problem. But the Railway Department refuses to implement such a system because of technical difficulties. Whereas our neighbor India has already done that 70 years ago.